More Bases More Bombs More War

 

They say things have to get worse before they get better.

But how much worse can the U.S. and the world tolerate?

Driven purely by institutional self-preservation and relentless pursuit of profits by the military-industrial-complex, the cancer of American military presence continues to metastasize unchecked across the planet.  Not satisfied with creating tens of thousands of new terrorists since 9/11 with aggressive wars, invasions, special ops initiatives, drone bombing, assassinations -- all claiming the lives of over a million innocent civilians -- budgetary allocations are in place and plans being implemented for even more bases in Asia, Africa, Europe, even the Arctic.

Is it any surprise that when America sets up a new military hub in a foreign country, conflict and war soon follow?

It's a closed feedback loop where a cure sets up the conditions for the disease it's supposed to treat.  If an area is relatively at peace, the putative guarantees of continuing tranquility offered by a military presence will produce opposition and rivalry which inevitably will metastasize into conflict and war.

On that note, there certainly is no mystery why terrorism is on the rise, especially in Middle Eastern countries.

Osama bin Laden stated it clearly.  To paraphrase: "We don't want you here."

Not only is sovereignty at issue in these native lands, but often they host sites which are considered sacred in both social and political traditions which stretch back centuries. The very presence of U.S. soldiers, war planes, drones, or any of the other paraphernalia of empire is insult enough. But the slaughter of innocent individuals, too often women and children, can only evoke cries of outrage and demands for revenge.  Is it asking too much to imagine how U.S. citizens would react if a wedding party was blown to bits in Topeka, Kansas or Knoxville, Tennessee?

This must end. The unnecessary expansion of U.S. military presence throughout the world is bankrupting our economy, incriminating each and every American citizen in horrifying war crimes, risking World War III, and ultimately will collapse the nation and take down the great American experiment.

It's up to us to stop this before it's too late!



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


More Bases More Bombs More War

Bulging Waste Line

 

I am not anti-government.

What follows is not an argument for reducing government.

It is evidence that we need . . .

Good government.

Smart government.

Honest government.

Visionary government.

Representative government.

The following is hardly an exhaustive list. But let me just offer some examples and some numbers on vast, incomprehensible, mind-numbing, breathtaking, destructive, possibly suicidal waste by government misadventures and boondoggles over the past few decades.

I am focusing on defense squandering and pursuit of unnecessary war.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, pictured at the top of this article, has been judged by many knowledgeable military analysts as the largest boondoggle in the history of the world. It is plagued with design flaws and technical problems. So far it has cost nearly $400 billion and total outlays to bring it into full production and implementation are projected to exceed $1.5 trillion.

The Department of Defense spent $40 billion between 2001 and 2014 on a missile defense program called Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System. It has been a complete flop. 

Another missile defense fiasco called X-Band Radar, a floating sea-based system, wasted $10 billion of taxpayer money. This was a project of the Missile Defense Agency, which still gets funded $8-10 billion annually, despite producing practically nothing of value.

At the end of 2014, Congress allocated funds for programs the Pentagon didn't even want:

• $1.46 billion for fifteen EA-18G Growler electronic warfare planes
• $1 billion to begin work on an additional San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship
• $479 million for four additional F-35 fighter jets (bringing the total number funded to 38)
• $341 million to modernize twelve Apache helicopters and nine Black Hawk helicopters
• $200 million for an additional Joint High Speed Vessel ship
• $155 million for twelve additional MQ-9 Reaper drones
• $154 million for an additional P-8A Poseidon Navy surveillance aircraft
• $120 million for M1 Abrams tank upgrades
• $150 million for medium and heavy tactical vehicles

Let's up the ante a bit. Look at this chart.


The U.S. has spent $1.5 trillion so far fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mind you, both of these wars were completely unnecessary. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And the Taliban offered to turn over to us Osama bin Laden, who was on a dialysis machine in Kandahar, if we didn't bomb them. So we bombed them!

Analysts are predicting that when all of the ancillary expenses are added in, including the interest on the money we borrowed to fight these two bogus wars, the combined total cost will be $4-6 trillion.

Now to add insult to injury, I'll take this a step further.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, Americans were promised a peace dividend. With the Cold War competition over, we could now reduce the defense budget and devote more of our tax dollars to those domestic items which would make life for everyone in the country better __ schools and libraries, parks, community and infrastructure investment, better education, recreational facilities, maybe child care services, improved health care.

