This is about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and any and all other modern manifestations of our wrongheaded penchant for military adventurism, but I begin it with a mention of Vietnam. Why? Because dear friends, as noted by the great Mark Twain, history doesn’t repeat itself...but it does rhyme.
The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I’d call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America’s whole culture -- aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn’t part of the local atmosphere.
Stephen Vizinczey, London Times, Sep. 21, 1968
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
William Westmoreland, Time magazine, Apr. 5, 1982
"One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society...shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help--because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.
Martha Gellhorn, 1986
I seriously doubt if we will ever have another war. This is probably the very last one.
Richard M. Nixon
Yep, old Tricky Dick was right. That nasty little clusterfuck in Vietnam was the war to end all wars. Aren’t they all?
Eisenhower’s Military Industrial Complex is alive and well and in more-or-less complete control of our government. No one who would understand the modern era or the never-ending wars that plague us is well served by missing that point.
It’s important to note that when I criticize the MIC, I am not criticizing the military rank and file, nor am I directly criticizing President Obama. I am criticizing the ‘machine’ that buhdydharma spoke of recently. I am criticizing the war profiteers, their wholly owned politicians and only the very highest levels of military leadership such as Petraeus and his ilk. My fear and my suspicion is that not even the President of the United States can resist these bastards. They have simply grown too powerful.
Their war machine is rivaled only by their propaganda machine. With it they play us like so many puppets on strings. The whole world dances to their tune. They define reality to suit them and then broadcast it to the rest of us. Along the way they make up whatever lies are necessary to achieve their goals. Do not for one minute believe that their grip on the MSM is anything but total and absolute.
The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media. Don’t miss that quote. It is key to understanding how they hoodwink us so easily. It’s not just the corporate-owned media, it’s the CIA-owned media.
The godless commies were the boogeymen in Vietnam. But skillful propagandists can make boogeymen of damn near anyone...and they do.
The Myth of Al Qaeda
Before 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s group was small and fractious. How Washington helped to build it into a global threat.
Michael Hirsh in Newsweek
Here is a series of videos that tell the story of how we created al Qaeda and how it was all manipulated to advance the agenda of the American neocons and the MIC (h/t LaFeminista):
The Power of Nightmares - The Phantom Victory 1 of 6
The Power of Nightmares - The Phantom Victory 2 of 6
The Power of Nightmares - The Phantom Victory 3 of 6
The Power of Nightmares - The Phantom Victory 4 of 6
The Power of Nightmares - The Phantom Victory 5 of 6
The Power of Nightmares - The Phantom Victory 6 of 6
It’s all propaganda skillfully designed to play on our fears. It is the purest and most insidious form of culturally catapulted bullshit. To fall for it is to be made a fool.
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.
Bob Dylan - It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Not much is really sacred. How true. How deeply and disappointingly true.
We are so mired in the crap of the MIC that not even the President of the United States is above it. Or as Dylan says in the above referenced song:
Even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.
As to the threat from al Qaeda, it is understandable that the president would define himself as an aggressive commander-in-chief. But he must wonder if our killing so many civilians and stunting so many children won't result in yet another generation dying to hate us. He must wonder if he is squandering the good will of the world, including the Muslim world, by sending more Americans to kill and die in a quagmire. He must recognize that he is putting his eight-year presidency on the line.
Tom Hayden
We have a tendency to discuss war in clinical terms. Is it wise policy? Can we ‘win’? What sort of strategery will best serve the imperial cause?
The reality of course is that war is no game. It is serious business...the cruelest business of all. Take it from the man who knew the business perhaps better than anyone, General Smedley Darlington Butler.
War Is A Racket
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
War is A Racket General Smedley Butler, USMC
These wars make the war profiteers rich but are devastating to virtually everyone else unlucky enough to be touched by them.
