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TechnoratiPentagon to Outline Shift in War Planning Strategy
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will adopt a new strategy that for the first time orders the military to anticipate that future conflicts will include a complex mix of conventional, set-piece battles and campaigns against shadowy insurgents and terrorists, according to senior officials.
![[The US military has set up a new "cyberspace" command designed to bolster the country's defenses against cyber threats and to wage digital warfare, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. (Pentagon)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/hybridwarfare.jpg "hybridwarfare.jpg")
The shift is intended to assure that the military is prepared to deal with a spectrum of possible threats, including computer network attacks, attempts to blind satellite positioning systems, strikes by precision missiles and roadside bombs, and propaganda campaigns waged on television and the Internet. The new strategy has broad implications for training, troop deployment, weapons procurement and other aspects of military planning.
In officially embracing hybrid warfare, the Pentagon would be replacing a second pillar of long-term planning. Senior officials disclosed in March that the review was likely to reject a historic premise of American strategy - that the nation need only to prepare to fight two major wars at a time.
Driving both sets of developments are lessons learned from the past six years, when the United States has been fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet is stretched to be ready for potentially significant operations elsewhere, Pentagon officials say, such as against Iran, North Korea or even China and Russia. Conflicts with any of those countries would also be expected to present a hybrid range of challenges.
But powerful constituencies in the military and in Congress continue to argue that the next war will not look like Iraq or Afghanistan, and they say the military is focusing too much on counter-insurgency and losing its ability to defeat a traditional nation-state.
Even so, senior officials say hybrid warfare will be adopted as a central premise of military planning in the top-to-bottom review required every four years by Congress. When completed later this year, the assessment, officially called the Quadrennial Defense Review, will determine how billions of dollars are spent on weapons and influence how the military reshapes its training.
During a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said of the new strategy, "It derives from my view that the old way of looking at irregular warfare as being one kind of conflict and conventional warfare as a discreet kind of warfare is an outdated concept. Conflict in the future will slide up and down a scale, both in scope or scale and in lethality."
Even before the review is complete, the new thinking has claimed high-dollar victims.
Mr. Gates proposed ending production of the Air Force's top-of-the-line F-22 fighter jets, arguing that money should be spent on warplanes that carry out a broader array of missions, from countering enemy air forces to evading surface-to-air missiles to bombing insurgent militias in hiding.
But supporters of the F-22 in Congress are pushing for financing to keep the production line open, potentially setting up a veto battle.
The defense secretary also put on hold a multibillion-dollar program for the Army's next-generation armored vehicle, saying its proposed flat-bottom design ignored lessons that angular troop transports are safer from roadside bombs, which have been the biggest killer of troops in Iraq.
In preparing to adopt concepts of hybrid warfare, the Defense Department has closely studied Israel's last war in Lebanon in 2006, when a terrorist group, Hezbollah, fielded high-tech weapons equal to any nation's, including long-range missiles. Likewise, when a traditional military power like Russia went to war with the former Soviet republic of Georgia last August, its tanks, paratroopers and warships were preceded by crippling computer network attacks.
The previous Pentagon strategy review focused on a four-square chart that described security challenges to the nation as perceived then. It included traditional, conventional conflicts; irregular warfare, such as terrorism and insurgencies; catastrophic challenges from unconventional weapons used by terrorists or rogue states; and disruptive threats, in which new technologies could counter American advantages.
"The ‘quad chart' was useful in its time," said Michele A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, who is leading the strategy review for Mr. Gates.
"But we aren't using it as a point of reference or departure," she said in an interview. "I think hybrid will be the defining character. The traditional, neat categories - those are types that really don't match reality any more."
The nation's top military officers are reviewing their procurement programs and personnel policies to adapt to the new environment, focusing in particular on weapons systems that can perform multiple missions.
"When I send a carrier strike group forward, or when I send an amphibious ready group forward with a Marine Expeditionary Unit on board, I don't know what they are going to end up doing," said Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations. "Therefore, the way that we view our training, the way that we view our capabilities, has to be packaged for this range of actions."
He cited the experience of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which was steaming toward Iraq to carry out combat missions when it was diverted to become the American headquarters for tsunami relief in Indonesia. Both Admiral Roughead and Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, said in interviews that they had adopted goals of making certain each weapon system could "stretch" across a spectrum of operations, proving value in traditional and irregular warfare.
General Schwartz cited Air Force decisions to place surveillance systems on its long-range bombers and tactical warplanes to make each a provider of valuable battlefield intelligence, as well as maintaining strike capabilities.
"This is the kind of thing we are talking about, where we avoid point-mission platforms and look for versatility," General Schwartz said. "Multipurpose platforms are inherently more affordable."
For the ground forces, the goal is an ability to sustain 10 combat brigades abroad at all times, with 10 more in reserve and nearly ready to go as they complete training. This eventually would allow active duty troops to spend three years at home for every year deployed.
Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, when asked to define the Army's goals in the review, said: "The most significant thing I'd like to get is an acceptance of that rotational model.
89 Comments so far
Show AllAt a trillion dollars a year and spending more than the rest of the world combined, the U.S. govt continues to chase phantoms and lies simply to line the profits of war profiteers.
A much more sane strategy for "national defense" would be to mandate green power initiatives, reward people willing to invest in green technologies, and move off this dangerous reliance on fossil fuels.
