All the politicians, in both parties, claim they are for bringing jobs back home. Of course the repub chant is completely hollow.

But if the taxpayer monies we send over there were spent over here, we would have full employment.

And the international corporations who owe no allegiance to US at all, are making all the profits.

I do not want us over there. I have been against every single war we have been in since Vietnam.

Fine discussion Stardust.

I admit that I had to approach this blog incrementally, reading it in pieces, by paragraph....going away and coming back again to read more.

This is the heartbreaking crux of the matter with which no one can cavil.  

This is not what we campaigned for, worked for, donated to.

Nor is it .... just more of the same (as if that would be justified).

RATHER, it is ESCALATION called something else, rationalized as something else, distanced by spin and whatever speak works in the moment.

THIS is grotesque.

I keep coming back to the $1T+ we've spent so far, and ask if we had just given that money to Iraq and Afghanistan, (Afghanistan's GDP = $12.8B, and Iraq's = $23.7B), would we be any worse off?  Now we've got corporations making boatloads of money servicing those wars, in ways that make Ike's fear of the MI complex seem quaint, and the Citizen's United ruling, and 501c nonprofits making corporate election giving not only unlimited, but completely anonymous.  I think whatever vestiges of democracy we have retained have been incontrovertably hijacked by capitalism and an uninquisitive belief in free market efficiencies, regardless of the question of whether a company that generates 90% or more of its income from gumint contracts may not be what we would or should consider a "private" enterprise, and is subject to the market forces that would theoretically guide it to the most efficient allocation of resources/cost.  Not to divert you from the question of perpetual war. It's a good one.   Apologies.  It's my belief that once we adopted this tack in the so-called-war-on-terror, there will only be a turning back once the treasury has been depleted.  To do so much sooner than that will leave whoever inhabits the Whitehouse or Congress open to criticisms of being soft on terror the next time someone sets their underpants on fire on a US domestic flight.

How do I put this?  I agree with the sentiments expressed so far.  Yet the questions lingers: What next?  How do we articulate a politically viable alternative to the current situation? By politically viable I mean one which acknowledges the legitimacy of national interests as all nations would claim.  By political viable I mean an articulation that acknowledges that while threats have been manipulated to amp up the fear for political and other agenda, there are in fact threats.  By politically viable I mean one which does not depend on America ignoring increasing political instability in significant regions of the world.

We can and do gnash our teeth over the current state of affairs.  But what is the alternative?  I don't have an answer, nor have I heard it from others, and that is the salt in the wound.

Wow, I really can’t find anyone on this thread I agree with. In my view, as long as Americans don’t lose their appetite for killing brown people, perpetual warfare and Empire is perfectly viable. The whole Military-Nat’l-Security apparatus accounts for about 7-8% of GDP, that’s smaller than the financial sector and less than half the size of the Health Care sector. And there’s less wasteful spending in ‘defence’ than in those other sectors. National interests and security could perhaps be efficiently – if less belligerently – maintained at a little over half the current cost, but harsher calculi go for Health care and finance. And the MIC is set to grow less than either of those other dysfunctional sectors. So – again, ignoring for the moment the killing of brown people – the MIT is really the least of the nation’s problems. Given our insatiable need for absolute total security at all costs, forking over 8 to 10% of GDP indefinitely for that luxury seems like a price people will accept.

But if you are going to worry about it, what is the problem? The US’s de facto ME policy – behind all the smoke and mirrors – seems to involve maintaining the region as a whole in a state of instability or oppression (which itself trends towards instability, of course). There are many reasons why we do so, but the LEAST IMPORTANT reason is the interests of the war profiteering industry. First, and most obviously, there is the oil, and the power that comes with control of oil resources, something that the US is unwilling to cede to independent local regimes. Second there is the general control-freakish unwillingness of the US to accept stable non-oppressive regimes that are not obsequiously obedient to the US. And yet, there obviously is no conceivable stable non-oppressive regime that is obedient to the US in that way. So that only leaves only one option – maintaining instability so that non-obedient regimes can’t gain a foothold. Third there is the unquestioning support of Israeli expansion and the implicit mistrust of all things Islamic – two sides of the same coin. With the deliberate destruction of civil society in the region, the only credible and viable political and social leadership lies with the religious authorities, which are precisely the kind of political movement that freak Americans out.

So how do you turn this situation around? Again, pretty obvious really – reduce US dependency on oil; reduce the power base of Islamic fundamentalists by pushing to normalize relations (i) between the US and Iran, (ii) between Israel and its Muslim neighbors, (iii) between Pakistan and India; render Islam less alien for the US population by increasing the visibility of Muslims and ethnic middle-easterners in government; be more accepting of less than total obedience in allies (such as Turkey), and be less frightened of democratic Islamic movements (like the anti-colonial Brotherhood in Egypt). There is already the beginnings of movement on oil-dependency with the nudges towards domestic Natural Gas resources, some movement on Israel with the rise of J-Street as a force standing against AIPAC, and other positive though fragile moves such as Turkey’s mediation (or ‘interference’, depending on your pov) vis a vis Iran. The two negative trends imo are Pakistan where US policy is a mess and the rising American Islamophobia. It is unbelievable how acceptable it is in mainstream circles to casually consider Muslims to be subhuman savages. And as long as that is the case, we’ll keep killing brown people with abandon. But, like I said at the beginning, nobody seems to think that is much of a problem. Which just illustrates how far we have to go.

Nothing I’m saying is controversial, and so it is probably a bit boring. But it seems at odds with – or at least orthogonal to – what I’m reading here. So thought it worth spelling out …

That said, thanks for this blog, Stardust. There should be more like it!

Thanks for pulling all this information together, fellow temporary collection of stardust.  :<)

As a thought experiment, can anyone here imagine one of the major news networks doing a story on this that raises questions about it? 

If someone were to ask me to argue in favor of the point of view that says the US mainstream media self-censors in ways that do enormous damage to our country, presenting the information you present here and asking why hasn't a major network done a story on this would be as good an example as any in support of that proposition. 

What legitimate excuse could there possibly be for this information not being reported by major media outlets?  That no one cares?  How would they know?   

I don't know what the answers are.  But one thing I am fairly confident of is that if there is no public discussion, or even presentation of this information, then the 2% of whatever of the citizenry who feed off of and profit off the status quo--out of earshot and eyesight, and outside the awareness of the ordinary Jane and Joe--are going to continue to have their way. 

Eisenhower didn't even say anything about the MI complex until he was leaving office.  Good for him for saying what he said.  But if even a conservative WWII hero in the Oval Office evidently didn't feel he could affect these developments while he was in Office, at that time when the situation was nowhere near as advanced and entrenched as it is now, what is the scenario by which that happens in our day?

For me it starts with spreading awareness about the facts you've collected.  I strongly suspect that the vast majority of Americans have absolutely no clue as to the extent of our presence abroad, let alone some sort of attempt at understanding what it means.  They are being more or less deliberately protected from having to confront those facts and think about their implications.