https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/09/27/what-would-real-national-defense-look-like/
What Would Real “National Defense” Look Like?
A progressive Pentagon? Talk about an oxymoron! The Pentagon continues to grow and surge with ever larger budgets, ever more expansive missions (for example, a Space Force to dominate the heavens and yet more bases in the Pacific to encircle China), and ever greater ambitions to dominate everywhere, including if necessary through global thermonuclear warfare. No wonder it’s so hard, to the point of absurdity, to imagine a Pentagon that would humbly and faithfully serve only the interests of “national defense.”
Yet, as a thought experiment, why not imagine it? What would a progressive Pentagon look like? I’m not talking about a “woke” Pentagon that touts and celebrates its “diversity,” including its belated acceptance of LGBTQ+ members. I’m glad the Pentagon is arguably more diverse and tolerant now than when I served in the Air Force beginning in the early 1980s. Yet, as a popular meme has it, painting “Black Lives Matter” and rainbow flags on B-52 bombers doesn’t make the bombs dropped any less destructive. To be specific: Was it really a progressive milestone that the combat aircraft in last year’s Super Bowl flyover were operated and maintained entirely by female crews? Put differently, are the bullets and bombs of trans Black G.I. Jane somehow more tolerant and less deadly than cis White G.I. Joe’s?
A progressive military shouldn’t stop with “more Black faces in high places,” more female generals “leaning in” around conference tables, and similar so-called triumphs for diversity. Consider Lloyd Austin, the first Black secretary of defense, whose views and actions have been little different from those of former Defense Secretaries James Mattis or Donald Rumsfeld, and whose background as a retired Army four-star general and well-paid former board member of Raytheon makes him the very stereotype of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex.
No, all-female air crews aren’t nearly enough. Indeed, they are, I’d argue, a form of “woke” camouflage for a predatory military leopard that refuses to change its spots — or curb its appetite.
A truly progressive military should start with the fundamentals. All service members swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, the system of laws that defines and enshrines our vital rights and freedoms (speech, a free press, the right to assemble, privacy, and so on); in short, the right to live untrammeled by domineering forces. Yet, almost by definition, that right is threatened, if not violated, by a massive military-industrial-congressional complex that penetrates nearly every domain of American life. That complex, after all, is anti-democratic, shrouded in secrecy, and jealous of its power, as well as fundamentally and profoundly anti-progressive. Indeed, it’s fundamentally and profoundly anti-truth.
Consider these hard facts. All too many Americans didn’t know how badly they’d been lied to about the Vietnam War until the Pentagon Papers emerged near the end of that disastrous conflict. All too many Americans didn’t know how badly they’d been lied to about the Afghan War until the Afghan War Papers emerged near the end of that disastrous conflict. All too many Americans didn’t know how badly they’d been lied to about the Iraq War until the myth of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (which had been part of the bogus rationale for invading that country) crumbled; nor did they know how badly they continued to be lied to until the myth of the American “surge” there collapsed when the Islamic State forces triumphed all too easily over an American-built Iraqi security structure that collapsed like a rotten house of cards. Perhaps some of them didn’t truly know until a loudmouthed Republican candidate for president, Donald J. Trump, dared to say that the Iraq War had been an unmitigated disaster, or, in Trump-speak, “a big fat mistake.” That burst of honesty helped him win the presidency in 2016. (His rival in that election, Hillary Clinton, remained essentially the chief spokesperson for the Pentagon.)
Yet despite the horrendous failures (and war crimes) of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other U.S. military ventures of this century, no one is ever punished! Sure, you could point to Donald Rumsfeld being cashiered as secretary of defense amid the rubble of “the Global War on Terror,” a belated admission by the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that the Iraq War was going poorly indeed. Still, all those cracks were later papered over with the myth of “the surge” and when Rumsfeld died in 2021, he would receive remarkably glowing tributes in obituaries, as well as bipartisan salutes for his “service” to America rather than condemnation for his numerous crimes and blunders.
The Pentagon’s rampant culture of dishonesty, a cancer that above all infects the brass, led one serving Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling, to write a now-renowned (or, if you’re part of the Pentagon, infamous) paper for Armed Forces Journal in 2007 on America’s failure of generalship. As he memorably noted, a U.S. Army private suffered far more dearly for losing a rifle than America’s generals did for losing a war. The Army’s response was — no surprise — to change nothing, leading Yingling to retire early.
