I would not have known this had I not tuned to RT for my news: “Veterans for Ron Paul 2012 “marched from the Washington Monument to the White House in an effort to show their support for the presidential candidate, a veteran congressman from Texas. The Presidents’ Day march is meant to send the message that Ron Paul is the choice of the nation’s armed forces, said group founders Nathan Cox and Adam Kokesh on the Facebook event page.”
Bless these men and women (you’ll tear-up; I did).
China, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Liberty, Military, Republicans, Russia
Said Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation: “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 have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.”
And that was then.
Nevertheless, Mitt Romney (“I will insist on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it”), and Rick Santorum (“I will not cut one penny out of military spending”) both decry the “gutting” of the military by Obama. They are following a not-so proud tradition. A “former president George W. Bush told his Argentine counterpart Nestor Kirchner, ‘The best way to revitalize the economy is war, and the US has grown stronger with war.'”
“In 2009 alone,” reports RT, “the United States was responsible for almost half of the world’s total military spending – 46 per cent, or 712 billion US dollars. Since then, the figures have only grown, to the point that American military spending now exceeds that of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined. The US has more than 700 military bases in 130 countries around the world.”
Wikipedia confirms that assessment.
Economy, Ethics, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Iran, Media, Propaganda
CNN’s inane wishy-washy Fareed Zakaria boasted the other day about the foreign-policy achievements of Barack Obama. Since the president’s reign of terror abroad began, the Iranian currency had lost 65 percent of its value. Like all fixtures of mainstream media, Zombie Zakaria has some appetite for destruction.
So how is Obama accomplishing this great feat against innocent Iranian economic actors? Via RT:
US wants Iran evicted from SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication], an independent financial clearinghouse that is crucial to the country’s oil sales. This could immediately cripple Tehran’s financial lifeline, but would come with its own costs for the world economy.
Iran’s eviction from SWIFT could drive forward the current slow pressure campaign of sanctions aimed at persuading Iran to drop its nuclear program. It might also buy time for the US to persuade Israel not to launch a pre-emptive military strike on Iran this spring.
The bitter truth is, the plan might actually backfire on western nations themselves as it could send oil prices soaring and undercut the reputation of Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT). The Brussels-based organization is a banking hub used by virtually every nation and corporation around the world. …
More than 40 Iranian banks and institutions use SWIFT to process financial transactions, and losing access to that flow of international funds could badly damage the Islamic republic’s economy. It would also probably hurt average Iranians more than the welter of existing banking sanctions already in place since prices for household goods would rise while the value of Iranian currency would drop.
“The war has been a disaster and the military’s top brass” is lying to the American public to keep the adventure going, never mind the grunts that give up the ghost for the brass’s career designs. Wow. That can’t be, can it?
Sure it can. It’s probably quite unremarkable.
Anyone who has been reading this space and articles with any regularity will yawn, and then, disinterestedly, peruse the report written by active-duty officer Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, who is “a 17-year Army veteran recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan.”
The title of the article in Rolling Stone is “The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to Read.” Don’t you think that’s over-dramatic? Is deception to keep the killing fields open for the business of the military-industrial-complex that unusual? Hardly.
“If the public had access to these classified reports they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes,” Davis writes. I don’t think so. The American public is a zombie.
Davis last month submitted the unclassified report –titled “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leader’s Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” – for an internal Army review. Such a report could then be released to the public. However, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the situation, the Pentagon is refusing to do so. Rolling Stone has now obtained a full copy of the 84-page unclassified version, which has been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House. We’ve decided to publish it in full; it’s well worth reading for yourself. It is, in my estimation, one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years.
UPDATE (Feb. 15):
Refreshers for the record from “‘JUST WAR’ FOR DUMMIES” March 12, 2003: “I’m no pacifist. While I don’t condone the lingering American presence in Afghanistan, and while I doubt the abilities of the U.S. military to contain al-Qaida there, I supported going after bin Laden’s group in that country. That was a legitimate act of retaliation and defense, accommodated within St. Augustine’s teachings, whereby a just war is one ‘that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects.'”
And from “A War He Can Call His Own” July 18, 2008: “The initial mission in Afghanistan was, after all, a just one. Going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan at the time was the right thing to do and was a legitimate act of retaliation and defense accommodated within Just War teachings. Al-Qaida was responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans. The Taliban succored al-Qaida and its leader bin Laden. The President had told the hosting Taliban to surrender bin Laden and his gang. The Taliban refused. America invaded. So far so good. But that initial mission mutated miraculously, and now we are doing in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq: nation building. Nations building is Democrat for spreading democracy. Spreading democracy is Republican for nation building. These interchangeable concepts stand for an open-ended military presence with all the pitfalls that attach to Iraq. …”