Additionally, and in tandem, all U.S. forces should be forced to withdraw to U.S. territory. There is no need for military installations to serve imperalistic interests. And this includes carrier task groups and nuclear subs. If the multi-national corps want security for their transactions, tell them to hire private armies. The U.S. taxpayer should not be responsible for shouldering their protection.
Finally, all taxpayer monies for retirement (Medicare and SSec) or healthcare (public option or single payer) should be lockboxed from any raids by the Congress and its greedy benefactors.
All monies saved from these elements should be used to retire the national debt.
For those wishing to see the future of the Defense Budget under that "liberal" O'bomb'a, check out this article:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22869.htm
From link:
"Obama also will outspend Ronald Reagan on defense.
Obama plans to spend $2.47 tril lion on the Pentagon for the years 2010 to 2013. If he makes it into a second term, he plans to spend an other $2.58 trillion for the years 2014 to 2017. Put together for the eight years, 2010 to 2017, Obama plans to spend $5.05 trillion.
In his first four years, Reagan spent, in inflation-adjusted dollars, $2.1 trillion. In his second four years, he spent $2.11 trillion, for an eight-year total of $4.21 trillion.
Obama will out-spend Reagan in his first four years by $369 billion.
Over eight years, Obama will exceed Reagan by $840 billion."
That article is a little dishonest, directing people to search for a table that is not available in the budget text, but on CD-ROM, according to the budget's list of tables. But here is the OMB 10-year proposed outlay for federal expenditures, defense spending is at the top.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets
/fy2010_new_era/Summary_Tables2.pdf#page=7
As you can see, the article is also dishonest by dismissing the claims that "the spigot is closing" as basically false, when defense spending is projected to decrease by almost 10% in 2010-2011 (admittedly still higher than in 2008), although it starts going back up in 2012.
I agree that the overall trend is towards more defense spending under Obama (which I absolutely disagree with), but details do matter.
Thanks for clarifying. Of course, it should be understood that Obama underscored his commitment to increased defense spending even as he ran for president. He said he would hire thousands of new soldiers and increase our involvement in Afghanistan. Little did we know....
Yep. And do you know what the Right has been saying? He's cutting defense spending! Apparently, to their conservative-spinning minds, a total defense budget increase a couple percentage points lower than requested by SecDef is a spending cut. It's so pathetic I can't even laugh at them anymore.
Sioux Rose
LOGARITHMIC: I pretty much related similar points on another thread today. It's all about the use of resources and the priorities these serve. I fully agree with all that you've articulated, and such a strategy would do much to redeem this nation and save not only its economy, but also its soul!
Re logarithmic June 23rd, 2009 9:43 am, who advises
"If the multi-national corps want security for their transactions, tell them to hire private armies."
We're halfway there already. Be afraid of what you wish for.
Jethro,
Yeah, I realize that Blackwater, et. al., remains a threat. But the U.S. taxpayer is already paying the tab for them. It should instead be paid for by their benfactors like big oil and then passed on to the consumer of oil products - not the taxpayer. That's all I'm saying.
Thanks!
Re logarithmic June 23rd, 2009 1:37 pm
Point taken. I've often thought that the only reason we still have anything resembling nations is that very few people would willingly march under ExxonMobil's banner to fight Shell.
If I'm gonna fight, it'll be under the banner of 7-Eleven and their big slurpee will be on our flag. Forward ho (bugles in background and lots of Indian whoops)!
RIGHT! Very good commentary.
I vote logarithmic as peoples voice.
This 'military' has only one real enemy and that is Sheer Boredom! Year after year it must attack and destroy one fabricated 'enemy' after another. It must kill a thousand bewildered civilians every week, 52 weeks a year, after year, after year. The only rational remedy is to fire all the feather merchants and soldiers of fortune and then downsize our peacetime army to one tenth of it's present bloated size. Otherwise we might just as well form a Red Army and a Blue Army and then let them wage 'war' and kill each other.
'Hybrid warfare' is just another way to say 'colonialism'.
They want to do it all- from the showy artillery and tank duels and the high altitude fighter dogfights to the house-to-house smash and grabs of *possible* 'terrorists' and 'insurgents'.
In other words, exactly what thay have been doing for the past thirty years...
Walk in peace.
I wonder if the top brass devoutly wish, hope and pray for the reinstatement of the draft; after all, economic hard times are not permanent, and though they may make good "recruiting sergeants" now, Impecuniousness and Joblessness won't be around forever ...
Would you care to put your money (what little you may have left) where your mouth is?
The World Bank released it's data yesterday saying that the 'economic downturn' (read collapse) 'will last longer than anticipated'. The responce from the stock markets was just short of screaming and running for the doors...
At commencement speeches across the US and Canada, grads are being told to bend over and take it, because there IS no bright and shiny future for them, let alone a job in the industry they just spent the last four years and tens of thousands of dollars preparing for. Hell, the summer jobs market is already filled, and not with teens.
THe military (for a while at least) will be seen as one of the few remaining places you can learn a skill (killing people) and where you will be fed three squares a day... at least until they are abandond in situ by the government the way Russian troops were in Afghanistan last time around...
Walk in peace.
