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Why do the neocons want to continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq?
---
to control the region and it's governments
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to control the region and it's governments
military contracts and oil top the list
On Nov 1, 10:35 am, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> Tuesday, November 1, 2011Neocon Lamentations on Iraqby Jacob G. Hornberger
> Neocons are attacking President Obama for his plan to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq by the end of December. Never mind that Obama is operating under the contractual agreement entered into between former President Bush and the Iraqi regime his invasion installed into power. And never mind that there will still be thousands of U.S. diplomats, military personnel, security people, contractors, and CIA spies and assassins in the vast Vatican-sized U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. What matters is that Obama had a moral duty, the neocons say, of continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq indefinitely into the future.
> Why do the neocons want to continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq? Because they know that 9 years of military invasion, war of aggression, undeclared war, and occupation have produced nothing but failure, and hope springs eternal. Neocons think that another 9 years of occupation, and perhaps another 9 years after that (a 9-9-9 plan for the occupation of Iraq) will finally produce an economic paradise, one with peace and stability, governed by a loyal member of the U.S. Empire.
> Despite the deaths and injuries of more than million people, both Iraqi and American, Iraq is ruled by brutal, dictatorial regime that is no different than that of Saddam Hussein. Like Saddam s regime, this U.S.-installed regime has killed a vast numbers of its own people, rounded up people without arrest warrants or trials, incarcerated them indefinitely in horrific prisons, tortured and abused them, and even executed them. Despite a brutal invasion and 9 years of brutal occupation, Iraq is a violence-wracked, impoverished nation ruled by a crooked, corrupt, dictatorial regime operating under Islamic Sharia law.
> Deep down, neocons know all this, even if they can t acknowledge it on a conscious level. They keep repeating, almost mindlessly, that Iraq is now free and democratic. And yet not one single neocon has taken his family to Iraq for summer vacation during the past 9 years. I wonder why.
> Necons are also lamenting the fact that the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will enable Iran to have greater influence in Iraq. Hey, they should have thought about that back when they were supporting Bush s invasion in the first place. How could they forget that it was Saddam himself who had been fighting Iran throughout the 1980s, when the U.S. Empire was partnering with him and evenfurnishing him with those infamous WMDsthat Saddam ended up destroying prior to Bush s invasion? Couldn t they figure out that ousting Saddam from power and installing an anti-Saddam regime was precisely what Iran desired? Duh!
> If Iraq and Iran establish closer relations after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, which seems likely, no doubt the neocons will condemn the Iraqi people for being ungrateful for what the Empire has done for them. After all, it was the U.S. Empire, not Iran, that brought them democracy, at the cost of only a million Iraqis and the destruction of the entire country. Why aren t those people more grateful, the neocons will ask, for having had their children, parents, spouses, or friends involuntarily liquidated by a foreign Empire for the sake of democracy? So what if they didn t give their approval to the invasion and occupation of their country. After all, neither did the U.S. Congress. They re just a bunch of ingrates, the neocons will claim.
> Unfortunately, even though Obama is withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he s simply shifting them to nearby countries instead of bringing them home and discharging them. He, along with his army and his intelligence forces, just don t get it. The reason that there is so much anger and animosity against the United States in the Middle East is not just owing to the deadly and destructive U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to the U.S. Empire s role in the Middle East, including the stationing of U.S. troops there as well as financial and military aid both to the Israeli government and the many U.S.-supported Arab and Islamic dictatorships in the region.
> Americans have been born and raised in a militarist, national-security, warfare state. Therefore, it is difficult for most Americans to imagine life without what has deceptively come to be called a Department of Defense. But if we are ever to restore a normally functioning society to our land, it is necessary for Americans to challenge the paradigm of militarism, empire, the military-industrial complex, and the national-security state that has held our nation in its grip for so long.
> If Americans choose to hold onto the neocon warfare-state paradigm, they had better accustom themselves to continuing to live in a society based on torture, assassination, support of dictatorial regimes, terrorist retaliation, infringements on civil liberties, out-of- control federal spending and debt, inflation, and ultimately bankruptcy.