The peace dividend never happened. For 16 of the 24 subsequent years, military spending increased. In fact over two-and-a-half decades, the U.S. spent over $2.5 trillion beyond the level of military spending in 1992.

$2.5 trillion!

Instead of us getting a peace dividend, defense allocations went up __ way up __ adding enormously to the national debt and cutting short all of those wonderful things that were supposed to happen since we were entering a new, more peaceful phase of our history.

Interestingly, the more we spent on military, the more conflict and war there was.

You have to wonder if this was a mere coincidence.

Now with the military budget more than twice what it was in 2000 __ and this is just the official military budget which doesn't include a mind-boggling assortment of black budget allocations and defense spending tucked away in other departments __ we live in a more dangerous world than ever, with whole countries destroyed, jihadists, like ISIS, the Nusra Front, al Qaeda rampaging from one end of the world to the other, and a whole multitude of crises brewing in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Africa, and the South China Sea.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. is being called the Empire of Chaos in some parts of the world. Recently, in an international survey by WIN and Gallup, America easily won the #1 spot as “the greatest threat to peace” on the planet.  China and Pakistan were a distant second and third.  Yaaay!  Go America!

We are without any doubt militarily the most powerful nation on Earth, arguably the most powerful nation in history.

We already spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined!

With all of this military might, we have lost every single conflict __ except one which could have been won by a high school soccer team __ since World War II.

The obvious question is . . .

What drives this extraordinary squandering of taxpayer dollars?

Actually . . . that's easy.

The defense industry in its relentless pursuit of profits building a lot of junk that doesn't work; the misguided neocon agenda of Congress and the White House commending the purchase of a lot of weapons we don't need; the hunger to be the preeminent power in the world; the paranoid preoccupation of the security agencies with the potential for terrorist attacks from both within and from outside our borders; our bombing-is-the-only-solution foreign policy which creates far more enemies than it destroys; our sociopathic infatuation with American exceptionalism which creates resentment internationally and makes us the easy-choice target for aggression; the dubious distinction of being the biggest exporter on the planet of weapons and military hardware, which may bring in a lot of profits for the military-industrial complex, but perpetuates chaos and carnage, endless threats and conflict . . . all combine to destroy any sense of proportion, perspective, and fiscal responsibility.

The verdict . . .

America's obsession with the military is bankrupting us.

It will probably destroy us.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Bulging Waste Line

This Is War

1992 © Kenneth Jarecke (Contact Press Images)

Until recently, this photo was never seen in the U.S.
It's a soldier making a last desperate attempt at climbing out of a
military vehicle after it had been hit by an incendiary bomb. This was
during Desert Storm in 1991.

This is the side of war our leaders don't want you to see. For us they want it
to be all about waving flags, marching bands, grandiose speeches,
stars-and-stripes lapel pins.

Remember Bush's order that there be no reporting of coffins flown in from 
Afghanistan and Iraq containing the remains of our dead soldiers?

But this photo is what war is really all about. That scorched corpse could be
your son or daughter, one of your grandchildren, an uncle, cousin,
nephew or niece, that freckled neighborhood kid that used to ride by on a
bike.

When our politicians speak about some new crisis that requires our military
intervention, some challenge to our national interests or terrorist
threat to the homeland, then with the appropriate somber expressions and
deeply furrowed brows reel off patriotic slogans and chest thumping
battle cries that beg for our bravado and self-sacrifice, they want you
to imagine proud soldiers in clean pressed uniforms, glorious fireworks
reflecting in the pool of the national mall, the flag majestically
waving in the background atop the White House, they want you embracing
that triumphant feeling of being a citizen of the greatest country in
the world. They most certainly do not want you thinking about that
photograph.

Sure, our leaders claim that they want to avoid at all costs sending our brave
soldiers into harms way. They claim to value every young man and woman
in uniform as they do their own children __ though for some reason their
own kids never get sent into battle.

They claim the decision to wage war, even to commit our troops to  "limited
engagement", is a very serious one, that putting "boots on the ground"
is something we do only when every other conceivable option has been
duly explored, considered, weighed, exhausted.

Warning! When you hear any of this talk about war as a last resort, be VERY
AFRAID. Because it means the bombs are about to drop and the bullets are
about to fly. Last resort is now pure cover, a charade, just one
component of a PR game to tenderize public opinion, just more cynical
role play to get people ready for the slaughter.