Sioux Rose
Where ya' been, brother Galen? I've posted dates to be concerned about as per economic perturbations. The first shows around mid-September, although I can't necessarily say it isn't directly attributable to a hurricane (at that time). The next BIGGIE comes in early November, with a HUGE influence of instability likely to show in May 2010, followed by an impressive astrological march into the sign of Aries, the one that IS ruled by Mars, in June 2010. That influence relates something new in terms of warfare, something unprecedented insofar as who's involved. A distinct element of surprise surrounds it. We are NOT out of the woods financially. Of course to give the disease fuel, rather than its cure, is never a recipe for instilling health. And of course I am speaking about retooling the "Enronification" of Wall St and bankster clubs at the expense of homeowners, a/k/a THE people. Water the dam without ever fixing the holes in it? (No muscle to reinforce that dam with a return to Glass-Steagall, of sane banking regulations against the betting casino-style derivatives.)
I will not go into detail, but the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) equate to the 4 season changes and represent an axis of power. ALL of them will hold planets in distressed angular relationship to one another. Two of the four axial points abrade in November, while four planets will agitate three of those 4 by next autumn (2010). Saturn, the planet associated with karma, enters Libra, the sign of the scales of justice. Persons commited to justice, along with those who have legal titles, will fight the FIGHT of their lives to get law back on the agenda. Libra opposes Aries, the sign of force first, and might makes right. Perhaps people will turn off their TVS as the big cosmic show really ups the ante in anticipation of all those prophecies that speak of 2012 as THE turning point for mankind. Each of us votes through how we live, the ideals we serve, the things we believe in. Turn on as many other lamps as you can! Only LIGHT can save us from the abundant darkness that like a cloud of abuse has covered too many lands.
Heyla Sioux Rose!
Been offline due to financial constraints, but I am back and loud n' proud.
Yeah, I think this will be the year that the 'Murican sheeple finally get to witness firsthand the inhumanity and depravity of their government and military.
Walk in peace.
odoco
It is unbelievably disheartening that literally no one ever speaks of a multi-faceted plan for prolonged PEACE!
Be aware that the new dynamic in this scenario that deals with cyber-security will eventually allow the government and the Pentagon to totally control what you read on the Internet - just as they now do with commercial t.v.
I also found it most interesting that the western media was reporting the HORRENDOUS depravity of the Iranian government goons going into the homes of dissidents in the middle of the night to kill and intimidate! ISN'T THAT EXACTLY THE TACTIC WE HAVE USED IN IRAQ FOR THE LAST SIX YEARS????
Sioux Rose
ODOCO: You hit on the point I intended to make. What if much of this is the ruse needed to turn the Internet into a virtual "Homeland Security State"? It's our last bastion of true progressive interchange! And the authoritarians want access closed off in order to offset the possibility of groups organizing around common ideals and objectives.
To persons constantly focused on war, everything is construed as a potential enemy. Perhaps these persons are clinically paranoid? And now that precedents have been set where Habeas Corpus is disabled, and prison camps exist all over the world, and persons are caught in dubious drift nets, never to be made aware of the charges against them, or given honest legal representation, an insidious net sits over us all.
It almost turns global climate change into the violent hero of the drama... that, or the collapse of the U.S. dollar. SOMETHING must come to stop this beast!
Let's not forget that Jane Harman's (of AIPAC's save the Israeli spies fame)Homegrown Terrorism Bill included language that could have impacted use and control of the internet. It also wanted to establish special units on college campuses to 'study' the effects of homegrown terrorism. Point 1) we have witnessed several episodes of homegrown terrorism, all from the rightwing, and not a single charge of terrorism was filed against them, and in fact, when the DHS issued such a warning, as did the State of Missouri, both warnings were roundly attacked by the rightwing fascist thugs running Wall Street, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Capitol and CNN, among others, and 2) Obama just announced that the CIA is establishing secret programs / recruiting programs on university and college campuses in order to ramp up personnel / humit forces.
If we don't find a way to de-program our children and truly educate them to a more humane, less materialistic way of living we have no chance for survival, as a nation, as a species.
Ouch. This hits close to home.
My youngest daughter has a 16-year-old son. Great kid. He's been a delight to everybody that's known him all his life. Now that he's 16 he thinks he should have a car. I don't see why any 16-year-old needs a car. His father's father (a retired cop) says he's going to buy him one. I freaked out when I heard.
Now everybody's pissed at me for trying to deny the kid what he wants. The cop came in to town last weekend and took the kid and his father to a military recruitment fair. They want to turn this kid into a killer (or get him killed. I don't know which would be worse). My daughter refuses to acknowledge the connection between the automobile-centered lifestyle and warfare but she'd be completely devastated if her son was killed in an oil war.
You have no idea how frustrating this is.
tommy - I understand and share your fears and frustration. I worked in public education my entire adult life; for the last 7 - 8 years I saw the schools being invaded by the military, and personally saw the type of psychological hype, and sometimes outright lies, these young people were exposed to. I saw National Guard pictures of students who had recently joined - prominently diplayed in classrooms; I saw custom painted humvees parked in or near the student parking lot with contact numbers of the recruiters; I saw the military send recent graduates back to their own schools to recruit their classmates; and I saw administrators and counselors close their eyes, close their consciences, and pretend the game didn't exist - or more cowardly - simply say they could do nothing to stop the militarization of our youth.
And for the record, I'm a vet, Vietnam, 1971-72. I remember how we, upon our return from that war, analyzed and condemned the "John Wayne" mentality that led us into Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. And ironically, the attempted undoing of that logic, is what the Elder Bush attempting to do when he stated that the "Vietnam syndrome" had finally died with the 'victory' in the 1st Gulf War. What he really meant was that most Americans are so stupid, so uninformed, so ahistorical, that they can / will be led down the path of corporate wars forever more.