> If Americans, on the other hand, choose to embrace the paradigm of free markets and a limited-government constitutional republic, the United States will once again be a society of freedom, prosperity, harmony, peace, and normality.http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2011-11-01.asp
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Viral video of Perry speech nears half-million views
By Cameron Joseph - 11/01/11 10:55 AM ET
A video compiling clips of a recent Rick Perry speech in New Hampshire is nearing a half-million hits on YouTube.
The eight-minute video shows a punchy Perry joking about how "cool" New Hampshire's state slogan is, making fun of Herman Cain's tax plan and giggling when presented a bottle of maple syrup from the event's organizers. It went viral over the weekend and now has more than 475,000 views online.
Perry showcases his sense of humor in the clips and clearly enjoyed giving the speech to the socially conservative group Cornerstone Action -- he comes off as much looser than he has appeared in many debates and on the stump.
But the speech might not be helping him: Late-night talk show hosts including Jon Stewart joked that he appeared drunk in the video, and the most common YouTube search on Tuesday attached to Perry's name was "drunk."
Asked about the comments by The Huffington Post, Perry's campaign said, "The governor is passionate about the issues he talks about."
Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7M4gz97Y9W8
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/190979-viral-video-of-perry-speech-nears-half-million-views
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Congressional and private sector studies concluded Mexican trucks in
the US received fewer safety violations than their American
counterparts.
the US received fewer safety violations than their American
counterparts.
As the Teamsters original objections grew untenable the union shifted
tactics: they now insist that letting Mexican trucks into the US will
be a green light for drug traffickers to move their product into the
US.
• President Obama scotched the trial program a few months after
entering office.
• In accordance with a NAFTA panel ruling, Mexico leveled tariffs
against 90 different US products, affecting some $2.4 billion in goods
across 40 states.
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/07/19/revving-up-expectations/
On Oct 31, 10:41 am, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Unemployment is bad and allowing mexican trucks into the US, how does this
> improve things for US citizens ??? IT does not. It makes the problem worse.
> Companies if they have a choice between hiring a Mexican company and hiring
> a US company with go with the one that is dirt cheap. Putting more US
> citizens out of work......What idiot thinks this is good for the rest of us
> ???
>
> More Than 150,000 Mexican Cargo Trucks Await U.S. Permits before the
> end of this year
> More Than 150,000 Mexican Cargo Trucks Await U.S. Permits
>
> http://www.laht.com/article.asp?Arti...tegoryId=14091
>
> MEXICO CITY - Eleven Mexican trucking companies hope to join a
> pilot program that could see more than 150,000 vehicles delivering
> products to destinations deep inside the United States by year’s
> end, the vice president of the Canacar transport association said.
>
> Eight of the 11 firms have already submitted applications and are
> awaiting a response from the U.S. Transportation Department, Luis
> Moreno said.
>
> It was only last Friday that a Mexican long-haul truck became the
> first to deliver a shipment to the U.S. interior under the revived
> pilot program.
>
> Nearly two decades after the North American Free Trade Agreement
> linking the United States, Mexico and Canada came into force in 1994,
> a Mexican trucking company began shipping cargo beyond a buffer zone
> near the border.
>
> “There are eight or nine companies enrolled (in the program), more
> don’t yet have permission from the United States to enter,†Moreno
> told reporters.
>
> Each firm accepted into the pilot program must undergo an 18-month
> probationary period to become eligible for a permanent U.S. operating
> license, he said.
>
> By the end of 2011, Moreno expects that some 150,000 Mexican trucks
> will be authorized to travel beyond the narrow border strip.
>
> Around 70 percent of the $400 billion in goods that pass between
> Mexico and the United States every year are transported by truck.
>
> Before the renewal of the pilot program, Mexican trucks were not
> allowed beyond a 25-mile buffer zone where their cargo was typically
> transferred to U.S. tractor trailers, a process criticized as
> inefficient and expensive.
>
> The pilot program was launched in 2007, but later canceled due to
> opposition from Democratic lawmakers in Congress.
>
> The Mexican government retaliated by imposing $2.3 billion in
> tariffs on U.S. imported goods.
>
> The tariffs were lifted last Friday, but the Mexican government said
> they could be reinstated if the program’s U.S. critics succeed in
> blocking it again.
>
> Under NAFTA, Mexican trucks were to have had access to U.S. border
> states by 1995 and all U.S. highways by 2000, but opposition from the
> Teamsters union stymied the implementation of that provision.
