The U.S. 7th Fleet secures our vital access to Toyotas, consumer electronics and sweat labor.

..........Post-Constitutional America

War is the health of the State.

All of this becomes meaningless if/when the US and Israel attack Iran, and the flow of oil that is the lifeblood of modern technology slams shut, crippling the extremely vulnerable and interlinked practice of rampant financial speculation masquerading as modern banking.

Complexity breeds failure.

All it takes is the slightest tap to bring down a house of cards.

Dyer is a first-rate analyst. I used to use his book & video series "War" in my POL SCI classes. It's one of the best histories around on the evolution of war, and may still be available. Also check out Barbara Ehrenreich's "Blood Rites".

If liberals had not decided to go outside, conservatives would still have us living in caves.

if only we could all learn how
to always be right here and now
with no yester, no tomorrow
no imagined future sorrow

"The armed forces are the single biggest vested interest in the United States, and indeed in most other countries. To keep their budgets large, the generals must threaten the tax paying public with plausible threats even if they don't exist. The Pentagon will accept some cuts..... but it will defend its core interests to the death. Obama goes along with this because it would be political suicide not to...... We left the caves some time ago, but in our imaginations and our fears we still live there." -Gwynne Dyer

It was not "political suicide" for the politicians who won independence from King George's colonial empire and who drafted the US Constitution to warn vociferously and often about the inherent dangers of "large standing armies" within a democracy, or about the need to avoid foreign entanglements that would inevitably enmesh the nation in pointless wars overseas. It was not "political suicide" for American electoral politicians to publicly oppose the invasion of Mexico, the Spanish-American war, the massive, futile carnage that was World War I, or eventually to turn away from the senseless, bloody quagmire of Vietnam.

Dyer is absolutely correct about the economic dynamics of the Pentagon and the national security bureaucracy. He is very insightful about how the modern war machine perpetuates the primitive caveman's mindset. But in my opinion, it's not so much the generals as it is the politicians of the two major US political parties who are responsible for the cynical fear mongering that fuels the flames.

Since the days of Ronald Reagan and post-9/11 in particular, the Republicans are a hopeless lot, beyond redemption. Barack Obama however had a choice.

It was not politically suicidal for our Nobel Peace prize president to make peace a patriotic virtue once again, to speak candidly about decisions over guns versus butter, and the critical need to assert meaningful civilian control over the spooks and the soldiers inhabiting Washington's current military establishment, to frame public dialogue about militarism in the manner that Eisenhower, Kennedy, and other prominent political figures of the not so distant past did.

Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership simply chose not to do so. Whether this was a matter of short term partisan expediency, or actual ideological preference, is largely irrelevant. The generals (and the spies) are less to blame for the jingoism which demonizes the tribes always sinisterly lurking over there on the other side of the mountain than are the civilian political elites.

And it was not always this way.

Bill from Saginaw

They must maintain a balancing act; we must remain so scared of vague mooslim and terrorist and lesbian threats that we remain willing to spend around 60% of our tax money on "defense". At the same time, we must feel secure enough that we do not do anything like change our consumption habits or start a protest or something...

We have a big billboard sign that tells us to be very afraid of our neighbors and to watch out for and report any "suspicious activity." All Good Germans will comply.

War is a con game and Americans are easily conned. Cave-man thinking with nuclear weapons just shows how little progress we have actually made these past 10,000 years. WWIII will be the war nobody wins, but one that will destroy America. People are so fxcking stupid, or greedy, or both. What greatness we could have reached if we had actually embraced peace, instead of just talking about "never again". Folks, it's happening again, and nobody but the #Occupiers seem to care. Ever wonder how good Germans could have let their country become so evil that millions died as a result? You need wonder no more, just take a look at America today. Good Americans, like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are marginalized, while war-mongering Neanderthals run the show. And now, even our human rights have been stripped from us without so much as a whimper. Good-bye America I loved, hello fascism.

"For the first time in history, NO great power is planning to attack any other great power." Oh pulleeeze. China is a threat not because they are Chinese, but because they are HUMAN. Its human-nature to take a wee bit of advantage, then a bit more, then a bit more, and finally to insist on the entire cake. No one says they plan to colonize other peoples. But they create a situation where Japan 'asked us to be there', and off it goes. Its human nature. The overwhelming American defense budget is natural, in the sense that America's Rambo's naturally got it in their mind that the defense of America required us to be in 500 different places on planet Earth. Classic ego-driven 'mission drift'. To the extent that there is a lesson here, its that the Chinese military likely wouldn't be as egotistical, but would have understood that the development of planet Earth is organically its own, largely, and doesn't respond to American military might, no matter how urgently our Rambo's want to believe otherwise. Take the Middle East, a place America has probably spent hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars on in the last 30 years. What is the most significant thing that has happened to the Middle East in those 30 years? The Arab Spring: one poor guy setting himself on fire, and a bunch of other poor guys agreeing with his reasons. Translation: those hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars were wasted. I find it hard to believe that the Chinese would be that naive, but maybe their ego's are as large as ours, who knows? Who cares? The lesson for America is that our security was surpassed several trillion dollars ago. And America just can't afford it anymore. Indeed, we never could.

We'll always be threatened by other great powers. That's human nature. But overspending on defense, ironically, does THEIR WORK FOR THEM, through misallocation of precious government spending dollars. We end up, ironically, MORE dependent on the sc8wed-up Middle East for energy we could easily have gotten ourselves with a little 'green energy' investment. If there's a lesson here, that is it: that its hard to believe the Chinese could have been so egotistically myopic about defense as we have been for 30 years. But, hey, maybe they could have been. Doesn't change a thing: the conclusion is that we've been stupid and its time to wise up.

Mostly correct except for the perpetual perpetration of the bald face lie that quasi-sovereigns hosting American military bases are countries having "close military ties" with America. I don't seem to notice any Japanese or South Korean military bases on American shores or reciprocal agreements regarding crimes committed by "guest" soldiers in the host countries. Prior to the WW2, China was graced by the presence of multiple foreign military powers, and they were not there as a result of close military ties. Let us call a spade a spade. As for China getting rich, don't forget that China has been merely selling its cheap labor, environments, clean water and the health of a generation in exchange for US printed fiat money, so that it can participate in the global economy under the Dollar hegemony...basically playing a game against the game creator who makes the rules, creates the chips, and may change the rules when it fits his purpose. The words "fiat" and "rules" and "hegemony" imply the ability to impose and enforce, hence the need for overpowering military advantages. Not here to judge, just to point out the facts.

gwynne dyer
*For the first time in history, NO great power is planning to attack any other great power.*

ubrew
* Oh pulleeeze. China is a threat not because they are Chinese, but because they are HUMAN. *

oh
pulleeeeeze
gimme a fucking break
who's picking fight..................9000 miles away from home as usual ?
http://tinyurl.com/bmtbsbx

Re ubrew12:
Something you're apparently missing -- the class system and capitalist's unlimited greed which evolves into worldwide imperialism and bases all over the world even if it is destroying the US and its economy -- revealing no concern for its own people but only for money. The next step -- riots and civil war in its true form -- fascism and near slavery.

As to Gwyn Dyer -- seems he has apparently extricated himself from American propaganda which "forced" him to pull his punches for years. Now if he could only do the same with Israeli's fascist regime.

JJR

oh come on, Gwynne - they 'paid full price for Iraqi oil' sure - but one of the first things they did when they took over was let Haliburton et al take over the oil fields - so that was just another scam to turn tax money over to private *American* "investors" (AKA serious crooks). Very sad this kind of high school civics course alice-in-wonderland world stuff should be allowed on CD