The Military Wants More Toys, More Time, More Lives...

10:40 AM

(The) conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

President Eisenhower (1961)

Pasted from <http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html>

Nobody was duped. Really. Secret report 'leaked'. A General giving speeches out of the border criticizing his Commander-In-Chief. Gates saying, before even reading McChrystal's paper, that he is sure that it will be on target 'and set for the challenges we have in front of us.'

The military wants to do war. On a big scale.

It does not want to stop. For security reasons? Maybe.

For political and financial reasons? Surely.

Well, that's what the journalist Seymour Hersh thinks.

And i don't think he's too far from the truth.

From Huffington:

Seymour Hersh: Military Is Waging War Against The White House

In addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military is also fighting a war against the Obama administration at the White House, Seymour Hersh said in a little-noted speech at Duke University on October 13. The military is "in a war against the White House -- and they feel they have Obama boxed in," he said.

Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, sees an undercurrent of racism in the Pentagon's dealings with the White House. "They think he's weak and the wrong color. Yes, there's racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it's true and we all know it."

As Neil Offen writes in the Durham Herald Sun:

"A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble," he said. By leaking information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.

"If he gives them the extra troops they're asking for, he loses politically," Hersh said. "And if he doesn't give them the troops, he also loses politically."

Hersh considers the worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the principal test of the Obama presidency, which will require the cooperation of the top military brass. Obama must face up to the military, Hersh said. "He's either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to run the Pentagon." If he doesn't, according to Hersh, "this stuff is going to be the ruin of his presidency."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/23/seymour-hersh-military-is_n_332139.html

Actually, let's put it another way.
Stop the war, get healthcare to pay for itself.

The wars crippled the nation. We started something we just couldn't afford.
The time has come for O.B. Man to learn from past mistakes and take
the steps to create wealth by creating peace. And jobs.

Don't let war, big porky business and neowingnuts eviscerate everything we hold dear for a buck and a half and a private jet.

Again, in the famous words of President Eisenhower:

'America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.'

Never Too Late to Say Thank You to Those Who Died

For those who fought and saw horrors and death in those miserable wars of ours, I offer you my thanks and these words from my favorite poet, Yuseph Kamunyakaa:

Facing It
by Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Pentagon begs: put us on a diet, cut some fat out !!

Another miracle from heaven direct to the American tax payer!!!

Pentagon board says cuts essential

Tells Obama to slash large weapons programs

By Bryan Bender Globe Staff / November 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - A senior Pentagon advisory group, in a series of bluntly worded briefings, is warning President-elect Barack Obama that the Defense Department's current budget is "not sustainable," and he must scale back or eliminate some of the military's most prized weapons programs.

The briefings were prepared by the Defense Business Board, an internal management oversight body. It contends that the nation's recent financial crisis makes it imperative that the Pentagon and Congress slash some of the nation's most costly and troubled weapons to ensure they can finance the military's most pressing priorities.

Those include rebuilding ground forces battered by multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan and expanding the ranks to wage the war on terrorism.

"Business as usual is no longer an option," according to one of the internal briefings prepared in late October for the presidential transition, copies of which were provided to the Globe. "The current and future fiscal environments facing the department demand bold action."

Great news! When it rains, it damn well must make up for the bloody drought from hell we lived trough before and friggin' pour!!

For the whole article from the Boston Globe, here's the link:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/11/10/pentagon_board_says_cuts_essential/

It might not work since I have a link problem which I ask Blogger to look into. Hope that they will very soon.

All the President's Men

Damn. Politico got ahead of me on this.
Scott Kesterson must be credited to have opened my eyes on the issue through his fantastic pieces The Other Side of Paradise I & II on the HuffPost: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-kesterson/the-other-side-of-paradis_b_141677.html

Kesterson was in Afghanistan during the election and he recorded the reaction of the servicemen and women present. I must say it wasn't what I expected. I left a post on Huff about it but it was "moderated" even though I wasn't insulting or disrespectful to anyone. I just stated my dismay.

I said that I saw the courage, determination and selflessness in the us soldiers' everyday decision to sacrifice and to serve for us. But I did not understand why all their collective anger was not directed to the one who put them there under false pretenses in the first place. Bush lied. Bush took them for a suicidal ride.

I think I continued by underlining the fact that we, the civilians, were fighting to bring them home. We were fighting too in our own way: not with guns and missiles but through cutting the bull that the present administration dispense like candies to the diabetics. Their only hope is that we as a nation get sick enough and paralyzed enough to let them do whatever they want with the place.

We were fighting to stop the war not because we do not respect the Army but because we respect and love it enough to want to protect the soldiers and their lives and use them in a way that is not wasted and careless.

The truth is that the real war is INSIDE our borders now. The devil is wearing a suit and tie, and the enemy is looting and stealing and destroying every institution of this country, that the servicemen love so much, for their own profligate pleasure. The selfish and the greedy are now laying the ruin of the country that they attacked under the military nose for all to see on CNN, laughing all the while.