13 Tasks for a Progressive Pentagon
Venturing into the Pentagon’s innermost corridors of power, one might be excused for recalling Obi-Wan Kenobi’s warning to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars as they approached the spaceport of Mos Eisley: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
How does one possibly reform such a top-heavy, self-serving, and dishonest institution along progressive lines? A moment in Greek mythology comes to mind: Hercules and the Augean Stables. Let me nevertheless press ahead with this all too herculean task.
Dreaming is free, as Blondie once sang, so why not dream a little dream with me? Here’s a list — a baker’s dozen, in fact — of ways a progressive Pentagon would both exist and act far differently from America’s current regressive (and very, very aggressive) version of the same.
A progressive Pentagon would:
* Take the lead in working to eliminate all nuclear weapons everywhere — that is, total nuclear disarmament — rather than investing vast sums in the coming decades in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It would disavow using nuclear weapons first (“no first use”) in any conflict. It would cancel all plans to “modernize” the current nuclear triad of missiles, planes, and submarines at an estimated cost of $2 trillion. It would also immediately eliminate obsolete and vulnerable land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs, and cancel as redundant the Air Force’s new B-21 stealth bomber.
* Oppose sending any more of those devastating cluster munitions or depleted uranium tank shells to Ukraine; indeed, it would take the lead in eliminating such awful weaponry.
* Stop inflating threats and end all talk of a “new Cold War” with China and Russia.
* Celebrate the insights of Generals Smedley Butler and Dwight D. Eisenhower that war is fundamentally a racket (Butler) and that the military-industrial-congressional complex poses the severest of threats to freedom and democracy in America (President Eisenhower).
* Reject the language of militarism, including describing its troops as “warriors” and “warfighters,” as profoundly undemocratic and un-American.
* Recognize the costs of wars already fought to those troops and ensure full funding of the Department of Veterans Affairs, including for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and moral injuries, among the other wounds of war.
* End the war on terror, launched just after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and urge Congress to repeal the open-ended war authorization it passed then with but a single dissenting vote, because war itself is terror.
* Refuse to go to war unless there’s a formal congressional declaration of the same as the Constitution demands. If the United States had followed that rule, the last war we would have fought was World War II.
* Reject its present culture of secrecy as profoundly counterproductive to success not just in war but in general. That doesn’t mean, of course, sharing specific battle plans (of which there should be far fewer) or detailed information about weaponry with potential enemies. It does mean a willingness to speak truth to the American people, whose support would be needed to prosecute any genuinely necessary war, assuming there even is such a thing.
* Embrace honor and integrity including a willingness of the U.S. military to fall on its own sword — that is, take genuine responsibility for both its deeds and its misdeeds.
* Recognize that one cannot serve both a republic and an empire, that a choice must be made, and that a Pentagon of the present kind in a genuine republic would voluntarily downsize itself, while largely dismantling its imperial infrastructure of perhaps 800 overseas bases.
* Lead the way in demilitarizing space, including eliminating America’s fledgling Space Force and its “guardians.”
* Clearly acknowledge that large, standing militaries and constant wars, as well as preparations for more of the same, are corrosive to democracy, liberty, and the Constitution, as America’s founders recognized.
Imagine that! A progressive Pentagon of peace rather than a regressive one of power and unending warfare. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Three Maxims for a Progressive Pentagon
Careful readers won’t be surprised to learn that I was an early Star Wars fan. Naturally, I rooted for the underdog rebels against the evil empire and its henchman, Darth Vader. I saw myself as a potential Jedi Knight, wielding an elegant weapon, a protector of freedom and the republic. (In my defense, I was 14 years old in 1977 when I first saw Star Wars.)
Then, in 1980, I watched The Empire Strikes Back, just as I was pursuing an Air Force ROTC scholarship for college. I heard Yoda, the Jedi master, declare to Luke that “wars not make one great.” That pearl of wisdom floored me then and continues to inform my life.
I’ve read my share of “heavy” philosophy and have the academic credentials to pose as a “serious” enough thinker. Yet I come back to the homespun wisdom captured in certain movies and TV shows that still carries weight for me. Let me share bits of such wisdom with you.
The first is from Kung Fu, the 1970s TV series starring David Carradine. As a young Kwai Chang Caine meets Master Po for the first time, he is astonished to discover that his master is blind. He takes pity on Po, suggesting that his life must be one of endless darkness. Master Po instantly corrects him. “Fear,” he says, “is the only darkness.”
