9-11 & military spending

Obama, War Crimes, and the Holy Right to Punish

There should be a strategy already mapped out for this - we see it everyday.  Those who are doing bad things either say that "I'm just following orders" [from whom?], or  "the Devil made me do it," or in the case of national politics, "the Party (or AIPAC, ALEC, etc.) made me do it."   

What is Obama's excuse?   That Harvard (or Pepperdine) made me do it?   But Kerry went to Yale (maybe Harvard law afterwards?)  Why is he saying the same bad things - total non-sequiturs, total petitio princippi's?  

They just assume that because they say they have "evidence" that Assad is "killing his own people" - that favorite line of GW Bush, that's a good reason to launch another "pre-emptive strike" on a country that is both  civilized and rational, as its leader proved in his recent interview on Charlie Rose (a truly courageous act, backed by  both CBS and PBS, to their credit).  We don't have to see the evidence.  It's a children's game of "hide the button" or "Truth or Dare."   Just say it.  If you  don't believe them, you can be locked up or assassinated.  If you're not with them, you're against them.  We heard it  all  from Bush, and the press laughed, and said "We'll get a Democrat next  time."  And so they did.  And he is going to do everything that  Bush did, and more.  It's all about ego and "not backing down."  We keep hearing that.  

All the evidence indicates that Syria's only interest in "weapons of mass destruction" is to have a deterrent against Israeli-Saudi aggression.  As Assad pointed out, Israel already occupies Syrian territory, and has  done so illegally since 1967. Since Israel refuses to acknowledge it has nuclear weapons (illegally), Syria should have the same rights to keep its arsenals secret.  

And Israel has launched several unprovoked attacks on Syria in recent years, allegedly as part of the "war on terror" or against the Muslim fundamentalists (Jihadists) who are actively attacking both Israel and the secular government of Syria (Assad).  Because of a really "unholy" secret alliance between (nuclear-armed) Israel and Saudis (and of course the Bush family and various NeoCons like Richard Perle), all fueled by oil and the "merchants of death," the "Assad regime" has been targeted for destruction - not because it  is "anti-western" or "backward," but precisely  because  it is a progressive, secular society unlike the rest of the Middle East.  

The weapons merchants (of which  Israel is now a leading player) need a war every year or two in order to promote sales and the necessity for "upgrades" and "improvements" - "more bang for the buck," along with "new missions" (like anti-genocide, protecting women and other human rights),  mostly just to keep "the war on terror" simmering.  These, it is thought, will be more palatable to the voters.  

Well, guess what?  The voters are sick and tired of it, and the Zionist  puppet, Obama, can no longer get away with it.  He is sealing his own doom with this fanatical insistence that it is his "right" to attack anyone anytime he pleases, no matter what Congress says.  If you're not outraged by that, what more can I say?

The sarin gas precursors have been documented to have been sold to Syria by British firms - they did it openly and legally, so the burden is now on the Foreign Office or whatever for approving it.  That's no doubt one big reason why Britain bailed out of the attack plans.  Do Obama and Kerry know this?  If so, they are certainly keeping quiet about it. 

 http://www.popularresistance.org/revealed-britain-sold-nerve-gas-chemicals-to-syria-10-months-after-war-began/

(For references and sources, see a 3-part article in Counterpunch which deconstructs and refutes every step of the Obama-Kerry case for war.) 

<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/09/flooding-the-zone-with-bullshit-on-syria/>

<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/11/syria-immodest-proposals-naked-emperors/>

We don't know if any sarin was produced by the Syrian government.  It is easy to produce anywhere.  And we certainly don't know if  it was the official Syrian government or military authorities who used it.  All the evidence seems to indicate it was brought in from elsewhere - by Israeli- or Saudi-financed elements, including Al Qaeda-like groups.  Gadaffi said  the same thing in Libya - it was Al Qaeda allies which NATO was supporting in overthrowing his government - after he had paid reparations for the Pan Am bombing  and other things which weren't his fault. Instead, he was being punished for his Marxism and support of African revolutions.  

We have a real test here of AIPAC,  ALEC, and the other big war and weapons lobbies.  Can they actually force our leaders to engage in a war which is no different from the original Gulf War, Afghanistan, and the subsequent "War on Terror"?   All were "manufactured" for the benefit of the multinational oil companies and the "defense" industry whose only mission, these days, is to expend as much ordinance as possible in some whitewashed way like "stopping genocide" or "defending human rights."   

It was the women's vote that got us into a war against the Taliban (religious teachers) in Afghanistan - the same people who were our allies in fighting the Russians, and whom we abandoned to Osama bin Laden when the Cold War ended.  Now, they are joined by the Black vote, the Veteran's vote, the Blue Dogs, and everyone else who thinks that "war is good for business" and "the economy".  

Here in Great Falls,  we  are told over and over, again, that Malmstrom (perhaps  including  the National Guard and pensions, Vet's health care, etc., but  they don't say that) constitutes "46% of the local economy."   Even if all those things are included (and many of them would continue if Malmstrom were closed), it's  probably not even 20% of the "local economy" - whether considered as Cascade County, where most of the money is spent, or the whole of Montana, most of which gets no military spending whatsoever (beyond pensions and Vet's programs).  The federal  budget is about 25% of GDP (the national  economy).   The military is about a third of that, including  pensions. interest on the debt, Vet's benefits, etc.  So, nationally, we spend about 8% of GDP (this is higher than the figure usually given)  on the military.  

