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America Owned by Its Army
It is possible that the creation of an all-professional American army was the most dangerous decision ever taken by Congress. The nation now confronts a political crisis in which the issue has become an undeclared contest between Pentagon power and that of a newly elected president.
Barack Obama has yet to declare his decision on the war in Afghanistan, and there is every reason to think that he will follow military opinion. Yet he is under immense pressure from his Republican opponents to, in effect, renounce his presidential power, and step aside from the fundamental strategic decisions of the nation.
The officer he named to command the war in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, demands a reinforcement of forty thousand soldiers, raising the total US commitment to over 100 thousand troops (or more, in the future). He says that he cannot succeed without them, and even then may be unable to win the war within a decade. Yet the American public is generally in doubt about this war, most of all the president's own liberal electorate.
President Obama almost certainly will do as the the general requests, or something very close to it. He can read the wartime politics in this situation.
The Vietnam war was opposed by the public by the 1970s, when according to the Pentagon Papers, the government itself knew that victory was unlikely. Today the public doubts victory in the war in Afghanistan. However the version of Vietnam history most Americans (who were not there!) read today says there really was no defeat at all.
It is argued that there was only a collapse of civilian support for the war, caused by the liberal press, producing popular disaffection both at home and inside the conscript army, with a breakdown of military discipline, "fraggings" (murders) of aggressive combat leaders, and demoralization in the ranks. This is the version most military officers believe today.
It is an American version of the "stab in the back" myth believed in German military and right-wing political circles after the first world war.
In the US case, the Vietnam defeat was painfully clear at the time, and few believed that either the US Congress or the Nixon Administration (which signed the peace agreement with North Vietnam) were parties to any betrayal of the United States.
Today the revised interpretation of the Vietnam war, claiming that it actually was a lost victory, has become an important issue because most Pentagon leaders are committed to the "Long War" against "Muslim terrorism." An Obama administration order to withdraw from Afghanistan, Iraq (or Pakistan) would be attacked by many in Congress and the media, and by implicitly insubordinate elements in the military community, as "surrender" by an Obama government lacking patriotism and unfit to govern.
Conservative politicians are convinced that any policy not set on total victory for the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan - and in coming months, perhaps in Somalia, Yemen, or possibly in Palestine, or sub-Saharan Africa, (or even in an Iran determined to pursue its nuclear ambitions) - would mean American humiliation and defeat.
After Vietnam, Congress ended conscription (which in that war had become heavily corrupt: the poor and working classes were drafted, while many of the privileged had influential families and found complacent doctors or college deans willing to hand over unjustified draft exemptions to those - like the future Vice President Richard Cheney - who had "other priorities" than patriotism and national service.
Congress created a new all-volunteer army. The sociology of the new army was very different from the old citizens' army. The new one was also composed of people who wanted to be soldiers, or wanted the college education that an enlistment could earn you, or often were high-school graduates who didn't have much in the way of other career choices, but since 9/11, and the Iraq invasion, the new army has increasingly relied on immigrants or other young foreigners who can earn permanent US residence by way of a US Army enlistment. The US also increasingly has relied on foreign mercenaries hired by private companies.
Its professional character is fundamentally different from the old army. In the old army, career West Point officers were during wartime largely outnumbered by war-service-only officers, the graduates of Officer Candidate schools or Reserve Officers trained in universities (where much of the cost of higher education could be earned in exchange for a fixed term of duty afterwards as a junior commissioned officer).
Thus the US army from the start of the Second World War to the end of Vietnam was effectively a democratic army, with civilian conscripts, and the majority of its non-commissioned and commissioned officers peacetime civilians, with solid commitments to civilian society, often with families at home - doing their temporary (or "for the war's duration") patriotic duty.
Professional armies have often been considered a threat to their own societies. It was one of Frederick the Great's own officers who described Prussia "as an army with a state, in which it was temporarily quartered, so to speak". The French revolutionary statesman Mirabeau said that "war is Prussia's national industry". Considering the portion of the US national budget that is now consumed by the Pentagon, much the same could be said of the United States.