The second is from The Outlaw Josey Wales, a classic western starring Clint Eastwood, also from the 1970s. Josey Wales is a renegade, a wanted man who leaves dead bodies in his wake wherever he travels. Yet he’s also tired of killing, a man in search of peace. In a moving scene, he negotiates just such a peace with Ten Bears, a Comanche chief, saying that there must be a way for people to live together without butchering one another, without constant bloodletting, without race-based hatreds.
A progressive Pentagon would recognize the deep truth of those three maxims: that wars not make one great, that fear is the only darkness, and that there’s a better way for people to live together than constantly butchering one another.
As a Catholic youth, I was taught that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. Today, I’d put that differently. The beginning of wisdom is the quest to master one’s fear, the urge to turn away from fear-driven hatreds, to find better, more pacific, more loving ways.
At the core of the original Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas implanted a message that anger, fear, aggression, and violence — the “dark side” of the Force, as he put it — should be resisted. As Darth Vader confesses to Luke, the power of that dark side is nearly irresistible. Fear and related negative emotions, eerily seductive as they are, can consume our minds (and, as it turns out, given the Pentagon budget, our taxpayer dollars as well).
Too many Americans are prey to the dark side, allowing fear to be the mind-killer. It’s not entirely our fault. From the end of World War II until this very moment, we’ve been told time and again to fear — and fear some more. Fear the communists in Korea and Vietnam. Fear Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Fear Russia and its Hitleresque leader, Vladimir Putin. Fear China and its growing authoritarian power. Closer to home, we’re even now regularly told to fear our neighbors, MAGA or “woke,” depending on your “blue” or “red” team allegiance.
In truth, though, fear is the true darkness. You shouldn’t have to be a Jedi master to know that wars not make one great, that the darkness of fear (and arming ourselves against it) is a path to hell, and that people could indeed live together without eternally slaughtering one another. Those, then, would be my three maxims for a newly progressive Pentagon.
To echo the words of Steven Tyler of Aerosmith: Dream until your dreams come true.
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https://www.salon.com/2023/09/23/think-this-summer-was-bad-it-might-be-the-best-one-you-and-i-will-ever-see/
Think this summer was bad? It might be the best one you and I will ever see
The calamitous summer of 2023 was an oasis of tranquility, compared to what's coming
This year we saw the hottest July ever recorded, and the same was true again in August. In fact, 2023 is on track to be the hottest year so far recorded, breaking the record set by 2020 and 2016. Over the past few months, more than 6,500 daily heat records have been broken in the U.S. alone, and in some places the roads became so hot that people suffered serious burns from falling on them. Terrible floods have ripped through China, Spain, Greece and elsewhere. Wildfires raged in Canada, the Canary Islands, Maui and parts of Europe. A tropical storm hit Los Angeles, the first in living memory. Wind speeds of Hurricane Lee, in the Atlantic Ocean, increased from 80 mph to 165 mph in roughly 24 hours.
The climate catastrophe is already here. We've been watching it unfold in real time on the news and over social media. Some have witnessed it first-hand, losing their homes, being forced to evacuate under emergency conditions and even losing their lives or the lives of friends and family. For those sensitive to human suffering and the grave injustices driving the climate crisis, this summer has been difficult to deal with. It's been one extreme weather event, one shattered record, one shocking tragedy after another — and though the summer is now officially over, there's more to come.
Much more to come. The disturbing fact that puts everything in perspective is that this summer will likely be among the mildest summers that you and I will experience for the rest of our lives. The extreme meteorological events of 2023 will be among the least disruptive that humanity encounters from here on out. Or to paraphrase the environmental philosopher Yogi Hendlin, the hottest summer so far on record will be one of the coolest and most stable of all the summers between now and the end of this century.
In a few decades, we'll look back on 2023 as the calm before the storm, when life was still fairly normal. Our children may even remember this year with nostalgia, as a fading glimpse of a world they never got to know — one marked by relative stability rather than environmental chaos and catastrophic collapse. For all the horrors of this summer, we should perhaps take a moment to appreciate it, because this may be as good as it gets moving forward.
Imagine what our children will face. Scientists warn of potential "tipping points" in Earth systems, causing dramatic and irreversible shifts in the conditions of our planet. One paper warns of a sudden, catastrophic collapse of the global ecosystem, while a consensus is emerging that human actions have initiated the sixth major mass extinction event in the 3.8 billion-year history of life on Earth. Another paper published just this year estimates that 1 billion — with a "b" — people will likely die because of climate change within the next century.
