dagblog - Comments for "$744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America"

booked and rec'ed oleeb.

tao — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:47:06 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

booked and rec'ed oleeb.
The US intel and military communities' abject failures to prevent the attack in 2001, and the compromised intelligence findings that led to the fraudulent Iraq invasion, were glossed over as totally unforseeable. And yet we spend more on our military than the rest of the world. The results of the last 10 years do not convince me we have gained an effective defense of our nation by giving the MIC every thing they wish for. If anything, Their need for eternal war has made the probability of another attack more likely. Their rewards were the Bush Doctrine of elective invasion of innocent nations; and the last wisps of privacy Americans had were taken away in a weekend. And the Bush approval ratings went up for a while. It is hard to argue with success.
We also spend more than any other nation on earth for our 37th rated health care system. The point of the MIC is not defense so much as profit. We end up with an invisible protective shield of infinite strength and nothing inside to protect.
My flip opinon is that we will never be beaten militarily. Some other nation will simply foreclose on us.
There was a time when potential military members had to pass psychiatric and moral standards to be accepted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0a6iWHSWbA

I listened to it in college.

cmaukonen — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:52:27 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

I listened to it in college. College stations played it and a lot of others. Country Joe and the Fish, Arlo Guthrie...etc.

And the engineers got payed

cmaukonen — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:49:16 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

And the engineers got payed even less. Almost became one but got talked out of it by a guy use to be an engineer at a radio station. We repaired TVs etc at the same place. He said he maid more money doing this than he ever got as a station engineer.

Word on the street at the

cmaukonen — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:44:02 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

Word on the street at the time was the JFK was going to pull the troops out of Nam after the election.

Just saying.

"oleeb, the biggest problem

oleeb — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:39:28 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

"oleeb, the biggest problem with defense spending is the sheer lack of an enemy."

Correct. This is the natural result of decades of militarism and allowing the merchants of death to call the tune in Washington. It is precisely the problem Ike warned us all about so clearly.

Are there threats in the world? Certainly! But there is no threat on earth that justifies even a third of the military spending we do annually. There simply isn't. Sure they can invent all kinds of potential threats and they can obviously conjure up scenarios that unrealistically warp the perception of our entire nation in order to justify the unjustifiable. But common sense tells us, for examnple, that in order to fight less than 200 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan we do not need to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers, mercenaries, CIA thugs and spend hundreds of billions of dollars. The President's own National Security advisor publicly stated that there are less than 200 AQ in that country!

We are being lied to in the name of profit and the lies are being cloaked in patriotism and myths about a nonexistent enemy who possesses super powers and who can threaten the United States with underwear bombs, shoe bombs and other weapons that may have the potential to kill some people but which have no ability to actually threaten the US.

The "threat" such as it is, is no greater today than it was on September 10, 2001 really. The numbers of those willling to die trying to harm American interests has grown primarily because of our invasions and occupation of Muslim nations, our support for repressive regimes in the Muslim world, and what most Muslims perceive as the US's unbalanced and unequivocal support for Israel since Bush was elected. Prior to Bush, the US was seen as pro-Israel but also as an honest broker. These are the causes of anti-American sentiment among Muslims around the world and it would be much smarter (not to mention cheaper) to simply get our troops out of Muslim nations as soon as possible and to put the entire weight of the United States behind finding a real and lasting peace between Israel and it's neighbors.

If our defense and intelligence establishment was not putting all it's energy into fighting wars that only increase hostility toward the US they might be able to do a better job preventing major attacks on the US when they do appear. You may recall the complete, abject failure of the US intelligence and military communities to protect this nation on September 11, 2001.

"counter this new

JEP07 — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:28:55 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

"counter this new threat."

It's like a deadly game of leapfrog, or a weapons vendetta, "they" build something that "we" have to match or surpass.

I have always wondered if some of the same people aren't on both sides of that "they" v. "we" struggle, fomenting war and it's weapons for fun and profit.