And remember the words of Bush the Junior when addressing a fundraiser of wealthy patrons, "You are my base." His base - those in attendance - were the very people that both instigate wars of choice and so assiduously avoid any physical or emtional harm to themselves or their families. They reap the profits - others reap the misery, dismemberment and death.
This insanity will never end without a truly educated citizenry. It will never end as long as some feel a natural superiority over, and disdain for others (mostly of color and of a different religion). It will not end until the cancerous corporate structure in this country is legally dismantled and until those in positions of power who have committed illegimate acts against the people are jailed.
This government is headed directly toward a fascist state. When the people finally do take to the streets you will see several things happen: 1) the citizenry will be so divided that any effective resistance to the state will be meaningless (this is the real agenda behind the rightwing propaganda machine), and 2) those who truly are informed and understand the reality will be easily isolated, robbed of their rights, labeled as terrorists by their own government, 'detained' in indefinite detention.
Think it can't happen?
Best wishes for your daughter, your grandson--your entire family. Keep shining your light on them!
...."if we don't find a way to de-program our children and truely educate them to a more humane, less materialistic way to living"...
Start by disconnecting from television. Just begin with that small step. Begin there. Take your life back.
The laws of momentum conclude the beast will only be slowed before it has it's fill.
Climate change, dollar collapse it's all just part of the plan.
Fierce militance is the biggest concern for most, probably then starvation. That's if you understand the disease state to be part of the militance issue and disease so widely being used as warfare against people.
But when the situation comes down to every man for himself with any more than a thousand people here, I can see how this situation will be very complicated to close for the financial dominant.
Global unity on policy by direct democracy will deliver the world to best production and kind living conditions for every person. As important is freeing the beings of this planet from the damage we wrought on their environment.
The financial system stands in opposition to solutions that maintain the worlds population at so challenging an expanse. The financial dominant is by such steering ends to his temporary power benefit, less mouths to feed, less politically active voices, less People's unity, huge death for being united. Unless your organization is death serving, then your organization would be maintained until obsolete, united as wide as was willing to serve the murderous gun slinging state.
Oceanians have been conditioned to put their trust in and give all their attention and loyalty to Big Brother so that it appears that NOBODY invests in peace. But the great majority of Oceanians dream of peace, and practice peace in their everyday lives. A few even vote for peace in their exchange/association. But out of fear, 130 million voted again in the 2008 elections for Oceania to "always be at war". Given a clue that their social and economic standing would survive, most would not hesitate to vote a peace candidate for the oval orifice and put a mighty gash in the hull of Big Brother's battleship. But lacking that clue, the fear remains. Thou shalt VOTE BIG BROTHER again and again, or THY ship may sink!! The rest of the world understands that the "land of the free" is truly in chains. Within ten years Eurasia and Eastasia will form a military coalition against Oceania, to free Oceanians from their chains, upon next major provocation, to end the global menace.
"allow the government and the Pentagon to totally control what you read on the Internet"
Even if the US goes "Chinese" on the Internet you'll still be able to use international proxies.
This nation is going nuts! I feel like Jack Nicholson in One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ............all this to protect the insanity and intrinsic evil of Wall Street and Global Corporate Capitalism.
Stephen...
I know, me too. I feel the same way this morning.
All this to protect ourselves from people who hate us!
This is our economy now!
This is our major export!
This is what we are famous for!
Just like Reagan forcing Russia to implode trying to build up it's military, we will do this to ourselves.
Reading your comment, I get the impression that you think this is a bad thing. It seems to me that when a country becomes an aggressor and a force for evil, then its unraveling into bankruptcy is a good thing. There is always the possibility that what country or countries emerge from the wreckage of America might be something better and wiser.
Caleb - I agree, bring it on! FASTER. I doubt there will be less happiness in my life if all the big corporations go away during the next year.
Would someone please move to Rapid City, South Dakota and open a really good bakery? We so need a kick-ass home-brew bakery! Otherwise, we're set. Bring it on.
"When I send a carrier strike group forward, or when I send an amphibious ready group forward with a Marine Expeditionary Unit on board, I don't know what they are going to end up doing," said Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations.
What they are going to end up doing is killing a lot of innocent people and monumentally fucking up everything they come into contact with. "Hybrid warfare"? The Nazis used to call it the Blitzkrieg. Except the rest of the world isn't Poland in 1939. The United States is the famous 800 pound gorilla - drunk, stoned, always looking for a fight, illiterate, a gargantuan ego contained in a peanut shell. And going nowhere fast.
Relax folks. Worry when the Pentagon calls for mass production and troop levies.
Being prepared for war with Russia and China is being prepared for suicide.
They like to talk big but they only fight the little weak nations, or ones without nukes.
The Pentagon likes to scare up business... the racket of war.
"[F]uture conflicts will include a complex mix of conventional, set-piece battles and campaigns against shadowy insurgents and terrorists ..."
Read that as a mix of actual wars agains opposing armies (few) and the suppression of peoples attempting to rid themselves and their countries of U.S. imperial domination (many). In fact, it's not unlikely that USAns may find themselves included in the latter category before long, if they aren't already.
I wonder how the Brits are enjoying their role as Hessian accomplises for the current imperial forces. The irony is almost overwhelming.