As numerous commentators have noted, the headlines two, three and four decades from now will be nothing like the headlines of today. Imagine reading that "another 1 million people have died this month" because of climate catastrophes, or that "another 20 million have been forced to relocate the past year" due to extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Right now, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that "around 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced by weather-related events since 2008." Yet studies project that 2 billion — again, with a "b" — people will be displaced by the end of the century.
Imagine the social, political and economic havoc this will certainly cause. Immigration to Europe and the U.S. has already fueled the rise of xenophobic far-right movements. What happens when it's not just millions but hundreds of millions of desperate refugees trying to cross state borders? What happens when countries begin to fight over scarce resources? What happens when deep fakes generated by AI spread disinformation about real-time disasters, and social media websites like X allow propaganda about the nature and causes of the climate crisis to proliferate? What happens when humanity finds itself in an existential calamity but is unable to agree on the most basic facts about reality?
Are we ready for this? Is anyone prepared for what's coming? If you're my age — in your 40s — is there any hope of a peaceful retirement? The question strikes with even greater force when asked about our children. A child born today will turn 65 in 2088, at which point hundreds of millions of people will have already died prematurely because of climate change. If that child is one of the lucky few born to wealthy parents in an affluent country and avoids such a fate, they'll still have to endure the psychological trauma of reading the news every day. What kind of life will that be? What will these generations have to look forward to by the time they reach their 40s, to say nothing of their 60s, 70s or 80s?
Some people I speak with tell me that "humanity" deserves what's coming because of its profoundly irresponsible, destructive actions. We've razed forests, poisoned the oceans and polluted the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. We've decimated ecosystems, annihilated habitats and pushed many species to the brink of extinction — or beyond. We've trashed this little oasis in space as if there's some Planet B waiting for us when Earth is no longer habitable.
But who is this "we"? Children don't deserve to suffer for the foolish behavior of their forebears. Justice isn't served if one generation gets punished for the actions of another. Furthermore, studies show that the socioeconomic elite are disproportionately responsible for the climate crisis. In the U.S., the richest 10% produce 40% of the country's global warming pollution. Another study concluded that "a billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gasses than the average person."
There is no sense, then, in which "humanity" deserves to suffer — indeed, the study mentioned above notes that many of the 1 billion deaths expected to occur because of climate change this century will happen in the Global South, which has contributed to the climate catastrophe far less than the major industrial nations of the Northern Hemisphere.
The injustice of this situation is spectacular. It's a crime against humanity — a crime against the future of humanity. Yet by the time children born today are my age, the main culprits of the 20th and early 21st centuries will likely be gone (unless they've chosen to be cryogenically preserved after death, in which case perhaps they can be revived and prosecuted). The catastrophe of climate change isn't just physical, it's moral. And there's nothing much you or I can do about it: We are essentially passive spectators in a world system run by avaricious sociopaths who have consistently chosen to ignore the warnings of climate scientists over the past three decades or more.
This, right now, may be the most tranquil year of our lives moving forward. It doesn't get any better than this, because it can only get worse from here on out. The heat records set this year will soon be broken, and those records will be broken soon after that. For the rest of our lives, we are likely to see each new year break previous records. That's what we have to look forward to.
If you and I live long enough, we may witness 2 billion people displaced by climate change and another 1 billion or more die prematurely from causes related to global warming. If you and I don't live that long, our children will be forced to witness these horrors unfold, while quietly — or perhaps loudly — cursing the generations that came before and let it all happen through denial and indifference.
So, despite the traumas of 2023, it's worth reminding ourselves just how good this year has been, at least when compared to what's coming.
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https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/us-debt-interest-payments-federal-budget-deficit-social-security-medicare-2023-9
US debt interest payments are unsustainable and flash 'huge warning signs' as they take over federal spending, budget expert warns
The trajectory of US debt interest payments is not sustainable, Maya MacGuineas told Insider.
Interest will eclipse defense spending in four years, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president said.
By 2051, interest payments will be the single largest federal expenditure, topping Social Security.
US debt this past week hit an all-time high of $33 trillion amid a ballooning federal deficit and a massive wave of Treasury bills.
To be sure, rising debt in itself is not automatically cause for concern, as it's uncommon for nations to completely pay down large balances. Instead, a more meaningful gauge may be the ability to keep up with debt-service payments.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNBC on Monday the metric she looks at most often to judge US fiscal health is net interest as a share of GDP.
That ratio currently sits around 1%, but the Congressional Budget Office expects interest payments to make up 6.7% of GDP by 2053. By that measure, US debt interest payments will become the single biggest federal expenditure by 2051, when it eclipses Social Security.