"It has become a pretty sorry

JEP07 — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:52:24 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

"It has become a pretty sorry business"

Almost totally automated, the pay for "talent" (which is what they called us living, breathing parts of the system, not "people" but "talent".)
has not gone up with everything else, either, anyone who thinks an entry level DJ job is glamorous has never seen a studio.

I also sold advertising, organized local sports tournaments and set up trade shows for the station(s) I worked for. Ad did play-by-play at a hundred small-town football and basketball games

The pay is lousy, and between that and the conservative programming restrictions (like I said, you can still get fired for playing "What's goin' on" or "War" or "4 Dead in Ohio) I have not attempted to re-enter the field since I left California 5 years ago, where we were working on building up local low=power radio.

With some of the changes that they are talking about in H.R.1147: Local Community Radio Act of 2009, that may begin to change the whole radio world, for the better.

There is a slight problem in

evildoer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:17:06 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

There is a slight problem in the argument.

A society isn't rich for having lots of money. We can print any amount of money we want anyway. A society is as rich as the sum of its productive capacities, first and foremost labor, and second, the instruments of labor, i.e., physical capital.

Whether shutting down the US empire therefore releases money is as immaterial as money itself. What matters is that it releases the labor and the means of production that are now commandeered and wasted by the death industry, and that this labor goes into things that create well-being, things we need and want.

But that won't happen just because we stop spending on war. Under capitalism, labor can only be employed if it takes place under conditions that create profits for capitalists. The reason the US created a war economy in the first place was precisely the inability of the economy to absorb labor profitably without it. The war industry is a monopsony where the government determines the prices and the profits of the industry, and since the government is controlled by that industry, the industry effectively determines its profits as it sees fit, and "patriotism" can always be used to prevent too much criticism. That is what makes spending on war so great from the point of view of capital.

So unless one thinks this through, the "savings" are unrealizable, and that is why there won't be popular support cuts, which will mean nothing but massive unemployment.

Thinking this through means either finding another way to give the wealthy free money every year, or beating them down and forcing them to make less money, which will inevitably translate in a capital strike, unemployment, deflation, etc. Avoiding it will require a serious confrontation and changing the rules under which labor becomes socially useful.

'Bad attitude' is precisely

evildoer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:59:20 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

'Bad attitude' is precisely what is needed to counter the idiotic servility of positive (non-)thinking in the face of our downhill rush.

oleeb, the biggest problem

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:50:31 +0000

In reply to $744 Billion Budgeted For War: Militarism Is Destroying America

oleeb, the biggest problem with defense spending is the sheer lack of an enemy. Just who are we fighting? AL Quida? NOT! They're a rag-tag bunch of terrorist that scared the living shit out of Bu$h and the republicans. Notice every time they say Boo! the defense posture tightens up another notch and more money is needed to counter the terrorist threat.

But we do have enemies that are a threat to us, but so far we've failed to address the subtle aggression or acknowledge there is an issue to be resolved. And I'm not talking about Iran or North Korea.

We've failed to recognize the threat and take selective actions and counter moves to nullify any adverse actions. Instead we're too taken up with a bunch of islamic fanatics that are getting sheer enjoyment of annoying us and getting us to jump through hoops at the slightest provocation as if they're some formidable military force.

Our military is exactly like your anti0virus software on your computer - it's only effective against known contaminants. Once something new pops up, it's an easy victim.

Congress needs to really study the issue, minus the military-industrial-complex and decide who really is in a position to thwart us in the global economy. The answer is there, but too many people prefer to ignore it, and I'm not talking about Russia here. They have the same needs for raw materials and resources as do we. And it's there where we'll be confronted and realize we're not prepared to economically or militarily to confront the party and sue for peace.

We need to spend on defense, but we need to know and understand with whom we will engage, for what reason and how to tactically engage and nullify their military with a quick shock and awe strategy with little loss of life and property.

Keep in mind too, the F-22 Raptor has been pretty much scuttled due to it's cost and lack of an worthy adversary to fight. However, the Russians just unveiled their prototype version and are planning to release a version for the open markets. The program will be revived to counter this new threat.

Face it, you can't win. So you might want to reconsider how to control it instead.