Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Our nation has become a military empire analogous to ancient Rome, another Republic that lost its bearings because it became the mightiest fighting force of its time. That we owe this to having spectacularly won what could be called “The Last Just War”, World War II, merely ironically underlines our descent into become the World’s most bellicose nation. This bellicosity has been masked by propaganda that makes us out to be the one nation responsible for ensuring “freedom and safety”. In this strife torn Earth, that idea cannot be supported since the truth is that we are the chief threat to peace in the world today. Now in truth, the use of the United States military to intervene in this Nation and other Nation’s affairs is not simply a phenomenon that began with World War II as you can see from this timeline linked here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations . What World War II marked though was the absolute dominant position in world military power which our country attained during our participation in that war. Given the magnitude of its scope it is easy to forget that for the United States World War II lasted only a brief four years. However, the incredible mobilization of troops and the supporting materiel of war were accomplished via a total mobilization that in the end fully turned the vision of Corporate America towards the great profits and benefits to be derived by American military dominance. Indeed, for generations to come there was a fluidity of personnel between leading corporate entities and the Department of Defense.
Since 2001 our Armed Forces have been totally engaged in two major, unjustified wars and various minor “peace actions”. A child born in 1990 in the U.S. grew up in a world where there has been constant warfare and warfare’s necessary companion glorification of military service. The admixture of America’s warlike behavior and the faux glorification of the nobility of our military has become a constant in that young persons mind, only to better make them future cannon fodder for our dominant Corporate/Military Industrial Complex. Sadly, the less educated that young person is the more they are gullible to the siren call of that propaganda of military glorification. As the Great U.S. General Smedley Butler said so long ago: “War is a racket”.
In truth we honor our soldiers far more in words than in deeds. “America’s Greatest Generation” as establishment mouthpiece Tom Brokaw put it, was also the one generation of military personnel that was actually very well treated in the aftermath of their service. The World War II returning troops were educated via the generous G.I. Bill, had their homes financed through special discount programs and entered the marketplace at a time of phenomenal growth of the U.S. economy due to our country’s new position as the World’s dominant power. Every generation of returning veterans before and after World War II was treated rather shabbily in comparisons, despite the lavish praise given them for their service. The huge backlog in receiving benefits and medical treatment for our latest generation of returning veterans is masked by our presumed “honoring of the troops”, which is constantly accomplished merely in words, with a paucity of actual services delivered.
The reality is that the only real bi-partisanship that exists in our politicians today is that the overwhelming majority of both Democrats and Republicans are enthusiastic supporters of American military hegemony and bought stooges of the Corporate/Military Industrial Complex. That many beyond their corporate donors are indeed true believers in American military supremacy is no doubt true. The fact is that if you were born after let’s say 1960, your view of the world was shaped by American interventionism and American military supremacy. Barack Obama was born in 1961 and one can count him as one of those who for the most part supports America’s military interventionism. The proofs of my assertions are simple. In this time of supposed budgetary crisis, there is barely minimal support for cutting anything out of our Military and Intelligence budget. I lump Military and Intelligence together because there has been such a blurring of the lines between these two formerly discrete government entities, that today it is impossible to distinguish boundaries.
When it comes to my premise for this piece which is that this country will soon be involved in its “next” war, let me explain my reasoning. First of all there is the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room of American politics that almost no one that I’m aware of talks about. We are mired in a recession with countless American unemployed. If we bring our troops home and cut our defense budget we will add hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to our jobless rolls. Truly, the military has been the escape for many with otherwise poor employment prospects into obtaining a respectable job and the semblance of a future career. By cutting the military/intelligence budget, as things now stand economically in this country, we will recede from “recession” into “depression”. However, without something to justify the existence of our military budget, the U.S. spends more on our military budget than the next thirteen countries combined military expenditures, the truth that we are squandering the riches of this country to support the profits of private corporations becomes obvious. Therefore we need something to justify this unnecessary expense and that is another war.
As I see it there are three good prospects for that coming war, though I won’t preclude that we might fight all three at once. The first prospect is that ever handy, oil rich, example Iran. The justification would be similar to that of Iraq, which is “weapons of mass destruction”. The idea is that we can’t allow a country as unstable as Iran to have nuclear capacity. Underlying this justification is that Iran has a massive supply of oil riches and so would be a prize similar to Iraq and the oil leases we forced Iraq to agree to. Naturally, a partial excuse would be its threat to Israel, but in truth that is merely a convenient overlay for Saudi Arabia’s competition with Iran for dominance in the Muslim world.