I think of war widows and orphans. I think of shell-shocked veterans. I think of my uncle who was never again sane after returning from the Korean War. I think of whole peoples who have been wiped out by genocide. I think of all the Iraq and Afghanistan vets with PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injuries. I think of all the naïve young boys who have been tricked into thinking an immoral war was a noble and necessary endeavor. I think of all the little children shaking in fear as they hear the bombers approaching or the fighting getting closer. I think of the screaming millions staring in abject horror at the bloody stump where their hand, foot, arm or leg used to be. I think of the lives lost and the resources wasted even now when we desperately need to be marshalling what scarce resources are left to try and ensure the continued existence of humankind – and all I can do is shake my head.
WAR - the American Way of Life
Recently, right here on DailyKos, I made a remark about the war in Afghanistan observing that it is all about warmongering and profiteering. A fellow kossack replied that as usual I had gone too far. Yep, once again I went too far and spoke the damned truth.
If you don’t think there is a sinister web of war profiteers, corrupt politicians and militaristic warmongers driving all these wars for their own nefarious purposes, you need to educate yourself.
Why We Fight
As President Barack Obama begins winding down the Bush war in Iraq, he is building up his own war farther east. We're told that it will be a new, expanded, extra-special American adventure in Afghanistan, involving a vigorous surge strategy to "stabilize" this perpetually unstable land.
The initial surge will add 17,000 troops to the 36,000 already there. Then, later this year, there is to be a second troop surge of another 17,000 or so. This mass of soldiers is expected to be deployed to a series of new garrisons to be built in far-flung regions of this impoverished, rural, mostly illiterate warlord state that is ruled by hundreds of fractious, heavily armed tribal leaders. We're not told how much this escalation will cost, but it will at least double the $2 billion a month that American taxpayers are already shelling out for the Afghan war.
Jim Hightower
$2 billion a month just for Afghanistan – and that’s about to go way up, and there is no end in sight. Is anyone paying attention? Is there anyone who believes that we can afford such nonsense?
The Iraq war alone will end up costing us over three trillion dollars.
The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More
There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.
Some people will scoff at that number, but we've done the math.
Linda J. Bilmes and Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz on Sunday, March 9, 2008 in the Washington Post
Even now, in the face of an unprecedented global economic meltdown, we spend the bulk of our money on our pathological military fetish.
This is insane. Certifiably batshit crazy.
The War Resister’s League website has the nauseating details.
And then there’s the fortune we piss away on the ‘drug war’.
What do you suppose the total price tag is for this failed war on drugs? One senior Harvard economist estimates we spend $44 billion a year fighting the war on drugs. He says if they were legal, governments would realize about $33 billion a year in tax revenue. Net swing of $77 billion. Could we use that money today for something else? You bet your ass we could. Plus the cartels would be out of business. Instantly. Goodbye crime and violence.
If drugs were legalized, we could empty out a lot of our prison cells. People will use this stuff whether it's legal or not. Just like they do booze. And you could make the argument that in some cases alcohol is just as dangerous as some drugs. I know.
Like I said ... something to think about. It's time.
War on drugs is insane - Jack Cafferty
None of the reasons for supporting any of these wars hold water. They may sound like they do, just like that scary old Domino Theory in Vietnam, but they are equally misguided or just plain wrong. The more we blunder about the world like the biggest bully on the block, the more we ‘stomp out terrorism’, the more ‘terrorists’ we create.
Everybody wants to stop the ‘terrorists’ but few want to consider where they’re all coming from. They do not spring from a vacuum. Most of them have serious and quite often legitimate grievances. If we really want to stop it, a good start it seems to me would be to quit pissing everybody off and start trying in earnest to come to terms with the problems underlying it all. It’s just as easy to make friends as it is to make enemies. And as far as the geopolitics of oil goes, nothing whatsoever gives us the right to take it from anyone else by military force. We need to just find another, saner way to face the future.
If we don’t, the warmongers by diverting our dwindling resources, are going to fiddle-fuck us out of any future at all.