USAns are in that latter category now. Don't forget the Army's 3rd Infantry Division 1st Brigade, Northcom, I think. They are our military stationed to be fighters within our country and not for defense. When they were permanently stationed here last year, it violated the Posse Comitatus act.
I thought Northcom was established to prevent those nasty Canucks from exporting their health care agenda and other socialist tendencies to the U.S. by force of arms. :^)
The way I see it, the military has already planned for "unconventional warfare."
The United States has a load of concentration camps built and awaiting bird flu quarantining, or "such other uses as the President may direct."
The government seems to be heading off any attempt to create any openness or transparency in its operations.
Illegal and continual surveillance of the American People is increasing with every law passed. Don't forget the "Homegrown Terrorist Act" and several others enacted by the Reichstag (oops, Congress).
Posse Comitatus was abolished and NorthCom was created to take care of emergencies and disasters in the United States. Now, the combat brigades that are being rotated back from our many wars are being trained to deal with "Civil Unrest" under NorthCom's command.
They are being trained in the use of the greatest collection of "non-lethal" weapons in history, i.e., the pain ray, various chemical and electronic means of control, etc. I have a copy of the Military's manual on the use of civilian forced labor on military bases.
Nacht and Nebel is coming closer to We the People, with the possibility of anyone being disappeared, with no right of anyone, family or others, to inquire. No trial, no habeas corpus, just disappeared into a gulag, or dead, and who is to know.
Yes the military is being geared up to fight on many fronts. When twenty or thirty million or more people are in the streets, jobs gone, mortgages foreclosed on, watching their families living in tents or under cardboard, begging for food to get through another day, while watching the limousines drive by, taking the wealthy to yet another banquette for the wealthy, they may kick over the traces here.
Fear not, the military is well trained in putting down patriots (oops, terrorists) fighting for their own or their nation's survival. I imagine they can do it more efficiently here than in the Middle East. For one thing, the supply lines are shorter.
Minitrue - excellent post
What a weird document!
We actually have the key to stopping most of the violence in the world. Let's call in all our troops currently stationed in places where they are not wanted, and put them all to work producing American goods, building schools, hospitals, roads and bridges, etc...paid for with the money we are spending fighting imaginary/manufactured enemies.
Let us stop waging war for energy. Let us take concrete steps to lead the world in dismantling all weapons of mass destruction. We need to reduce fear. Things cost less when there's no conflict. Energy would cost a lot less, if we didn't have all these wars, all that beef.
Let us encourage the whole world to invest all that war money into alternative sources of energy AND alternative "lifestyles" that don't require so much fossil fuel. Let us promote respect and human dignity.
Let us feed and shelter the poor and hungry. Let us treat the sick.
All the above would cost a lot less than our wars (treasure, human casualties, infrastructure destruction, deprivation, hunger, ilness, instability, war crimes, etc).
War is a thing you quit like drinking or smoking. We are addicted to the military prowess kool-aid. We need to be reformed as a society, in order to be a force for good in the world.
The only sensible place to start is by smashing media control, thus freeing our politicians to guide our foreign policy in a more responsible direction.
All war is crime.
The source of media control and political control is one and the same and neither is really anxious to be "freed" from it. In fact, they are likely to fight would-be "liberators" with every weapon at their command and with a zeal at least equal to the source itself.
I agree with you that we have a monumental task ahead of us, and it is solidifying and growing every day. Indeed, change may be impossible until we become a third world economy, with unsustainable unemployment rates, and our people are so angry that they stand up with the same courage the Iranian demonstrators did.
And even then, we'd probably be SMASHED!
good posts Tex! peace
Peace, friend!
Our current foreign policy strategy can arguably be described as Hypocrisy. Is this our product? Our philosophy as a nation?
I don't see how this could ever be a winning strategy.
Should we start painting murals and building sculptures of the change we want to see? Maybe we need more visuals. We definitely need more people demanding change.
At the very least, we should make honest efforts towards reducing violence as priority one, as violence is ultimately unnecessary. Violence is pork. It is the tool of choice of the idiot, incapable of negotiating according to fair rules with curtesy and what should be common decency. Violence is cheating. It is illegal and immoral.
Violence has no respectable place and claims no credit in the stupefying achievements of the human race. It has no enduring legacy, except that of a suffering unimaginable even to those who have endured and continue to be victims of it. We can do better than that.
We should be talking about the victims, and how to protect them, wherever they are. We should just make all the violence stop.
By "propoganda campaigns waged on television and the Internet," were they referring to propoganda by the US government and military?
"Hybrid" appears to be the latest label for old trends in Pentagon thinking that are calculated to blur the traditional distinctions between military, paramilitary, and civilian spheres of legal authority and command structure accountability.
With a straight face, Gen. Schwartz declares "Multipurpose platforms are inherently more affordable" for taxpayers. Upgrading heavy high altitude bombers like the B-52, fighter jets, and assault helicopters with the very latest high tech surveillance equipment and software will generate "valuable battlefield intelligence" for regular grunts and exotic covert special ops teams scattered out there on the ground all over the globe. Oh sure.
This may be skillful marketing jargon for DOD appropriations purposes, but I doubt it has many real world jihidis shaking in their boots. And just look at the understandable collateral damage blowback among the locals that has been generated from the US military's use of drone surveillance technology to date in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
For that matter, who said "the goal" is to maintain ten brigades of US combat forces deployed continuously abroad, with an equal number stateside "nearly ready to go as they complete training"? Not content with just fighting two major wars at the same time, I would like the intellectual architects of this latest doctrinal shift to step right up to the mike and identify themselves publicly.