A second possibility is intervention in Syria for humanitarian reasons. The Syrian dictator Assad is no doubt a brute, but we live in a world where a great many country’s are ruled by brutes. The “humanitarian” interest in Syria is its strategic location, the presence of American military bases close by and the various economic benefits to be supplied by controlling that country.
Now a third possibility rearing its ugly head comes from the clownish dictator of North Korea. Again we find a nuclear threat involved and also this is paired with the “humanitarian” need to rid this unfortunate country of its hereditary dictator. That North Korea is a failed state, unable to feed its people and geographically located next to one of the World’s great powers China may be ignored because the silly posturing of its’ “dear Leader” can be propagandistically twisted into a “threat” to our country.
It must be noted that possibly the most unstable country to possess nuclear capability in the World today is Pakistan, yet that ill-governed country is somehow never cited as a threat to the U.S., even with its harboring of Osama Bin Laden and of the Taliban, next door to the country we are currently deeply involved in.
These are my reasons for my believing that quite shortly our country will be involved in another war. Unless thinking by both parties in Washington changes drastically, which I don’t see as likely given the gravy train our politicians are on, we will receive the same propagandist buildup as a preparation of the American people for yet another war. We will squander the lives of our troops and the wealth of this country maintaining our role as the “Leader of the World”. We will move ever closer to Rome’s example as a republic turns to empire and the empire is ruled by military heroes and so it goes.
The reader will note that I used no links to back up my suppositions and in truth this guest blog was my meditation on the militaristic character that has prevailed in our nation. However, my musings are not merely the product of a fevered brain this morning, but actually a continuation of an ongoing theme of a portion of my guest blogs. The links below supply the information and detail that have influenced my feelings and a the combination of work that both Gene Howington and myself have produced in the past year or so.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/09/petraeus-the-problem-with-heroic-hagiography/
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/02/why-they-hate-hagel-and-american-mythology/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/09/15/this-changes-everything/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/09/08/the-drum-beat-goes-on/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/08/25/lest-we-forget/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/06/23/missing-the-point-when-the-point-is-obvious/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/06/17/propaganda-102-holly-would-and-the-power-of-images/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/05/20/propaganda-101-what-you-need-to-know-and-why-or/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/04/01/defending-our-freedoms/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/02/25/hypocrisy-democracy-whats-going-on/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/07/americas-transcendent-issue/
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/09/24/as-we-careen-towards-a-dream-of-armageddon/
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/09/10/the-president-has-been-afraid-of-what/
CheatinDog 1, April 13, 2013 at 12:01 pm
No one talks about making the world safe for Democracy anymore.
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At the moment, trying to sell our “ideal” form of government to other countries will be a hard sell indeed, given the behavior of this government over the past fifty years. And it is not getting better, it seems to be getting worse.
Mike S, what you say really is the current reality of our nation.
itchinBayDog: Bloomberg? Weiner? You have your 9/11s mixed up.
Get Rid of Mubarak!
Whose this Morsi nazi?
How did we get him?
Let me count the ways.
Get rid of Saddam and his weapons of catolic mass destruction.
Who are these thieves in office now?
How did we hire them?
Let me count the ways.
Get rid of Ghaddafi!
Get rid of TallyBan!
Get rid of Putan!
Get rid of Bloomberg!
Bring on Weiner!
No one talks about making the world safe for Democracy anymore.
[music]
And its one, two three, What are we fightin for?
Don’t ask me I dont give a damn..
Next stop if Viet Nam..
And its five, six, seven Open up the Pearly Gates!
Ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoppee we’re all gonna die!
-Country Joe and the Fish
A friend of mine who did two years in Nam tending to wounded and dying, is dying of a tumor in some hospital. No one, or few, are linking the illness to the stress of war.
What are we fighting for in Afghanistan? Keep the pirate territory safer than when the Russians had it so that seven guys with box cutters wont get on planes in Boston and hijack them?
The budget debate on CNN is all about welfare and social security benefits. Not one cent in tribute is denied for defense. Billions for Halliburton but not one mention on CNN when budget crisis is discussed.
This apparently ain’t no time to wonder why.
Whopee, we are all gonna die in the long run so why care?
Great job Mike. I am not so sure that we are close to a major conflagration with any of the three countries that you mentioned. I do not see North Korea actually starting a war because they this is the way they get things from the international community. They bluster and shoot a defective missile or two and then the world gives them aid in exchange for stopping their nuclear ambitions. Plus, even China is getting sick of North Korea’s tactics.