The new army also has political ambitions. It now dominates US foreign relations with a thousand bases worldwide and regional commanders like imperial proconsuls. Both General McChrystal and his superior, General David H Petraeus, have been mentioned as future presidential candidates. The last general who became American president was Dwight Eisenhower. He is the one who warned Americans against "the military-industrial complex".
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29 Comments so far
Show AllAnd where the many strands our 'defense' industry entwine with those of the corporate state we live in, thus is a strong rope placed around our necks.
In Rome, The Preatorian Guard often overthrew an Emporer it didnt like, and sold the Imperial throne to the highest bidder.
NO, Congress just(ly) needs to show the courage of its Constitutional executive oversight mandate for We, the People. And for the record - Reminder: It is illegal for federal agencies, including the "Army" to lobby Congress!
A well written article by William Pfaff. Pfaff mentions the "Reserve Officers who trained in universities" but neglects to state that those who did enter the ROTC during the Vietnam era were subjected to protest by the antiwar movement. When Pfaff writes of those who try to engage in revisionism in regard to the Vietnam War, it brings to mind the myth propagated during that time of the Vietnam veterans who were supposedly spat upon when they returned to the United States. As Jerry Lembcke points out in his classic work The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam,this is, as his title states, a myth with no documentation to support that claim.
The bigger change has been the Cheney-ing of our military - it was his initiative that created today's 'private military contractor' industry which now lobbies for anything but Peace in order to continue the flow of taxpayer trillions into their Caymen death-profiteer accounts.
As I've said, in order for 'us' to realistically discuss the future of America and it's military, the PMCs - i.e. the profit incentives - have to be removed from the equation.
And the only way to do that is to pay em, cause they ain't walking away from trillions without a fight. We pay farmers not to farm, we pay Taliban members not to taliban, why not pay PMCs to shut the f**k up and go away and let We The People figure out the right path without the influence of the worst Greed of them all - War Greed.?
If the draft were still in effect, reactionary officers would have been fragged, thereby preventing the proble.
Why do you think it was ended?
But I could be wrong !
For the majority of americans, the only distinction between them and the military is that the latest fashions are easily distinguishable from fatigues. Don't blame the military, it has the full support of the eye for an eyer's and full support of the politicians. As long as we are winning, the bumper sticker ribbons will remain stuck in place.
"Support our troops" and "God bless America and nowhere else."
Amen, Serios! "bless Us the U. S. and none of the Res-t..." No more turn the other cheek! Pat Robertson preaches that on his Conservative Republican TV show. The kind, the merciful, the peacemaking, the healing and Loving Jesus / God of the Christian Bible, and/or anyone Else's scripture--tenets of faith--that promotes anything like the above qualities is considered anathema in the sick society of conservative religion in America, where they preach as if they can't wait to see the earth and Creation destroyed along with everyone and thing that doesn't believe like them!
Damn good article.
So, what do we do about the militarization if our society and government?
Ray Berthiaume
Meanwhile, the sheeple annually give half their taxes to the military. We could cut half the military budget and have enough for single payer health care and free higher education for those who qualified.
Half, at least, of the discretionary budget. The first half seems to be already committed to entitlements: SS, M-care & M-aid, veteran and government employee pensions. Half of the remaining half does go to military spending. Or, as "W" said a while back, we have a bargain... only 4% of our GDP. Now, don't you feel better?
As someone said, "Torture numbers.... they'll confess to anything".
And yes, Ray #1, what we could do with that money.....
Daniel Ellsberg's explanation of the motives for staying in Afghanistan are quite similar.
To speak of the "will" or "motive" of a national action must always be in some sense fictional, but it is interesting to what extent these petty ambitions apparently drive broad action.
I wonder how Pfaff or Ellsberg would say that such things play with the kinds of realpolitik considerations that Pepe Escobar discusses in PIPELINEISTAN and elsewhere.
Some study of the nature of faith and wilful ignorance and the play of personal and projected realpolitik motivations in such actions might be of some use in combating these things.
As is, progressives often find ourselves discussing the transparently false motives that elites fluff up and advertise as propaganda. We discuss and repeatedly disprove the notion that Afghanistan is a security threat to the US, but it's unlikely that Cheney or Boshama ever imagined that it was.
