Capitalistic waste extends to our other wars, on poverty, for example, which enlisted battalions of social workers when contributions to the poor would work better. Then there’s the war on drugs withs its armies of police and prison builders to keep people from ruining their lives. We prefer to put them in the slam on the theory that’s better then their getting high on the outside.

The same is true for conservation. Who needs it? Everyone makes more building power plants and strip mining.

Some people mentioned Abu Ghraib which illustrates our tendency to follow orders. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychology professor, gained some notoriety in the 60’s or 70’s with a variety of imaginative experiments. One, a supposed visual accuity test had four lines on a page, one shorter than the others. Participants were supposed to pick the longest line. Four people took the test together. Three were in on it and picked the shortest line. About fifty percent of the time the fourth person followed the others rather than trust his perception. It brings to mind the joke about the cheating husband caught in the act who asks his wife “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

Every now and then someone suggests not paying taxes (it wasn’t only me)to be reminded that’s a felony. Whoever withheld taxes might be prosecuted by someone who is equally against the war but prosecuting people is his job. He does his job. I’m sure many riot police sympathize with protestors, but they break their skulls anyhow. And so it goes.

I’m not sure anything can be done about madness of this magnitude. But if we want to start we must get personal. I understand Jane is off to Washington for a meeting of the movers and shakers of the liberal blogging world. How much better it would be if the meeting were online, open to anyone interested. I don’t know how that can be done-I’m computer illiterate-but I’m sure someone can do it. We have to get into the habit of eschewing hierarchy in favor of anarchy.

Eisenhower wasn’t an anomaly when he had 5 stars, only once he got into politics.

You may not know he covered up a training accident for the Normandy invasion and had ~600 soldier corpses bulldozed into a mass grave — and letters went to their families saying they died in battle.

But I have to give him credit for not starting World War 3 on a mistake. When they finished the DEW line, with everything online, suddenly they had radar indications of an over-the-pole attack. The military commander got on the horn to Eisenhower, asking, “What should we do?!”

The reply was, “Wait, it might be a mistake.” And it was. And that’s how they discovered ‘moonbounce’!

The military has traditionally been very good at fighting the last war. After World War 1, Billy Mitchell declared air power was the answer for the future and claimed an airplane could sink a battleship. Granted, he fudged the arbitrary test but he proved the point. So the Navy came to believe the aircraft carrier was the final answer.

Unfortunately, technology and missile development by the Germans, working off American Robert Goddard’s early experiments in rocketry, proved this wrong. But we still have aircraft carriers, just as the ones off Iran.

Don’t ask about the Russian SS-N22 Sunburn cruise missiles they have, and hopefully won’t have to use. I wouldn’t want to be assigned to one of those floating dinosaurs.

Of course I do agree that we are losing in Iraq – to a centuries long battle between the Sunni and Shia, the local countries are the only ones who can prevent this.

This is on target.

What it misses is the fact that the military is the only jobs program that Republicans will tolerate. It is a source of pork-barrel expenditures that create local employment for people who are doing nothing except consuming to help the economy. And it has distorted the markets to which American corporations respond. That, not national security is why the military budget remains large. It is an addiction.

The military is a form of socialism. Yes.

Ian-I know you likely have your own answer to this…but after your fine piece one could raise the question as to WHY the US supposrts such an excessive and largelt inefficient military at great cost to social and economiuc development domestically…and a more efficient program of foreign aid that would improve the US image abroad?

It’s clear that this system benefits SOMEONE (or several SOMEONES).

When the Cold War ended there was lots of talk about how the “Peace Dividend” associated with a reduced military and the closure of bases was going to be expended. Such talk drove those in the military-industrial complex insane with fear. THEY certianly DID NOT benefit from the mothballing of military armament production lines or reduction of military contracts…and they were not going to convert their factories to plowshare-production (where there were already better plowshare makers already out there) without a political fight.

So we had a massive influx of corporate contributions to militaristic candidates…and the purchasing of the MSM outlets to promote the fight against a new “enemy” (Islamic terrorists) through conventional means (as there was little money in actually developing the methods of effective small-scale counter-insurgency using targetted aid and small forces). They had to encourage taking on rivals that were largely tangential to (or even a “natural opponent” to) Islamic terrorism (Iraq). Getting the US involved in such wars would create a situation where “perpetual war” would fuel their investors pockets for generations.

Of course, those investors are increasingly non-American and range from Australian media magnates to mainland Chinese bankers and politicians. Thus globalised capitalism uses and distorts “nationalism” and foment irrational fears to their own benefit.

Remember how openly disrespectful the military was of Clinton? There’s a cost to cutting the military and many have decided that it’s not worth the heartburn. It’s not just the multinationals, the rich, etc… it’s all the people associated with the military (including tons who aren’t officially on the payroll). Cutting the military is dangerous politically. Remember in 2000 how openly the military helped Bush? Until the Iraq war messup I was quite convinced that if Bush had declared martial law and cancelled elections “temporarily” odds were high the military would have gone along.

One thing I would note is that the US officer corps is almost exclusively Republican, with the deformed habits of mind that entails.