>
> Canadian trucks operate in the United States without restriction.
> EFE
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RIYADH - A Saudi royal offered a $900,000 reward to anyone who
captures an Israeli soldier, on Saturday. Prince Khaled bin Talal, the
brother of business tycoon and Fox News co-owner Walid bin Talal, told
the Saudi-based broadcaster Al Daleel that the captive would then be
released in exchange for Arabs held in Israeli prisons.
captures an Israeli soldier, on Saturday. Prince Khaled bin Talal, the
brother of business tycoon and Fox News co-owner Walid bin Talal, told
the Saudi-based broadcaster Al Daleel that the captive would then be
released in exchange for Arabs held in Israeli prisons.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/saudi-royal-offers-900-000-reward-for-capture-of-israeli-soldiers-1.392666
---
considering that all israelis are soldiers it should be an easy gig
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Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Neocon Lamentations on Iraq
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Neocons are attacking President Obama for his plan to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq by the end of December. Never mind that Obama is operating under the contractual agreement entered into between former President Bush and the Iraqi regime his invasion installed into power. And never mind that there will still be thousands of U.S. diplomats, military personnel, security people, contractors, and CIA spies and assassins in the vast Vatican-sized U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. What matters is that Obama had a moral duty, the neocons say, of continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq indefinitely into the future.
Why do the neocons want to continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq? Because they know that 9 years of military invasion, war of aggression, undeclared war, and occupation have produced nothing but failure, and hope springs eternal. Neocons think that another 9 years of occupation, and perhaps another 9 years after that (a 9-9-9 plan for the occupation of Iraq) will finally produce an economic paradise, one with peace and stability, governed by a loyal member of the U.S. Empire.
Despite the deaths and injuries of more than million people, both Iraqi and American, Iraq is ruled by brutal, dictatorial regime that is no different than that of Saddam Hussein. Like Saddam's regime, this U.S.-installed regime has killed a vast numbers of its own people, rounded up people without arrest warrants or trials, incarcerated them indefinitely in horrific prisons, tortured and abused them, and even executed them. Despite a brutal invasion and 9 years of brutal occupation, Iraq is a violence-wracked, impoverished nation ruled by a crooked, corrupt, dictatorial regime operating under Islamic Sharia law.
Deep down, neocons know all this, even if they can't acknowledge it on a conscious level. They keep repeating, almost mindlessly, that Iraq is now "free and democratic." And yet not one single neocon has taken his family to Iraq for summer vacation during the past 9 years. I wonder why.
Necons are also lamenting the fact that the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will enable Iran to have greater "influence" in Iraq. Hey, they should have thought about that back when they were supporting Bush's invasion in the first place. How could they forget that it was Saddam himself who had been fighting Iran throughout the 1980s, when the U.S. Empire was partnering with him and even furnishing him with those infamous WMDs that Saddam ended up destroying prior to Bush's invasion? Couldn't they figure out that ousting Saddam from power and installing an anti-Saddam regime was precisely what Iran desired? Duh!
If Iraq and Iran establish closer relations after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, which seems likely, no doubt the neocons will condemn the Iraqi people for being ungrateful for what the Empire has done for them. After all, it was the U.S. Empire, not Iran, that brought them democracy, at the cost of only a million Iraqis and the destruction of the entire country. Why aren't those people more grateful, the neocons will ask, for having had their children, parents, spouses, or friends involuntarily liquidated by a foreign Empire for the sake of democracy? So what if they didn't give their approval to the invasion and occupation of their country. After all, neither did the U.S. Congress. They're just a bunch of ingrates, the neocons will claim.
Unfortunately, even though Obama is withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he's simply shifting them to nearby countries instead of bringing them home and discharging them. He, along with his army and his intelligence forces, just don't get it. The reason that there is so much anger and animosity against the United States in the Middle East is not just owing to the deadly and destructive U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to the U.S. Empire's role in the Middle East, including the stationing of U.S. troops there as well as financial and military aid both to the Israeli government and the many U.S.-supported Arab and Islamic dictatorships in the region.
Americans have been born and raised in a militarist, national-security, warfare state. Therefore, it is difficult for most Americans to imagine life without what has deceptively come to be called a "Department of Defense." But if we are ever to restore a normally functioning society to our land, it is necessary for Americans to challenge the paradigm of militarism, empire, the military-industrial complex, and the national-security state that has held our nation in its grip for so long.