Perhaps when we discuss Pipelinistan, we may also partly err in focus. If decisions to go to war derive principally from individual perversions around "glory," then the perverse will invent new reasons to don their uniforms and polish their boots until their personal problems get addressed or their toys taken away.
The only study I know of this kind of thing is DEATH AND THE STATESMAN, by Joseph B. Underhill, who is quite interesting but understandably incomplete. I'd like to find more.
and the soldiers == poor "patriotic" soldiers
are - in fort Hood _
"IN SHOCK -- the war has come home..this is unacceptable"
HORRORS, SHOCK!!!!
how can this BE?
horrors!!!!
in word:
That's is AMERICA - PLAY WAR some more....war , war , war, glorify it some more and see where that gets you and your precious "SHOCKED" soldiers and their families expressing "SHOCK"
at the consequences that america thinks can only be suffered by people far away who have NO QUARRELS with the ordinary americans who THEMSELVES , through THEIR own beliefs in their OWN
american-made MYTHS of glory and honor and greatness as a WARMAKING NATION HELP SUPPLY their own
"SHOCK TROOPS" grand imperial army
and THEN Express HORROR and SHOCK at its CONSEQUENCES when it hits THEM!!
have some more WAR america!! wallow in its "glory" some more
================
South Asia
Nov 10, 2009
When war comes home
By Dahr Jamail
PHOENIX, Arizona - While investigators probe for a motive behind the mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas last Thursday, in which an army psychiatrist killed 13 people, military personnel at the base are in shock as the incident "brings the war home".
"We're all in shock," said Specialist Michael Kern, an active-duty veteran of the Iraq war, told Inter Press Service (IPS) by telephone. Kern, who is based at Fort Hood, served in Iraq from March 2007 to March 2008. "Every single person that I've talked to is in shock," Kern added.
"I'm surprised this hits so close to home, but at the same time, I knew something like this was going to happen given what else is happening - the war is coming home, and something needs to be
done. Innocent civilians are being wounded and killed here at home by soldiers, and this is completely unacceptable," he said.
The gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, entered a Soldier Readiness Center (SRC), where troops get medical evaluations and complete paperwork just prior to being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and opened fire with two non-military issued handguns.
Hasan killed 13 people, 12 of them soldiers, and wounded over 30 others, before being shot four times by a civilian police officer. Hasan is now in stable condition in a local hospital, where he is in the custody of military authorities.
Colonel John Rossi, a spokesman at Fort Hood, told reporters that Hasan was "stable and in one of our civilian hospitals". Rossi added, "He's on a ventilator."
Hasan, 39, joined the army just out of high school. He had counseled wounded war veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, and was transferred to Fort Hood in April. He had recently received orders to deploy to Afghanistan.
His cousin, Nader Hasan, has said in media interviews that Hasan was very reluctant to be deployed overseas and had agitated not to be sent. "We've known over the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare," he said.
Responding to the allegations in the media that the attack was based on his Muslim faith, Kern told IPS that he did not know of anyone on the base who felt this was the case.
"We all wear the same uniform here, it's all green. I've seen the news, but most folks here assume it's just a soldier that snapped," Kern explained. "I have not talked to anyone who thinks what he did has anything to do with him being a Muslim. There are thousands of Muslims serving with dignity in the US military, in all four branches."
Fort Hood, located in central Texas, is one of the largest US military bases in the world. It contains up to 50,000 soldiers, and is one of the most heavily deployed to both occupations.
Tragically, Fort Hood has also born much of the brunt from its heavy involvement in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted for more suicides than any other army post since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. This year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month - at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year alone.
In a strikingly similar incident on May 11, 2009, a US soldier gunned down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling center at a US base in Baghdad.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a news conference at the Pentagon at the time that the shootings had occurred in a place where "individuals were seeking help".
Mullen added, "It does speak to me, though, about the need for us to redouble our efforts, the concern in terms of dealing with the stress ... It also speaks to the issue of multiple deployments."