This crap is precisely what the founders of our constitutional form of government feared when they warned about the dangers of having a strong federal central government with a "large standing army" without first a declaration of war.
The inevitable problem with large standing armies is they never just stand around for very long.
Bill from Saginaw
I posted this on another article, but I think it may fit well, here, too.
"Terrorism goes back a long way. Don't you remember the terrorists that illegally boarded a ship and dumped its cargo overboard to protest exploitation by the government due to taxes and imposts? Then, there were the terrorists that resisted the legal attempts of the government's military forces to enforce the law.
"These terrorists formed their own government and authorized terrorist groups to harass the legal government wherever they could on land and sea. The government did everything it could to rid itself of these terrorists, picking up their families, burning their homes and businesses, occupying their homes with their own troops.
"Eventually, after suffering horribly for years, those terrorists managed to defeat the overextended military of the government and eventually gained their freedom, at great price and sacrifice."
Note: For "terrorists," above, substitute "Patriots," Minute Men," George Washington, et al. Washington and his foreign "terrorist," Lafayette, were probably King George's "Osama bin Laden."
Worse than that. They were not rebelling against some foreign invader, but against the origins of their own colonial regime under which their presence had been established in North America in the first place.
Leaving aside some of the less noble quarrels (such as George III's edicts honoring treaties with the natives and thus restricting westward land speculation by Washington et al) it is interesting to note that they were objecting to being asked for financial support for imperial protection. There are other parallels, but I'll stop there.
And we desperately need more enemies. (As long as they're poor).
The term "addiction" is used in many contexts to describe an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence. In medical terminology, an addiction is a state in which the body depends on a substance or behavior for normal functioning.
The term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user himself to his or her individual health, mental state or social life.
Addiction is habit or practice that damages, jeopardizes or shortens one's life but when ceased causes trauma. A pathological relationship to mood altering experience that has life damaging consequences.
I propose that America; it’s people, the social identity or body politic is addicted to war, conflict and domination. It is compulsive behavior that has become necessary for normal functioning. War is our compulsive need that gives us financial, political, theological domination, like heroin coursing through our veins. We, as a nation, are indeed afraid of what will happen if we cease our dependence on world domination. Afraid of the trauma of withdrawal.
War has damaged the people of our nation. Our money is spent on our wars robbing the funds we need to cure and care for our selves. 1/6 or 50 million of the people of our nation are atrophying because of our addiction. Our health will not improve unless we stop our addiction that also afflicts so many of the worlds people.
Anne Wilson Schaef published the best-selling "When Society Becomes an Addict" in 1987. You might find it interesting support for your post (with which I agree, for whatever that's worth).
Sioux Rose
ABE: I would say it's less an addiction that an engineered aspect of massive programming, and the programming begins with the Abrahamic religions as they bear witness to an angry, punitive father god. I have argued LONG in this forum that the archetype for what passes for "God" is very close in resemblance to the war god Mars from mythology (and astrology). He is at times rendered a hybrid with the old god of time, Saturn-Chronos. He holds the hourglass to measure out our fates via the cycles of our lives, including our very mortality, i.e. when our time is up.
The National Anthem begins the indoctrination process at an early age, followed by all those sports that pit team against team and lend a near-worship to uniforms and slogans, cheers for the home team, and the exalted goal of "winning." The words used to smear the enemy frequently involve feminizing the opponent, and that in part derives from a twisted perception of God as ONLY a masculine expression. This species of belief effectively cuts off HALF of the world, and HALF of our basic fields of sentience. The Divine feminine is intended to be nurturing, the giver of life; whereas the macho god is power-oriented, and demonstrates prowess through conquests, the chief of which is war.
Movies, TV shows, video games, it's ALL about violence. However, I see an analogy that relates back to my childhood. When my father (named Abe) ate an unusual cheese and I'd make noises of derision he'd say, "You have to develop a taste for it." And that is what has happened in our nation. A taste for war has been wontonly created! Note the emphasis on competition and BRUTALITY in our society. Of course war also happens to be highly profitable for those who have no consciences; and given that America has exported most of its major industries, one of the only "products" (Andrew Card) left IS war, added to the media complex that keeps it foremost in the human psyche by glorifying shows of explosive force on the big screen. The nation has indeed become deranged, and I believe the proliferation of a particularly destructive, insidious form of pornography aimed at soiling the female, presenting her as worse than an object of derision, also plays into the collective INCAPACITY to love, to experience empathy or know true communion with a partner.
The Divine force was cut in two, and the splitting of the atom became the testament to the male god's attempt to rule it all. If he cannot make life (and he can't since it takes two genders to do the eternal cosmic tango), then he will show his muscle in fierce shows of destruction. Until this principle and it's being fueled by human anger and codes of vengeance is dissipated, the entire template of human interaction remains off-kilter. Balance has been lost. So what you term addiction had CENTURIES of help, and a media quite under thrall to the "rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air," to make the deadliest of prospects into today's banality of evil.