Totally wrong strategy. People are at their best, as warriors, when they are defending their own home ground. If we learned nothing else from Vietnam, we should have learned that. So the thing to do is leave Iraq, leave Afghanistan, abandon all of our numerous foreign bases–bring ‘em all home–and then…open the borders. You want to see Americans win a war? Let the tersts come to us!

American women will become the most ferocious of warriors, cuz the tersts want to veil them, take their shoes away and put them in the tent. No self-respecting Amurkin woman will put up with that (except for some stupid Bushite females, and even some of them…). Guys will get to use their many guns, real-time. As the robes of flying jihadists whip through our neighborhoods, Duck City, Guys! The Minutemen will finally have a purpose in life. The chickehawks will finally be exposed for what they are–the world’s biggest cowards, on fast jets outa here to safe havens in Colombia and Dubai. And we will be rid of them. Hoorah! And the real Murkins can be proud of their Republic once again, having sent the Infidel packing, along with the Bushite slime.

It’s easy to make fun of my fellow and sister Murkins, but I am at least half-serious. Let us pull back within our borders and defend our own land, at one tenth the cost. Let us be clever. Let us be frugal. Let us be real citizens again, in civil militias, as Thomas Jefferson and that poor maligned fellow, Nicolo Machiavelli, advocated. Let us not be serfs and cannon fodder for prancing princelings. Let us not be pawns in corporate resource wars. Let us mind our own business, and if any barbarians be at the gate, smite them. Let us throw this “military-industrial” monster off our backs and be free again and love the land, and defend it, if it comes to that, but, you know, it probably won’t. Islamic peoples just want to be left alone, to live their lives peacefully, like we do. Eliminate 90% of our military budget, trade fairly, deal honestly with other peoples, stop bullying the world and ripping it off, and I think we would find we have no enemies.

How is it you and I can figure this out but those who graduate from our military academies can’t ???

At least one experienced graduate has it figured out. Active duty Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling [deputy commander, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment], in an excellent commentary and analysis published in May in the Armed Forces Jounal:

http://armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198

Failing to visualize future battlefields represents a lapse in professional competence, but seeing those fields clearly and saying nothing is an even more serious lapse in professional character. Moral courage is often inversely proportional to popularity and this observation in nowhere more true than in the profession of arms. The history of military innovation is littered with the truncated careers of reformers who saw gathering threats clearly and advocated change boldly. A military professional must possess both the physical courage to face the hazards of battle and the moral courage to withstand the barbs of public scorn. On and off the battlefield, courage is the first characteristic of generalship.

Failures of Generalship in Vietnam

America’s defeat in Vietnam is the most egregious failure in the history of American arms. America’s general officer corps refused to prepare the Army to fight unconventional wars, despite ample indications that such preparations were in order. Having failed to prepare for such wars, America’s generals sent our forces into battle without a coherent plan for victory. Unprepared for war and lacking a coherent strategy, America lost the war and the lives of more than 58,000 service members.

Following World War II, there were ample indicators that America’s enemies would turn to insurgency to negate our advantages in firepower and mobility. The French experiences in Indochina and Algeria offered object lessons to Western armies facing unconventional foes. These lessons were not lost on the more astute members of America’s political class. In 1961, President Kennedy warned of “another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin — war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by evading and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him.” In response to these threats, Kennedy undertook a comprehensive program to prepare America’s armed forces for counterinsurgency.

Despite the experience of their allies and the urging of their president, America’s generals failed to prepare their forces for counterinsurgency. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Decker assured his young president, “Any good soldier can handle guerrillas.” Despite Kennedy’s guidance to the contrary, the Army viewed the conflict in Vietnam in conventional terms. As late as 1964, Gen. Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated flatly that “the essence of the problem in Vietnam is military.” While the Army made minor organizational adjustments at the urging of the president, the generals clung to what Andrew Krepinevich has called “the Army concept,” a vision of warfare focused on the destruction of the enemy’s forces.

First, it’s said the Republicans are right-wing authoritarians, but that Hilary Clinton wants to be more active abroad with the military and wants to increase spending on the military more than the Republican authoritarians.

That’s just plain weird.

Then, the thread seems to indicate the other alternative to Clinton is Kucinich and he’s wacky because he wants a “Peace department”.

Is that it?

Is that all we get?

We can have right-wing authoritarians or a Peace department or we can settle on someone who says we’re leaving Iraq, but not really and oh by the way we’re going to spend EVEN MORE on the military because if we don’t we’ll go into recession.

Really? That’s our choice?

I call b.s.

There are other choices and somehow they get shoved out of the discussion like they don’t exist.

If Americans allow the choices to be presented to them in these terms then they might as well just give up and let the Rich decide everything.

All Americans need to do to realize it’s phony strawman choices is to look at the entire list of candidates and wonder why they’re being spoon-fed such a narrow logic which offers completely unacceptable options.

Democrats should look at ALL of their candidates, not just Hilary and her V.P. Obama.

Isn’t it clear his entire purpose is to defend her wing, so no Democrat looks good in relation to her? Isn’t it clear he isn’t going to be President? They’re playing as a team: Clinton-Obama and arranging the choices with false logic to make their own nominations inevitable.

Why on earth would anyone allow themselves to be played that way only to be left at the end of the day with NO Liberals, stuck in Iraq forever and spending more money on the military?

Don’t buy into strawman choices. Think for yourselves.