Commenting on the incident in nearly parallel terms, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the Pentagon needs to redouble its efforts to relieve stress caused by repeated deployments in war zones that is further exacerbated by limited time at home in between deployments.
article continued
--========================
The condition described by Mullen and Gates is what veteran health experts often refer to as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
While soldiers returning home are routinely involved in shootings, suicide and other forms of self-destructive violent behaviors as a direct result of their experiences in Iraq, we have yet to see an event of this magnitude on a base in the US.
To many, the shocking story of a soldier killing five of his comrades did not come as a surprise considering that the military has, for years now, been sending troops with untreated PTSD back into the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis, reported in the Denver Post in August 2008, more than "43,000 service members - two-thirds of them in the army or army reserve - were classified as non-deployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed" to Iraq.
In April 2008, the Rand Corporation released a stunning report revealing that, "Nearly 20% of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan - 300,000 in all - report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment."
President Barack Obama, speaking during an event at the Department of the Interior in Washington, said that the mass shooting at Fort Hood was a "horrific outburst of violence". He added: "It is horrifying that they [US soldiers] should come under fire at an army base on American soil."
Victor Agosto, an Iraq war veteran who was discharged from the military after publicly refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, has had first-hand experience with the SRC at Fort Hood, where he too was based.
"I knew there would be a confrontation when I was there, because the only reason to do that process is to deploy," Agosto, speaking to IPS near Fort Hood, explained.
Agosto was court-martialed for refusing an order to go to the SRC to prepare to deploy to Afghanistan.
"I was court-martialed for refusing the order to SRC in that very same building. I didn't enter the building, but I didn't go in because I was refusing the process," Agosto continued. "It's a pretty important place in my life, so it's interesting to me that this happened there."
Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last five years.
(Inter Press Service)
We need to SHOW the horrors! The brutality and ravages of these wars NEEDS TO BE SEEN HERE AT HOME! People need to know and see what OUR nation is doing on a dad to day basis to the families and innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need news coverage like we had during the Vietnam war! Show the families--the blood and guts; YES! Blood and guts--the REAL human beings; again, FAMILIES and HOMES DESTROYED, DEAD MEN, WOMEN and CHILDREN who wanted to LIVE and grow up EVERY BIT AS MUCH AS PEOPLE DO HERE!
You will know when we have a real war---war industry will be nationalized, the 'profits' plowed back into the war effort, no executive will make more $ than the President, and, Congressmen and the rich will be dropping their children off at the recruiters....
Otherwise, it is just a deadly game for the concentration of wealth and power propelled by greed and lies.
the military has no respect for obama. they have been hazing him since he stepped into office. the republicans don't respect him, nor does israel, which is tearing up arab homes in jerusalem, effectively guaranteeing that obama will never become the honest broker between israel and the palestinians. mcchrystal leaks a report, another general says the us will soon base a missle defense system in ukraine, and the expanding powers and budget of the pentagon seem to dwarf the role the state department used to play in foreign affairs. i mean, the huge bases that the pentagon has built all over iraq, afghanistan, and columbia almost gurantee a generation- long military presence in those countries. obama is going to have to fire mcchrystal, give israel an ultimatum on their expansion and ethnic cleansing, and start exerting the authority that over 53% of americans voted for him to have. vipers all around sense a void of determination, and they will all be more than happy to fill his nest with the meanest hawks around.
No need to declare a state of Martial Law. This is it folks. You can run but you can't hide.
Don't think of just the active military either. There are piles upon piles of retired military folks working in the Defense Industry for private contractors. Drive by any military city and you'll see their brand new buildings all along the main roads to the base(s). See, the economic stimulus plan has created some jobs!! These folks can, and often do, recite and believe the whole anti-tax, anti-federal government spiel of the Limbaugh listening crowd while claiming they work for private industry. These companies have never ever made a dime that didn't come from the Feds. But hey, cognitive dissonance has its privileges!
This is nothing new. We have been owned by our military most of our lives. They have called the shots for years, probably since Ike warned us about it in the 50's, if not before. Quit voting in Dems and Rethugs. They are all part of the problem not the solution. Hang on though, with the economic meltdown the elites are handing us, and wealth evaporating from the lower classes while the rich get much, much richer, we are sure to start seeing some Third Reich-like Righties making headway in the polls, if not actually getting electing. Interesting times dead ahead!