If Americans choose to hold onto the neocon warfare-state paradigm, they had better accustom themselves to continuing to live in a society based on torture, assassination, support of dictatorial regimes, terrorist retaliation, infringements on civil liberties, out-of- control federal spending and debt, inflation, and ultimately bankruptcy.
If Americans, on the other hand, choose to embrace the paradigm of free markets and a limited-government constitutional republic, the United States will once again be a society of freedom, prosperity, harmony, peace, and normality.
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2011-11-01.asp
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I'm doin' the first one next year
On Oct 31, 10:40 pm, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Happy Halloween.png
> 448KViewDownload
>
> halloween_cartoon_you_push_for.jpg
> 68KViewDownload
>
> when-you-see-it-its-kinda-hard-to-see-far-away.gif
> 165KViewDownload
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What Would Really Happen If Ron Paul Were To Be Elected President?
by Bill Sardi
So what would really happen if Ron Paul were as elected President?
President Paul would immediately push for $1 trillion cut in federal spending (per year, not the $3 trillion that Democrats proposed over 10 years with half of that from increased taxes).
President Paul would have the authority as commander-and-chief to withdraw troops from overseas, within limits of treaty commitments which must be honored (US supplies defense for Saudi Arabia, many other nations). To the extent possible, the US would cease being the world's policeman and plunderer of foreign economies (Iraq, Libya). The US would cease being a war economy. President Paul would also push to eradicate foreign aid which essentially is bribery, often to foreign despots who the US quietly supports because they hold a strong hand over their masses.
President Paul would have some empty chairs in his Cabinet -- the Department of Commerce, Department of Education and other Cabinet positions would be eliminated. Civil service employees would be ushered into other government jobs.
President Paul would likely demand, using his bully-pulpit, a regular audit of the Federal Reserve (recall the FED pushed $13 trillion of short-term loans out the door in the world financial crisis without any oversight, which resulted in worldwide inflation and the unrest we now see in foreign countries -- Egypt, Libya, etc -- as a result of rising food prices.).
You probably don't know that the Federal Reserve bank takes a 6% cut off the top of all interest it collects as middleman between the US Treasury Dept and local banks. (President John F Kennedy realized this, recognized it would result in huge federal debts in the future, which have now materialized, and cut the Federal Reserve entirely out of the equation in 1963 by directly issuing US Notes, not Federal Reserve currency, into the economy. Of course, shots fired in Dallas ceased that practice and all those US Notes were quietly withdrawn from circulation.) That cut for the central bankers would be eliminated in a Ron Paul Presidency.
President Paul would likely demand and personally oversee an audit of the gold at Ft. Knox. Wouldn't you like to be there for that (live cameras please)? If the gold isn't there, who absconded with it and where is it now? (Might not have to look far, it could be stashed in Federal Reserve bank vaults – recall, the Federal Reserve is not federal, it is a bunch of private banks who may have absconded with the nation's gold supply).
With a public groundswell of support, President Paul would oversee the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service, freeing Americans of the onerous and treacherous task of figuring out the taxes they owe (recall the Secretary of the Treasury couldn't accurately figure out his own taxes). No more debtors prison for not filing tax forms properly (yep, some Americans are in prison for this). That would free-up about 6 billion man-hours and $250-300 billion of money now committed to tax preparation. Real money, not the fractionated loan money, would be returned to the economy.
There would be a re-adjustment period as the nation figures out how to rebuild employment without phony government jobs programs, but anticipate an eventual US renaissance. The US would be spared the fate of Greece which has 40% employment in the government sector, placing those jobs on the back of the remaining tax payers there.
Without an income tax the Federal Reserve would have no conduit to siphon money back out of the economy to limit inflation and it would have to cease its inflationary money printing practices. Mothers of young American children would be told that their struggles to see their kids get ahead in this country will not be futile as the Federal Reserve's planned inflation policy would be put to a halt. If your kids can't earn a better income than the rate of inflation (now 7-11%, government says it is only ~3%) they will surely be impoverished.