I could see us sending more aid to Syria, but I do not foresee a major military move there. Iran may have the highest chance of instigating or enticing the US into a conflict, but I do believe that their military has the ability to do damage to the US and its allies so we may think twice. I just hope I am right!
I think we will continue the run away military spending and continue the war by proxy that seems to be the latest product of the MIC.
After reading my previous post I realized that the point was, without sufficient soldiers, the military would be less powerful. Then I thought of the drones and the lasers. Lots of kids these days would love to sit at a console and play drones and lasers without understanding that those are real people they are killing.
Should we go after N. Korea, and sit on another border with China, I think we’ll be in for more than we can handle.
Great Mike….
History is always in the making…..
BarkinDog: Is it not “parallel”? Or is it: “para L”?
For the Germans, WWI was a war that taught them the profit motive of war. For America WWII gave the lesson.
America watched, observed, and absorbed some German successes in the run-up to WWII. We must address the 1933 Parellels. The Germans used the arson of the Reichstag as the necessary evil to end al civil liberties. We saw that and did the same with the Twin Towers. At the Nuremburg Trials, Goerring was locked up and admitted to committing the arson himself. History might reveal who was responsible for 9/11. But we have gone down that cliff. It is well beyond “slippery slope”. We tax what we can and spend as much as we can on Halliburton. Welfare is a diversion to keep our attention on the welfare cheats while Cheney and the Koch Brother boys cheat us to kingdom come.
Which brings us to Kingdom Come. There will be a reckoning. America the Beautiful will be viewed as AmeriKa The Tyrannical. So sayeth, BarkinDog this 13th day of April, 2013, [day, month and year of our Lard]
“We are moving more and more to a feudal society where a few will be determining what the rest of us do, if we manage to survive.”
Bettykath,
There you go channeling my thoughts again. 🙂
OS,
Thank you for the Sun Tzu quotes, As you point out many have read him through the lens of their own pre-judgment. Also as you know Confucius, a contemporary also was drawn to philosophize because of his being appalled at the ongoing wars of the various Chinese States.
Mike, Great article. Can’t disagree with a word of it. Some thoughts:
Much of the unemployment would go away if the government hired people, directly or indirectly, rather than lay them off. This is one way to turn around a recession. Would a few more people in the VA help turn around the abysmal turnaround rate of VA benefit requests? Would a few more inspectors in the regulatory agencies help the environment, the work place, EEOC claims?
The more people who are working at living wage jobs, the more money that is spent. The minimum wage should be doubled and then tied to the cost of living index.
We are moving more and more to a feudal society where a few will be determining what the rest of us do, if we manage to survive.
How does this tie into your article? Only a few join the military because the want to fight. Some believe the propaganda of “keeping the homeland safe”, which can be countered by those opposed to more war but when wages are low and unemployment high, the military is an attractive option for many young people who can’t find jobs that pay enough to provide food, shelter and clothing for themselves, much less a family.
The one of the better things that the American public can do is vote every federal politician out of office and start over. But, we see too many people almost worshipping them and buying in to their propaganda for that to happen. Politics is a racket and will be as long as people continue to be so easily mislead due to their ignorance or apathy of what it takes to be a true leader.
yet another nice one,Prof Mike
-but let’s call a spade a spade: war,shmore…the name of the game is Invasion
[mea culpa, have been reading, ‘It Ain’t Fine if it Don’t Rhyme’ :’An eclectic collection of lyrics written over the past 60 years by happy-go-lucky veteran songsmith, Andy Halmay…’Kindle Edition on Amazon ]
My guess is North Korea will be the most likely theater.
Mike,
This is an excellent piece. As an amateur historian, I am constantly bemused by the fact too many people see an armed intervention as a first choice, not the last choice. Sun Tzu gave them the answers over 2,500 years ago. People say they have read Sun Tzu, but fast money speaks louder than common sense and the lessons of history.
A few lessons from Sun Tzu:
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“The reality is that the only real bi-partisanship that exists in our politicians today is that the overwhelming majority of both Democrats and Republicans are enthusiastic supporters of American military hegemony and bought stooges of the Corporate/Military Industrial Complex. ”
Yep.
And of every other K Street high dollar John who strolls up to the steps of Congress looking for a date.
Good job, Mike.
But we won’t see any substantive change until either “campaign contributions” are reigned in or something really terrible happens. Probably both.
I cannot remember the last time the U.S. was not at war in some form or another. Few talk about the effects on the psyche for adults and children conditioned to believe that war is as inevitable as oxygen and breathing. I hope you don’t mind me sharing my take on the war without end. http://deconstructingmyths.com/2013/03/23/war-without-end/