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Saying No To Militarism
No mail on Saturday, maybe, but small-town police get armored personnel carriers?
Let’s take a moment — in the context of these bitter times, and President Obama’s recent austerity budget proposal — to celebrate the questions the residents of Keene, N.H., are asking their city council about the kind of world we’re creating.
Eight-ton Bearcat 'tank' for Keene, N.H police department
First of all, the grotesque insult of “austerity” in the shadow of limitless military spending is destroying our national sanity. And the proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, mental health services, environmental cleanup, National Parks programs and even, yeah, Saturday mail delivery are miniscule compared to the unmet social needs we haven’t yet begun to address in this country, in education, renewable energy and so much more. But we’re spending with reckless abandon to arm ourselves and our allies and provoke our enemies, and sometimes arm them as well, creating the sort of world no one (almost no one) wants: a world of endless war.
The official 2012 Defense budget of $530 billion, and just a shade under that for 2013, leaves out an enormous amount of defense-related government spending. According to a recent piece in The Atlantic, when you add in, oh, the cost of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, our spending on nuclear weapons development (relegated to the Department of Energy budget), Homeland Security, veterans’ medical care (inadequate as it is, but rising), military aid to allies ($3 billion to Israel, for instance), and interest on the military’s portion of the debt (projected to be $63.7 billion in 2013), our defense spending almost doubles, to $986.1 billion in 2012 and $994.3 billion in 2013.
In the last 13 years, according to Business Insider, U.S. military spending has increased 113 percent. We spend more on the military than the next 15 biggest military spenders combined — and more than all 50 states spend, in total, on health, education, welfare and safety. In 2007, some $11 billion was simply written off as “lost” in Iraq, the Business Insider story notes.
And the military is, in effect, our 51st state, albeit one surrounded by barbed wire. “The total known land area occupied by U.S. bases and facilities is 15,654 square miles — bigger than D.C., Massachusetts, and New Jersey combined,” according to the article.
And beyond anything that appears on a ledger sheet, the unregulated military has carte blanche to spend the earth’s resources and contaminate the planet. “The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world,” Lucinda Marshall wrote at Common Dreams several years ago, “producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined.”
This waste includes pesticides and defoliants (e.g., Agent Orange), solvents, petroleum, lead, mercury and, horrifically, depleted uranium and nuclear fallout. The military’s legacy — in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia, where we have fought recent wars; on the tiny island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico, where the U.S. Navy tested weapons for more than 60 years; and in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands, where we tested our nuclear weapons above ground — is cancer, birth defects and a devastated environment.
All to what end? “National defense” is perhaps the most cynical — and effective — lie in human history, commanding the quaking allegiance of the populace over and over again, justifying virtually any activity, devouring the planet’s resources, and ever failing to deliver the promised peace, indeed, delivering only the conditions for the next war. Few things in today’s world are more unsettling than the fact that “national defense” still owns the country’s politics, its budget — and the minds of far too many of its citizens.
Welcome, then, to Keene, N.H., a town of 23,000 people that, despite its low crime rate and general friendliness, was set at the end of last year to score a “tank” — actually, an eight-ton Bearcat armored personnel vehicle — for its police department, thanks to a nearly $300,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security.
When the news began circulating, the townspeople, instead of going along with the deal, actually stood up to the mayor and city council, not simply questioning the need for this military vehicle (even though it was “free”), but expressing concern that the militarization of the police department could harm their community.
An anti-tank petition garnered 500 signatures, and earlier this month more than 100 people, mostly opposing the tank, showed up at a city council meeting to speak their minds, according to the Keene Sentinel.
“This vehicle is continuing to fund the culture of war in this country, and Congress will continue to fuel the culture of war unless we do something,” said Terry Clark, the lone city councilor to oppose the deal, as quoted in the Sentinel. “Do we want a militarized police force in Keene? We can take the lead and ask the council to rescind its decision, and have the courage to do what Congress does not.”
In contrast, the Bearcat was defended by the government sales manager for Lenco, the vehicle’s manufacturer, as quoted in Huffington Post: “I don’t think there’s any place in the country where you can say, ‘That isn’t a likely terrorist target.’ . . . If a group of terrorists decide to shoot up a shopping mall in a town like Keene, wouldn’t you rather be prepared?”
The residents of Keene have so far said no to the fear peddlers. May their stand give all of us the courage to do the same.
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19 Comments so far
Show AllGreat article, Mr. Koehler. I've been ranting in the CD forum about the need to examine the premise of, and terminology inherent to the word DEFENSE. Thank you for laying out the case I so frequently make, that in the U.S. MARS, the god of war rules in the place of any other God, idol, or symbol.
The amount of money wasted on war allows sociopaths who ENJOY killing, and feel dangerously empowered by their access to grotesque weapons, to continue on. Contrast this banquet to the martial vanities with the lack of money for all the things citizens genuinely need, and the false premise of DEFENSE spending is exposed.