For example, if an American child was born in 1990 and her/her mother as sole bread winner was making $35,000 a year on the date of that child's birth, that child would have to earn $60,758 today (2011) to equal his/her mother's salary in 1990. Soccer moms should shout loudly for a Ron Paul Presidency. Your children have no future if one of the other pretenders is elected. Without currency reform, all other reforms become meaningless. The elites will continue to plunder and undermine the wealth that you create.
President Ron Paul would push for the federal government to get out of the real estate lending business. By Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ensuring home loans, lenders generated loans based upon low teaser interest rates (subprime, ALT-A) and unverified incomes and then funneled these bad loans on up to these quasi-government agencies where the public took the losses (these losses are now on the accounting books of the Federal Reserve). In a Ron Paul Presidency, bad lenders would go out of business, not be given bailouts.
The Federal Reserve now holds over $1 trillion in bad loans on it accounting books – let the Federal Reserve get what it deserves – a giant loss as its banks go out of business due to insolvency, just punishment for allowing low interest rates to prevail and create a real estate bubble in the first place. Stop protecting bankers, start protecting your own wealth – vote for Ron Paul!
Without a government backstop to insure home loans, lenders would be more diligent in checking out lender qualifications and incomes. The false demand for housing that the Federal government created would cease and home values would crash, for a short time. But that would be good news -- now homes would become affordable.
It is said, if the Federal Government would get out of housing homes prices would tumble by 50%. While that is not good news for the asset-side of lenders accounting books, it is the only way to bring back the housing market in a short time. This is the mark-to-market value accounting that must be practiced. Interest rates on home mortgages would rise, but so would the interest on saved money -- Americans would cease losing money on savings accounts (interest on saved money today is less than 1% while inflation is ~7-11%).
While the US economy is said to be the strongest in the world (~$14 trillion), the US is hiding the fact its Gross Domestic Product is actually in decline and that probably half of the GDP is comprised of financial gains from moving money around. An example is the stock market with 70% of its trades now comprised of high-speed millisecond trading. Financial gains are contrived and there is no real value created out of these phony transactions, nor is any employment created. The lending classes will have to face reality. Phony numbers would not likely be a part of a Ron Paul Presidency.
With a groundswell of public support, President Ron Paul would push for a currency that has limited stretchability by backing it with gold. No more rubber money. The fortunes of Americans would cease being eroded by money printing practices at the Federal Reserve. If you missed Ron Paul's object lesson -- he recently held up a pre-1964 silver dime (dimes today have no silver in them) and said it is worth ~$3.00 today, about the price of a gallon of gasoline. That means a gold-backed dollar could buy you a full tank of gas. Imagine that?
But inflationary policies have robbed American bank accounts of wealth. The thief of inflation that is robbing your money out the back door of your local bank would be handcuffed.
Ron Paul would also push for competing currencies (if this sounds foreign to you, we already have one – its called a VISA card, and don't forget American Express Checks). Creators of currencies who have the most backing in the form of reserves would have the most desired currencies, those who don't would have currencies of lesser value.
So what would happen worldwide with the announcement of a Ron Paul Presidency? Did you see what happened yesterday when the European Union band-aided its currency and debt problems for the time being. Markets soared with even a hint of sound money. Likewise, a Ron Paul Presidency should cause markets to soar just on the announcement of his Presidency. The International Monetary Fund has been begging the US to cut federal spending or devalue its currency by 30%.
The tax and print-money Keynsians would be ousted from power. Phony money would be a thing of the past. Real jobs, not government-contrived jobs that add a 15% administration burden and place the salaries of government workers on the remaining private sector, would be created. Two bad examples are Solyndra and General Motors, both whom received a government-back loan and then sought government contracts to sell solar panels to the US Navy and Chevy Volt electric cars to the federal government's fleet of automobiles. That is nothing but false demand.
Imagine Ron Paul appoints a new chief at the Food & Drug Administration who turns that institution upside down, who complies with the law (Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act) rather than repudiates or ignores it as the current FDA does, and works to allow health claims for natural medicines that work far more safely and effectively than synthetically made drugs, and at much lower cost. Imagine the National Institutes of Health is forced to generate studies to reveal the true effectiveness of vitamins C and D, as previously documented by this author in the archives at LewRockwell.com, and the life expectancy of Americans soars and their quality of life in their retirement years greatly improves. Dr. Ron Paul is committed to this kind of real change, not give lip service to it.