"So clearly not sustainable," Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told Insider. "The way one evaluates that is: if your debt is growing faster than your economy, which ours is, and if your interest payments are going faster than — take any indication, whether it's your economy, income, a variety of things — those are all huge warning signs. All of them are going off right now."
In fact, CBO estimates that US debt as a share of GDP will set a new record this decade, climbing from about 100% now to 107% in 2029 and topping the 1946 peak of 106%. And it's on track to hit 181% by 2053.
The US still boasts the most liquid bond market in the world and can sell fresh debt to investors as needed.
But the problem is that debt payments must come before anything else when the government makes budgetary decisions, MacGuineas said. Failure to pay would risk the US defaulting, as almost happened in June.
At today's level, interest payments already outpace federal spending on youth education, and in four years, it will top defense spending.
"It gets a lot of attention from members of Congress when they learn that," she added. "Pretty serious warning signal."
If CBO estimates are correct, it's not just that federal programs will get crowded out, she added. It would mean a stagnant economy, and a weakened ability to invest in things like national security.
Wall Street has started to sound the alarm too. Recently, leading bond commentators have warned that interest rates will have to keep rising so that the Treasury keeps attracting enough money to service the growing debt. This will only aggravate borrowing costs.
To lower the debt, tax hikes on both wealthy and middle-income Americans have to occur, MacGuineas said. Meanwhile, spending cuts must also be implemented, including on defense and social entitlements, if necessary.
"We know how to do that. There are many sensible plans out there," she said. "We don't have the political will. And in this hyper-partisan environment, politicians are busily promising that they won't do all the things that are exactly what we need to do."
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-late-graeme-macqueen-and-911-in-his-own-words/5831414
The Late Graeme MacQueen and 9/11: In his Own Words.
“The American people are willing to fight wars if their blood is out. If their blood is boiling hot. Well, what is it that triggers that phase change?” – Graeme MacQueen, from the film Peace, War and 9/11 [1]
LISTEN TO THE SHOW ( llisten to one hour audio at article address )
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
On October 1, 2001, days prior to launching an attack on Afghanistan as an act of “self-defence,” the Tanzanian-Canadian feminist sociologist, academic and activist Sunera Thobani, said the following at the “Women’s Resistance: From Victimization to Criminalization” conference in Ottawa…
“We feel the pain of those attacks every day; we have been watching it replayed constantly on television. But do we feel any pain for the victims of U.S. aggression? Two hundred thousand people were killed in the initial war on Iraq. That bombing of Iraq has continued for 10 years now. Do we feel the pain of all the children in Iraq who are dying from the sanctions that were imposed by the United States? … Do we feel the pain of Palestinians who now for 50 years have been living in refugee camps? U.S. foreign policy is soaked in blood. And other countries of the West including “shamefully” Canada, cannot line up fast enough behind it. All want to sign up now as Americans and I think it is the responsibility of the women’s movement in this country to stop that, to fight against it.” [2]
Ms Thobani, an Associate Professor and once the president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) took a great deal of heat for blaming the resulting violence of September 11 on U.S. foreign policy! How DARE she try to find an explanation for what might motivate these horrendous attacks!
These are sensible comments, especially when Operation Enduring Freedom and the War on Terrorism cannot be acceptably challenged. Yet she was condemned by Prime Minister Chretien, had received death threats, and been the target of petitions trying to get her fired. [3][4]
Such was the frenzy the massive attacks generated. And as this website has been trying to communicate for now nearly 22 years, there are problems with the official story of the 9/11 attacks that suggest it was far worse than the news suggested. That there was, at the very least, FULL FOREKNOWLEDGE of the event!
While not exactly the first person out of the gate to expose these horrific discoveries, Graeme MacQueen, an academic who would rise to a position of prominence within the 9/11 truth movement would not only cast his gaze on some of the most profound discoveries, but would network and organize in his request to get to the heart of what 9/11 and the war on terrorism was really all about.
Graeme MacQueen’s Legacy Will Live
We reported on his passing in late April and featured a number of prominent figures paying their last respects to the man’s solid research.
This week, as our anniversary tribute to 9/11, we present excerpts of speeches and interviews we shared in previous years on the Global Research News Hour.
In addition, we also present a NEW interview with his fellow 9/11 Researcher Ted Walter about the film Graeme contributed to that will be screening for the first time on September 6 in Hamilton (hosted by the Hamilton Coalition to stop the War) before it is released on YouTube on September 11.
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