Excellent post, Sioux Rose. The splitting in two of the Divine that you reference was actually a rejection of of the real Divine in favor of worshipping a projection of Man's ego. The real Divine is, was and always will be both masculine and feminine, immanent and transcendent. Alas, the time of valorizing the ideology of domination is fast coming to a close. America will go the way of all past empires, only much faster. The system is going to collapse. To anyone who read Chris Hedges fine article here recently, "The American Empire is Bankrupt," it will be clear that this is how the military industrial empire will end, with China and other nations of the world finally abandoning the dollar as a global reserve currency, refusing to finance their own military encirclement (this includes Russia and the former Soviet countries). For those who still can, it might be prudent to consider moving to another country, as the decline of the US empire may coincide with even more overt forms of fascism in the US.
Oops. Duplicate deleted. Sorry.
zmann: If you're concerned about dishonesty, let's start with the big one. It's called "defense" spending.
Haha. Well we're hardly alone in that, I think every nation calls their military a "defense" agency.
Believe it or not, there was a time not so very long ago when those agencies actually fell more honestly within the ambit of War Departments and Ministries of War. But you're probably right about the universal adoption of new nomenclature in today's global propaganda environment.
Yes, I know we had a War Department at least through WW2. I don't know when the terminology switched though.
Re zmann June 23rd, 2009 7:48 pm
If I'm not mistaken, it was with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, which also created the CIA.
Sioux Rose
RV: Excellent posts. I totally agree.
Do we better the world with this? Is this really the best for the human society?
I know of a country that stopped spending in military and invested in schools, health care and reforestation of there lands. They tried to revers the damage done and build a sustainable future.
Why do I get the creepy feeling that America is going the wrong way?
"Why do I get the creepy feeling that America is going the wrong way?"
I wish I had your equanimity. I went way beyond "creepy feeling" to out-and-out certainty many years ago, and it's made me into a horrible pessemist as the years have gone by.
Seeing as how this is the same defense / intelligence complex that was still geared towards a war with the Soviet Union on 9/11, it is sort of encouraging to see they have become relatively quicker on the uptake when it comes time to change institutional doctrine (from 12 years to merely 8) this time around. What is disturbing is nowhere in this "plan" is there a mention for recruiting the vast number of foreign language specialists (Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Pashto, for starters).
What makes you think that their primary "terrorist" concerns speak a foreign language?
Simple objective examination of the news and a realistic examination of strategic and intelligence matters.
I don't doubt that your examination is as objective as humanly possible. I would be less certain about the news itself that you're examining however.
It's possible is just wasn't mentioned by the NYT. But yes, it would be insane to not beef up critical language areas.
FYI--the terrorists that attacked us all speak English just fine. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Rice, Zacheim, Bush, etc... they all have English as a first language.
Yes, all good points and arguments. But the big question remains; how do we stop this incredible waste of resources and human lives from becoming the new political order of the US?
Leaving aside the obvious question about whether this actually represents a new political order or merely the strategic refocussing of a long-established one, the answer must be the same for this as for all other elements of the entire U.S. political system.
So long as the electability of any party or individual is very largely determined by the financial support of corporate economic interests -- a "right" that is guaranteed to corporations by their judicially awarded legal personhood along with their singular fiduciary responsibility for maximizing their own profits -- the paid sponsorship of those interests will continue to call the tune. (For a partial listing, see: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22891.htm )
It really is that simple. Everything else is mere corollary, including all of the consequential public indoctrination and propaganda to persuade people that this paid representation system constitutes "the greatest democracy on earth" and that it is worthy, not only of defence at home, but of global export to inferior nations (i.e., all others) by force of arms if necessary.
Take a piece of chalk. Draw a circle around your own life. Begin the changes necessary right there. Then make the circle bigger. Draw it around your neighborhood, around your community, around your county, and into the next county. The horrid truth of it is: We Need One Another!
In the past eight years, it was Bush who deliberatly tried to force the attacks on the Middle East, and Obama continous on the same path. I see no stopping the wars or conflicts, because our leaders don't want to. Our leaders have become the agressors without any real concern for civilians, or our troops.
Jeevee
Where is the concern for the environment and for out-of-sight reproducing of the human species? And who was/are in the gang, including a Rothschild, who plotted reducing the planet's human population to one billion?
Re Jeevee June 23rd, 2009 7:01 pm
Google "Georgia Guidestones."
Can you imagine what the history books will say about the united states; that is, if anyone is left to read them.
I feel sick at heart.
How about we plan for our next peace. Then plan to stay at peace. But no, the military/industrial/corporate complex isn't going to allow that to happen. No profit in that.
Until people stop playing the corporate game, stop buying goods from thousands of miles away, stop working for corporations and, instead, become part of a local economy, refuse to be wage slaves and remove themselves from the corporate slave gang and refuse to pay into the system, the system will remain. The only way to change things is hit them where it hurts. In their wallets. People really don't need all the cheap stuff that corporations throw at us.
For a good take on this subject read Radical Simplicity by Dan Price. Suck the life out of big corporations by denying them your money and your slavery.
just take it easy everyone; life's a bitch and then you die.
Interesting philosophy. I wonder what the leaders of the original American Revolution would have to say about that. I believe their slogan was: "No taxation without representation." Isn't that almost exactly what you've got now?
Your elected so-called "representatives" won't even put "on the table" such things as universal "single payer" health care, prosecution of war crimes, etc., that are favored by significant majorities of their alleged constituents. They claim it would be too difficult politically meaning, of course, that their paid sponsors will never permit any such expression of "the will of the people." What kind of "freedom and democracy" is that?