Imagine for a moment that President Ron Paul, advocate of free markets, calls for a true revamp of the nation's electrical grid unlike the current administration which only gives rhetoric to the idea. With installation of new US-manufactured power cable technology that is able to transmit twice as much power on a single power line with 9-20% greater efficiency (less line loss), averting the need for 98 new fossil-fueled or atomic power plants by stringing just 3000 miles of the nation's power lines with this US-made technology, and bringing $60 billion greater bottom-line profits to power generating companies, your electricity bill would be measurably trimmed instead of continually rising.
Ron Paul – your President. Your vote for RP will cause all of the above and more to happen. This article is just a sampling of what could happen almost overnight. One man, one moment in time, and everything changes on day-one of a RP Presidency. It would the best $39,000 your government could invest (Ron Paul has publicly stated he would take a $39,000/year salary while in office compared to the $400,000/year salary of the incumbent, to set an example).
Don't be dissuaded by bogus claims "Ron Paul is unelectable" or by the menu of wanna-be candidates served up by the news media. The 4th-Estate, the nation's major news sources are not unbiased parties. The news media is in dire financial straits themselves and wants those campaign advertising dollars, particularly the $750 million the incumbent President is likely to raise like he did last election. Ron Paul is electable – by you. Make the election of RP so magnanimous that even vote fraud can't hide it.
Let's recap -- no income tax, the Federal government generates revenues by other means; no IRS forms to deal with; no need to send your kids off to phony wars in foreign theatres; no more cut off the top by the Federal Reserve; assurance there really is gold in Ft. Knox; gold-backed money like this nation once had before the banksters cut their own deal at Jekyll Island, South Carolina decades ago and Nixon took America off the gold standard; rising individual purchasing power as inflation is nixed (no need to ask the boss for a raise, your money will buy more), financial gains on your banked money instead of erosion of your wealth via inflation; your chance to own a home will greatly improve rather than the current situation where home ownership is now only a fading American pipe dream; and true reform of healthcare rather than manipulation by those with vested interests.
These are what a Ron Paul Presidency portends. This is Doctor Ron Paul's prescription for the re-installation of sanity in American politics. Entrenched forces and crony capitalism are destroying America. You can fight back. Let the public's voice be heard loud at the ballot box. Vote for Ron Paul so the 99% can have a real opportunity to become the 1%.
You can save your country, save your family, save your nation's future -- vote Ron Paul for President.
Oo-rah
by Fred Reed
I read frequently among the lesserly neuronal of the supposed honor of soldiers, of the military virtues of courage, loyalty, and uprightness – that in an age of moral decomposition only the military adhere to principles, and that our troops in places like Afghanistan nobly make sacrifices to preserve our freedoms and democracy. Is not all of this nonsense?
Honor? A soldier is just a nationally certified hit-man, perfectly amoral. When he joins the military he agrees to kill anyone he is told to kill, regardless of whether he has previously heard of the country in which he will kill them or whether the residents pose any threat to him or his. How is this honorable? It is cause for lifelong shame.
It is curious that so many soldiers think that they are Christians. Christianity is incompatible with military service, if any Christianity is meant that Christ would have regarded with other than repugnance.
The explanation of course lies in the soldier's moral compartmentation. Within his own tribe or pack, these usually being denominated "countries," he is the soul of moral propriety – doesn't knock over convenience stores, kick his dog, or beat his children; speaks courteously, observes personal hygiene, and works tirelessly for the public good in the event of natural disasters. A steely gaze with little behind it and a firm handshake amplify the appearance of probity.
In conflict with foreigners, he will burn, bomb, rape and torture indiscriminately. His is the behavior of feral dogs, which humans closely resemble.
Sacrifice? GIs do not make sacrifices. They are sacrificed, sacrificed for big egos, big contracts, for the shareholders of military industries, for pasty patriots in salons who never wore boots. They fight not for love of country but to stay alive, and from fear of the punishments meted out to deserters. If you doubt this, tell the men in Afghanistan that they may come home on the next plane without penalty, and see how many stay. Troops are as manipulated as roosters in a cock fight, forced to choose between combat and the pot.