Since the CIA wasted President Kennedy, the visible power
of President has gone up but actual power has gone down
and Obama may now be paid actor powerless.
And all the trouble our military is causing in Central and
South America, from the CIA coup dictatorship in Honduras,
to the new U.S. bases around Venezuela, surely this shall
be the doom of Empire USA.
I agree with you, Alabama John. I believe that president Eisenhower decided not to run a second term because he knew who really ruled, and president Kennedy was the last one with enough guts--or the first and last--to go against the "powers that be." Wow! What have we become?!
I wholeheartedly agree.
I do have a problem with the Prussia analogy, however. The Prussians (and pre-unified "Germany" before 1848) had for centuries been invaded by all the countries surrounding it. It had also been used extensively as a battlefield in wars between other countries. (see especially the 30 years war) Prussia's militarism was a natural reaction. The USA, however, hasn't been invaded since the war of 1812. The USA is an offensive power and has been since it's inception (just ask the Natives.) Rome comes to mind. Lets hope we don't spiral into the savagery that became the Empire.
For a further understanding of the exact issues addressed in the above article, please refer to the excellent trilogy by Chalmers Johnson, THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE, BLOWBACK, and especially NEMESIS: THE LAST DAYS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.
Mr. Johnson elaborates in these books upon the themes of this article- a nation Owned by its military and its foreign hubris, and paying through the nose to garrison the same.
And Mr. Johnson has also personally stated to me his belief that a wholly Mercenary Army/military such as we have today may indeed take matters into its own hands, and value its judgements above that of democracy, the people, or the republic, which it is already strangling with its huge budgetary appetites. Mr. Johnson states that either the American Empire goes away, or American democracy will. Any bets?
The NeoCons are indeed NeoFascists. Professional large standing armies need wars for their purposes, and for their justifications -and a war on "terror" as a war that can NEVER be won (any more than can a war on "fear") is perfect. Also, professional soldiers have few civilian attachments or empathies.
So this is a very ominous time, especially since the generals' lapdogs, the warmongering Republicans, seem eager to jump to do the bidding of, outdo in belligerence, and savagely defend, the MIC (no matter the warnings from Eisenhower, whom today they would probably treat as some kind of socialist.)
And the supposed opposition party, the Democratic, is too frightened (terrorized)to oppose the wardogs due to right-wing criticism/catcalls of insufficient patriotism (though ironically, the exact reverse is true.) Meanwhile, both parties and the rightwing pundittos treat generals as if they were untouchable gods. So when the generals call for tens of thousands more troops, just as it was in Vietnam war days, the request is considered appropriate, and not, as well it should be, rejected as foolishness and mindlessness and brutal venality on its face. And so goes the continuation of evil.
Finally there was nothing learned from that Vietnam tragedy, either, other than better control of the MSM and spin by the MIC.
But of course, then there is all that oil and gas to get past Russia and China... through the really, really friendly territory of AfPak -Pipelineistan-, territory that we continue to bomb and strafe.
And so we go on planting military forts right along the pipeline route.
Bad juju all around.
Not owned by
in the sights of
It was reported this morning that the president intends to increase by 40,000 the number of US troops in Afghanistan, which will raise the total to about 100,000.
Clearly, the owners of what is left of this republic want that done.
It is no skin off their collective noses, and in fact enhances their bottom line.
I clearly recall a forgotten statement made by JFK long ago to the effect that by his third day in office, he learned what the limits of his own power would be.
I don't believe he ever elaborated on that, or that anyone ever asked him to elaborate.
America is war.
Remember the 60 Minutes interview when Sec Gates referred to himself as the Sec of WAR not once but two or more times.
Well, it's not like that's news. And that's what his position was called only 60+ years ago.
What bothers me is the attempt by public figures to militarize and glorify even the terminology of how we refer to American troops. I listened to a NPR report on my way home tonight about the woeful state of the military's resources to handle mental health issues, and listened to a woman refer to troops as "warriors" over and over and over again.