Of course no media, for the most part, speaks in these terms given that the media, itself, has become another tool of the MIC in promoting endless pro-war propaganda.
With climate change threats abounding, that the MIC is not being retro-fitted to work pro-actively to protect citizens from inevitable harm, is a testament to its misuse of purpose.
Thank you for speaking about its foot-print in terms of chemical and ecological ruin, too. Further proof that what passes for Defense is closer to a mass suicide pact.
If Hollywood didn't sexualize violence, if football games didn't push the subliminal that we're all part of one team opposing another, if religions didn't reinforce that same inanity, and if international "commerce" was not conducted at official bayonet-point, there'd be far less tolerance for the grotesque absurdity of this entity (the very same MIC that Ike warned about) added to the way it cannibalizes the national budget.
As Thomas Friedman once related, "There could be no McDonalds without McDonnell Douglas." Smedley Butler wrote about the graft, as did Jack Perkins. Anyone paying attention knows the MIC is the muscle behind global corporate capitalism's quest for others' resources, notably oil and gas. Anyone who still believes Defense (or spreading democracy) is the driving ambition is blind.
When Mars rules, the product is DEATH on a massive scale.
But the God of America has never been MARS, nor even Mammon (as Lyingfish suggests below). Both are merely servants of a greater Master. As Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler so eloquently stated in War is a Racket, "I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."
The Pentagon is merely the enforcement arm of American capitalism (as economic hitman John Perkins suggests). And what is capitalism but the ideology of Freedom run amok (viz Ayn Rand). The God (or idol) we worship in America has always been personal Freedom, but that ideal used to be balanced by a sense of moral obligation to the greater good. Even the much-demonized US corporation was originally designed to be a tool for the funneling of private capital into public needs.
Today, we have allowed Freedom free reign to trample all other values and turned what might have been a benevolent God into the world's greatest Demon. And that is why conservatism and even Ron Paul's version of libertarianism are so rampant in America.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
I offered references to Smedley Butler and John Perkins. And since you may (?) be new to this forum, you obviously missed my earlier posts that tied the inverted Mars (overt militarism) to the inverted Venus, his Divine partner, as seen in Mammon; that is, how the worship of money fosters the enduring fruits of evil. I don't always repeat the full message. It's obvious that $ finances the MIC, and in turn, the MIC rewards its financial donors. It's a very dark partnership, or insidious quid pro quo, if you prefer.
Greed would be tough to enforce were there no muscle behind it. After all, most tribes or groups of people work towards cooperation. The top-down hierarchy is neither the product of greed, nor capitalism. It is a DIRECT outgrowth of the Age of Aries, the transition from the Peaceful Garden/ Goddess Mother archetype, to that of the martial, avenging father. When one gender is placed UNDER the domination of the other, the Divine partnership is broken. All hierarchies ensue from that theft; for indeed it is and has been a theft of massive proportions that's long robbed the world of input from billions of persons, while simultaneously denying these persons their sovereignty.
It's also part of thelong-established mindset that sees the natural world (Mother Nature) as a THING, something to dominate, place a MANmade pricetag upon, and sell off... as if the living world were also the target of massive collateral damage.
My story goes back further in time than yours, and frankly, there's more scholarship backing it up. Plus, I find your case and post poorly reasoned. (And let your fish pal fry his own.)
Another outstanding article by Koehler and an excellent post by Siouxrose. My thanks to you both.
I've been wearing a button for ten years that says "Feed the Cities, Not the Pentagon". Sad to say that the button is over 35 years old.
In a very real sense - especially in this country and with its insane level of consumption - feeding the cities almost implies feeding the pentagon. Cities are - by definition - unsustainable, as they extract and exploit resources from elsewhere. The MIC is simply a mechanism to enable and maximize this extraction and exploitation. Of course, this is nothing new, simply a neo-colonialism. Until all communities reach a level of sustainability, resources will be stolen - by definition, requiring force.
Thank you, Mahannah & Oikos. It's a pleasure to be appreciated... and understood.
MARS rules only at the behest of our true ruler the GOD Mammon.
"Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God."
Thank you, Robert Koehler, for exposing the U.S. military for what it is, the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world, and the most brutal, wicked, and suicidal expression of Western nihilism.
Thank you, Siouxrose, for your comment, with which I totally agree!
And yet again I suggest something that you can do in the comfort of your comfy chair. That's not asking too much, is it? .
The sane people of the world must unite and shout out that this is all DAFT.
Those pushing for war and more war - they are DAFT.
Those mongering fear - they are DAFT.
The global aggression that is supposedly to prevent future terrorism - DAFT.
Occupy language! Sane people, I implore you to get DAFT into the world lexicon.
DAFT - the Defense against Future Terrorism war
The DAFT not meant to be won, only to continue - to be used by TPTB as excuses to cow the sheeple at home and steal resources abroad. That should be obvious, after 10 years.
Rise up, sane people! Occupy language!