Always, to understand the bloody absurdity of the military, bear in mind the primitive, overriding instinct of mankind to form packs and fight other packs. It is the only drive that can at times take precedence over sex. Thus we have tribes, football teams, Crips and Bloods, religious wars, rabid political parties, and patriotism, this latter being far the worst. Men in particular live primed to form martial herds and rush mindlessly upon other herds, waving slogans, arguments, forty-yard passes from scrimmage, swords, naval artillery, or white phosphorous. Dogs. Ants. Soldiers. Humanity.
Nowadays a high moral pretext for war will be contrived, embodying saccharine goodness and nauseous piety. We kill them to make them free, butcher their families because they must be democratic. The race has accumulated just enough fragile decency to want a noble pretext before burning children. Yet the pack's hostility to outsiders remains the primary drive behind wars, with reasons hung on later like Christmas ornaments.
Most profoundly, wars are not about anything. They are just wars. Aggression trumps substance. Note that in politics, the content of debate often matters less than the visceral pleasure of antipathy as, for example, when greens and capitalists exchange irrational insults like savages working themselves up for battle. The posturing is just foreplay.
Armies, and nations, have to have enemies. Since our instincts seem wired more for single combat, for bar fights more than for sprawling industrial wars, soldiers invariably seek the atavistic adrenal satisfactions of a quick and smashing victory. They are almost always wildly optimistic about the likely outcome. Thus the belief in decisive battles, cakewalks and such, even when experience counsels that there won't be one. The military wants to fall upon the bastards, any bastards, and give them what for, to settle things once and for all in brutal, exhilarating, simple combat. Agincourt, Picket's charge, Themistocles in the Saronic Gulf, that sort of thing.
If you don't think that exhiloaration is a factor in military affairs, you have never watched night flight ops with a carrier battle group, Tomcats trapping ker-wham! rising howl of huge engines, thirty-knot wind whipping across the flight deck, smell of burnt kerosene, the focused dance of men cooperating in something complex and dangerous in the wilds of the Pacific. It is a drug. This is much of why we have wars.
And it is why the Pentagon is repeatedly surprised when after the swoosh and scream of the jets over Kabul, or Quang Tri, or Baghdad, angry men with rifles creep from their holes and begin killing and there comes a losing uncomprehended disaster of ten years. Practicality matters less than the spirit of the thing.
Armies of the First World have made this hormonal miscalculation time and again: The French in Vietnam, the Americans in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan, the French in Algeria, the Israelis in Lebanon, the Americans in Iraq, the Americans in Afghanistan. Militaries don't learn. They can't.
They can't learn because soldiering is directed as much at maintaining a desired mental state as at practicality. A thick layer of romance has always lain over matters martial. The rush of a low-level pop-and-drop bombing run in an F16, the legions wintering on the Rhine-Danube line, pennants, charges, the poetry and intensity of it all. "Oo-rah!" "Death from Above!" "The most dangerous thing in the world is a Marine with his rifle." "Crush their skulls and eat their faces." Feel-good slogans, suitable for children of eleven.
One thinks of the excitement of a high-school basketball game, bright lights, tense expectancy, cheerleaders twirling and emitting exhortations to invincibility. "Hey, hey, whaddya say, let's get that ball and go!" "Ricky, Ricky, he's our man! If he can't do it, nobody can!" Oo-rah.
Those who train and arm the soldiers are less delusional. Behind the curtains the butcher's trade is an ugly one. In my days of covering the military, I remember efforts to invent blood-red plastic shrapnel that would not show up on x-rays, to make it difficult for the enemy to save his wounded. A tac-nuke manual spoke of how to keep soldiers fighting after being lethally irradiate by a nuclear explosion. Shortly they will die, puking and stumbling, but how does one get a bit more combat out of them? This manual used the evocative phrase, "terrain alteration."
While soldiers quickly come to hate their assigned enemies, as do fighting cocks, they also know that what they are doing will not play well back home. The entrail-dripping gut-shot, a woman deening over a mound of red mush that is no longer precisely her child – these could interfere with the flow of contracts. Consequently militaries try furiously to suppress photographs of those they torture and mutilate, to package routine atrocities as "isolated incidents," to keep pictures of garishly altered soldiers off the pages of newspapers. The extreme sensitivity suggests moral uneasiness, oo-rah or not. During Vietnam, the damning photos poured out. The controlled press of today poses no similar problem.
If this is honor, I'll pass. Oo-rah.
www.fredoneverything.com
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