In fact, you really have to ask yourself, not only about the American Revolution and its purposes, but also about subsequent wars to battle against dictatorial powers and fascism (a.k.a. corporatism). Life was "a bitch" for some who sacrificed their lives in those struggles also. Should we just "take it easy" and forget about all that too?
no, we shouldn't forget about all the others before us who sacrificed themselves. but i believe the ones now who are willing to do that are in the minorty and therefore it will be pointless, as i cannot see the rest changing their ways in the future.............
there is no 'freedom and democracy'..................most are manipulated.
Oh, a great new philosophy. This will change everything. But
why not just keep it simple and shoot at anything that moves? And anything that doesn't move? And just keep shooting, no matter what? Sooner or later, one is sure to hit somebody. Declare it a bad person at that time.
Quite frankly the only real way I see of breaking this system down is from inside each of us as individuals.
It is not something that will happen overnight.
The US economy is 72 percent based on Consumerism.
If every American cut back on what they spent by 50 percent "they" could not afford this war machine.
The American electorate will never "force"its Government to do anything via the ballot. The system is hopelessly corrupt so you have to make the system irrelevant.
Like the Hippies suggested 30 years back.
Making a corrupt system irrelevant is not an easy chore, even if one discounts the system's likely reactions to any such attempt. It would require popular rejection of the "consumerism" values upon which many of U.S. society's perceptions of its own wellbeing and superiority are based. And those values have been deeply inculcated over many generations, almost to the point of religious faith. In fact, the hippy movement's ultimate surrender is probably as good an example as any.
One might even dispute the fundamental accusation of corruption. Many would argue that the paid "corporate person" sponsors of the U.S. political system are merely fulfilling their singular fiduciary responsibility for maximizing their own profits. And the recipients of their beneficence could, I suppose, claim that they're only doing their patriotic duty in support of "free enterprise" which the they equate with "freedom and democracy." In any case, the average USAn doesn't seem to get nearly so incensed about it as their revolutionary ancestors did.
..."the American electorate will never FORCE its Government to do anything via the ballot. The system is hopelessly corrupt so you have to make the system irrelevant"..
Yes, yes, and yes. I agree whole heartedly.
And the solidarity needed for such an endeavor (to make the existing system irrelevant) would (will) be our greatest challenge. It is counter-intuitive for us to acknowledge our need for one-another (especially in the U.S.) ...to accept that we are inter-dependent. How to get from HERE to THERE will be quite a struggle...we are one of the youngest nations in the world, with a very short history of working arm-in-arm. We are undermined by our sense of hyper-independence, not only on an individual basis, but as a people.
Let's begin to put our energy, and all that entails, into making the system irrelevant. Let's take our lives back.
I've searched this page for the words "climate" and "warming" - without success. While we don't know what the next security threat to the US or any of its allies will be, there is a significant probability, based on the available evidence, that it will arise because of climate change and the ensuing scramble for diminishing basic resources for living. Suppose, as appears a possibility, the Himalayan glaciers melt in the next 30 years,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/tim_johnson/story/16151.html.
As the article says
"Scientists say 1.3 billion people reside in areas affected by glacial retreat, either in flood-prone areas or in locales that rely on year-round supplies of fresh water from glaciers rather than from the monsoon rainfall of only three or four months."
Do you imagine that 1.3 billion people will just stay there and let it happen? Now we could respond to these threats militarily or we could use a little foresight and try some less violent preventative measures. And this applies to other potential security issues around the world.
The DoD has mentioned the security implications of climate change before, and is probably taking them more seriously than most of the rest of the government, especially Congress.
For an in-depth analysis of the causes of the war without end (the war that needs constant growth, just like capitalism), see the excellent new documentary by Massimo Mazzucco "The New American Century," at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3776750618788792499&ei=bEs-SuuI...
Be warned: the latter part of the film (devoted to Iraq) is extremely disturbing.
The film exhibits the forces (and their agenda) that have brought about the war of constant growth, and their relationship to the general tendency of Empire: it is a story that way predates 9/11. In fact, the film shows how 9/11 fits perfectly within the constitution, extension, and maintenance of Empire.
Albert Pike summed it up pretty well. He had been through the Civil War and seen what the "Industrial Revolurion" had done to the common man.
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Who can sum up the horrors and woes accumulated in a single war?...War comes with its bloody hand into our very dwellings. It takes from ten thousand homes those who lived there in peace and comfort, held by the tender ties of family and kindred. It drags them away to die untended, of fever, or exposure, in infectious climes; or to be hacked, torn, and mangled in the fierce fight; to fall on the gory field, to rise no more, or to be borne away in awful agony, to noisome and horrid hospitals. The groans of the battlefield are echoed in sighs of bereavement from thousands of desolated hearths. There is a skeleton in every house, a vacant chair at every table. Returning, the soldier brings worse sorrow home, by the infection which he has caught, of camp-vices. The country is demoralized. The national mind is brought down, from the noble interchange of kind offices with another people, to wrath and revenge, and base pride, and the habit of measuring brute strength against brute strength, in battle. Treasures are expended, that would suffice to build ten thousand churches, hospitals, and universities, or rib and tie together a continent with rails of iron. If that treasure were sunk in the sea, it would be calamity enough; but it is put to worse use; for it is expended in cutting into the veins and arteries of human life, until the earth is deluged with a sea of blood.
Albert Pike
1809-1891
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He also said,
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A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend.
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That was written in the late 1800's. Don't see much improvement in the early 2000's