Spread the word, and the word is DAFT.
That's not asking too much from you, is it?
Furthermore -
from the NY Times -
the authorization by Congress to use military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying that nothing in that statute limited the ability to wage war against Al Qaeda and its allies to the so-called “hot” battlefield zone of Afghanistan.
from this article -
our wars in Afghanistan and...
It's not a war 'in Afghanistan'. That should be frickin' obvious by now.
The USA is supposedly fighting the same enemy in a dozen countries, yet our esteemed Progressive pundits continue to erroneously title them as separate conflicts.
It's no wonder that Progressives make no progress.
It's all the DAFT war, everywhere.
Not only is the US military the greatest polluter, but also the greatest consumer of petroleum and hence the primary culprit in global warming.
The US wages wars for oil in order to "protect" the American Way of Life (AWOL = absent without leave from the Web of Life).
The Pentagon is the world's largest consumer of petroleum, and so control of the world's oil is necessary in order to control the world's oil in order to "protect" the American Way of Life (AWOL).
Half the Pentagon's oil goes to the Air Force, 85% of that for jet fuel to move fuel, personnel & weapons around the world in order to control the world's oil in order to keep fueling the war machine in order to "protect" the American Way of Life (AWOL).
The US military budget is now more than a Trillion dollars a year and larger than all the other military budgets on earth combined, requiring well more than half of total government revenues (that means your hard-earned money). This non-productive use of financial resources leaves the US well behind even "developing" nations in serving the common good, and undermines the economic health of the nation.
Which means that the "defense" of AWOL is the leading cause of economic collapse, lack of basic social services that every other industrialized democracy offers its citizens, global pollution, global warming and the consequent destruction of AWOL.
Additionally, the US Navy is the world's largest consumer of diesel fuel and now the largest user of "green" biodiesel from GMO soybeans that we can't sell to the EU because they don't trust its safety. As the largest converter of food to fuel, we are reducing the world's food supply, causing hunger, displacement and social unrest that fuels terrorism.
Which means that the "defense" of AWOL is likely the major cause of global terrorism that requires a defense of AWOL which is destroying AWOL.
Catch-22
Kudos to the little town of Keene in the progressive "lower left" corner of NH. In 2003, I lived nearby and helped organize, and train in non-violence, students from Keene State College and area residents to resist the impending war on Iraq. We also created the nation's first grass-roots campaign for Kucinich for President in 2004 and convinced the NH Green Party to go against their national organization and endorse the little giant-slayer from Ohio.
So,
out of 23,000 people,
500 signed a petition and a smaller portion cared enough to confront the city.
The pity is that so few people realize that the manufacturer and the so-called government depend upon terrorism and the fear of terrorism for profits.
Of course the US MIC/CIA continues to arm and equip themselves and their cronies. They know where their policies and actions are taking us. When they totally trash the economy and the environment they are going to need the police state to maintain their power and control.
If Keene gets one, next it'll be Pittsburg, NH.
Those terrorist moose betta watch out!
Trylon
Mr. Koehler,
Thank you for your Common Dreams article on Keene. Good people there! I recently read this book on U.S. War-culture--I noticed the Keene poeple speaking of our culture of war. See:
Dr. Kelly Denton-Borhaug on US War-culture: http://www.kellydentonborhaug.com/
And here is Kazu Haga, putting nonviolence in the face and language of youth, Asian, current events, on-the- ground choices which face young people today. I've learned from Kazu's teachers, Dr. Bernard Lafayette (invited him to speak at Chrisitan Peacemaker Teams conference 10 years ago) and his colleague David Jehnsen, who together wrote the books on Kingina nonviolence ( http://www.kingiannonviolence.info/ )
http://298353.edicypages.com/
And a shorter, 8 minute speech at public meeting in Oakland http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNjzMnFiUy0&noredirect=1
Nearby my home in Bath Township MI, an artillery cannon sits on a concrete pad inside the chain-link fence surrounding a U-Store-It. I have no idea why it is there or how the owner got it. Maybe he thinks it will scare thieves away. It reminds me how wide-spread the influence of the Pentagon is; and that scares me. Chalmers Johnson wrote about the reach of the US military around the world and how deeply US society is influenced by Pentagon spending. If the citizens of Keene NH refusing to accept this 'gift' succeed in their effort, good for them. Their city can do without this ugly reminder of how much of our time and treasure is wasted on 'defending' ourselves.
In contrast, the Bearcat was defended by the government sales manager for Lenco, the vehicle’s manufacturer, as quoted in Huffington Post: “I don’t think there’s any place in the country where you can say, ‘That isn’t a likely terrorist target.’ . . . If a group of terrorists decide to shoot up a shopping mall in a town like Keene, wouldn’t you rather be prepared?”
Whoa! This boy has been watching way too many Chuck Norris movies and too many reruns of 24! And besides, way too many police departments in this country would probably end up killing a bunch of innocent bystanders! New York's, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles's PD's come to mind!