When our leaders say they hate war, be VERY ANGRY. Because their actions betray
their love __ their worship! __ of military power.  Just look at their
priorities.  Just look at the national budget. Just take out a world map
and try to identify the 1000+ military bases
the U.S. has in over 140 countries across the globe. If they really
wanted peace, these would be Peace Corps camps, not military
installations.

When they talk about "humanitarian war" and "R2P" __ responsibility to protect __
LAUGH, then CRY. Because any humanitarian concern is not about you. And
when you're getting your ass shot at, the only reason they want to
protect you is so you can shoot back.

On the increasingly rare occasions, when our leaders do give their token nod to
promoting peace in the world, be INDIGNANT __ be OUTRAGED __ at the
blatant hypocrisy. Why, our Nobel Peace Prize winning president even
used his award acceptance speech to make the case for "necessary wars".

Let's see . . . necessary wars. When I was in college, it was Vietnam. Commies
would take over the world if we didn't stop them. Then we had to stop
Saddam Hussein from taking over Kuwait, even though 9 out of 10 American
thought Kuwait was a tropical fruit. Then, of course, we had to bomb
the shit out of Afghanistan to catch Osama bin Laden, though he strutted
around the caves and continued to make threatening videos for the next
eight years. Then, we really had to get Saddam Hussein, this
time before he dropped an atomic bomb on Baltimore or Orlando, even if
he didn't have one and if he did had no way to lob it further than the
Sea of Galilee. Then there was Libya because we had to get rid of that
pesky Gadaffi. And Syria because . . . well, just because. And of
course, we've been having  a regular hissy fit about Iran for decades
now, so they're high on the hit list. And now we have the Ukraine, for a
lot of reasons, including Snowden, and Putin's making Obama look like a
warmonger, which frankly is not that hard, and the BRICS, and the
abandonment of the dollar, and the deranged neocons running amok in the
State Department, and the piles of military hardware which we're
bankrupting the country to buy __ after all, you can't just leave that
stuff laying around, because it's dangerous, so it's imperative we use it. Hell, 
let's throw some ordnance at the Russkies, and the Chinese . . . and . . . and . . .

Whew! All these "necessary wars" are exhausting!

As anyone who reads my blogs knows, I have never recommended any 
organization and directed readers to support its activities. There are hundreds __
thousands __ of good, hard-working, well-meaning, probably extremely
worthwhile groups out there trying to make a difference. My reluctance
stems from observing that despite their best efforts, not a lot seems to
be getting done.

But now, since time is running out and this might be our last best hope, I'm going to break tradition.

Please go to the website for World Beyond War. One of the founding members and its current director is a man I greatly respect and admire, David Swanson, who I've written about before. There is much more on the web site itself but here is a quick summary of their agenda:

• Creating an easily recognizable and joinable mainstream international movement to end all war.
• Education about war, peace, and nonviolent action -- including all that is to be gained by ending war.
• Improving access to accurate information about wars. Exposing falsehoods.
• Improving access to information about successful steps away from war in other parts of the world.
• Increased understanding of partial steps as movement in the direction of eliminating, not reforming, war.
• Partial and full disarmament.
• Conversion or transition to peaceful industries.
• Closing, converting or donating foreign military bases.
• Democratizing militaries while they exist and making them truly volunteer.
• Banning foreign weapons sales and gifts.
• Outlawing profiteering from war.
• Banning the use of mercenaries and private contractors.
• Abolishing the CIA and other secret agencies.
• Promoting diplomacy and international law, and consistent enforcement of laws against war, including prosecution of violators.
• Reforming or replacing the U.N. and the ICC.
• Expansion of peace teams and human shields.
• Promotion of nonmilitary foreign aid and crisis prevention.
• Placing restrictions on military recruitment and providing potential soldiers with alternatives.
• Thanking resisters for their service.
• Encouraging cultural exchange.
• Discouraging racism and nationalism.
• Developing less destructive and exploitative lifestyles.
• Expanding the use of public demonstrations and nonviolent civil resistance to enact all of these changes.

Is it naive to think that the human race can rise above its long history of savagery?

Noam Chomsky says we are a "strange species which attained the intelligence to discover
the effective means to destroy itself, but __ so the evidence suggests
__ not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst
instincts."

Let's hope he's wrong.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]