Defense budget cuts could mean the U.S. would no longer have totally awesome overkill capabilities. This could reduce us from, wait for it, “being unquestionably powerful everywhere to being less visibly globally and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries.” So says the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who enjoys massive perks now and no doubt will have cushy “consulting” jobs when he retires. Does he lie in bed twitching in anguish at the thought of the US not being enough of an overmatch? (All this macho posturing does get tedious, especially when you realize that little bitty Vietnam defeated us a few decades ago.)
Lordy, if we cut back our bloated and corrupt military budget we might not be able to invade, bomb, and destroy when it pleases us to do so. That would just be so wrong. Of course the majority of the public thinks that would be a good thing and favor ending our insane wars for empire.
I am so tired of the war pigs looting this country for personal profit and gain, wrapping it all the while in a phony flag of patriotism. The incessant and pointless adventurism of the US military and establishment is destroying this country. And they don’t care how many die or if it bankrupts the country.
Because, when all is said and done:
“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.”
What is a bigger priority protesting or self defense?
We have military bases in what, 90 countries. That’s not self-defense, that’s empire building. And it’s not working. We alienate those we say we want to help (and conveniently ignore making thuggish governments we support like Uzbekistan “safe for democracy.”)
It’s all about empire and, no, I don’t feel safer because of it.
Protesting IS self-defense.
“Patriotism” is the last resort of scoundrels.
Came to mind the other day that I should be supporting Willard, as it would hasten our inevitable devolution into autonomous perhaps even fully independent region-states centered on economic, environmental and cultural commons – Nine Nations of North America. Whatever good Obama might be able to do prolongs the agony, leaving the inevitable even more complicated and potentially explosive.
Physics is everything, everything is physics – a perpetual motion machine is bound to fail, a beast cannot feed upon itself indefinitely. The inevitability is statistical. Not only has the “population” grown so but the population of variables both within and without the “population” has grown so large, so diverse, and across so much territory it has reached a point of statistical saturation, the “model” unsustainable. It has to change, it has to collapse, that’s its “nature”. Hyper-inflation breeds hyper-deflation, hyper-evolution breeds hyper-devolution, the longer it takes, the ever more hollowed out the machine becomes breeds the ever greater failure.