Why is Great Falls any different?  I suspect that  Peter Johnson's $200 million figure (see below) would be about 8% of "the local economy" (Cascade County).  There are 4500 military people (active and reserve) getting checks in Cascade County, and another 3-400 civilians.  The active duty soldiers are counted as "jobs" - clearly a mis-representation.  And there are those  whose jobs in bars, car dealers, construction, etc. are dependent on military customers (estimated to be 5% of local business in these areas).   Do we count students, prisoners, or other institutional clients as "jobs"?  No.  If  we had  a draft and a real "service" instead of mercenary army, we wouldn't even think of calling them "jobs."  

How far do we take this?  The so-called "multiplier" effect counts such spending several times over.  They never mention that the same jobs and income would be doing something else if the base weren't  here.  The important thing is whether or not we are actually benefitting from this spending, which in most cases is clearly not the case.  It's called "the marginal efficiency of capital."  Does an investment bear a return, or does it merely entail more taxes, more remedial expenditures, and more destruction?  Clearly, the MEC of a nuclear arsenal is profoundly negative.  Indeed, it might cause the very end of human civilization, never mind the local economy.  

Peter Johnson, the veteran Trib reporter who covered military affairs for 20+ years, puts the direct economic impact figure at $200 million.  That sounds about right.  We know what the Minuteman program has cost the taxpayers over the past 50 years (at least $80 billion), and how much of that was spent in Montana.  Very little, and no mention is ever made of "opportunity costs"  - there are thousands of ways the same money could be spent with much better returns, whether public or private. 

Congress guarantees that every state will have a major military facility.  Ours is Malmstrom.   And it would continue as large or larger without the Minuteman nuclear strategic missile mission.  

We have open air space for training.  We  have vast landscapes in which any kind of troops could train.  About the only thing we don't have is an ocean.  So, there's no reason that we can't have just as many troops and federal dollars here doing something else.  Except that it's the nukes that people here actually want (or fear or are addicted to).  They're power-mad.  They actually enjoy having the capacity to destroy human civilization.   And one of these days, they'll do it, if the ability to do so is not removed from here (and everywhere).  

That's the simple answer to 9-11.  It's our own  fault.  It's the chickens coming home to roost, just like Ward Churchill and a number of others clearly said.  It's a whole part of the world which has suffered and died at the hands of oil imperialists and the war profiteers.  If we didn't trade them weapons, we couldn't get any Middle Eastern oil.  We don't  have the money.  So we  basically force them into wars by arming both sides, and then provoking them to attack each other.  

A few, who were once our friends and allies (like Osama bin Laden) finally had enough.  With the CIA's help, they trained and carried out 9-11, hoping it would bring us to our senses.  But no.  We're still blaming the wrong people for the wrong reasons. 



Note:  See my essay from last year, in which I made Churchill  a general in the Royal Waldegren Navy.
http://paul-stephens.blogspot.com/2012/06/waldegren-ward-churchill-and-julian.html

Why military spending is a black hole

Military Keynesianism's Reductio Ad Absurdum

The bizarre reasoning behind vast and wasteful military spending - the F-35 program (which keeps getting cut back, and might finally be eliminated), and NPR's report last week on the politics of Egyptian military "aid."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/08/209878158/egypt-may-not-need-fighter-jets-but-u-s-keeps-sending-them-anyway

Egypt  has been supplied with about 1000 front-line Abrams tanks, and more are being shipped every year, kept crated in warehouses, because there is no use for them.  F-16's, no longer considered "modern" enough for the US Air Force, are still being manufactured for the "foreign aid market", as well as those countries paying for them with oil or other resources, and Egypt gets a lot of them,  giving them one of the largest Air Forces in the Middle East.  

"The U.S. started sending M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt in the late '80s. In all, the U.S. sent more than 1,000 tanks to Egypt since then — valued at some $3.9 billion — which Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks.

"There's no conceivable scenario in which they'd need all those tanks short of an alien invasion," Shana Marshall of the Institute of Middle East Studies at George Washington University, told me.

A thousand tanks would be helpful for large land battles, but not for the threats facing Egypt today, such as terrorism and border security in the Sinai Peninsula, according to Robert Springborg, an expert on the Egyptian military at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. In fact, he said, at least 200 of the tanks the U.S. has sent to Egypt have never been used.

"They are crated up and then they sit in deep storage, and that's where they remain," he told me."

"The story with F-16 fighter jets is similar. Since 1980, we've sent Egypt 221 fighter jets, valued at $8 billion. "Our American military advisers in Cairo have for many years been advising against further acquisitions of F-16s," Springborg said. Egypt already has more F-16s than it needs, he said.

I asked the State Department why the U.S. is giving Egypt weapons against the advice of its own military personnel. (The State Department, along with Congress, gives final approval on the weapons we send to Egypt.) Regarding those unused tanks, an official told me via email, it's not usual for a country to "maintain a portion of its equipment in reserve in the event of security contingencies." The U.S. decides which weapons to send to countries like Egypt "in consultation with our partners' own determination of their strategic and force structure requirements," the email added."

This is the legacy of Carter's Camp David, which increased military aid to both Israel and Egypt, hoping they would henceforth peaceably co-exist and oppose the Muslim fundamentalists who wanted to removed "the Zionist Entity" from Palestine.  

Several billion dollars a year is spent on weapons for these two largest recipients of American "aid" - all American weapons, of course, and these programs have political constituencies in every state and Congressional District so that the money keeps being spent, regardless of the actions or intentions of the regimes receiving them.  

The victory of the  Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt overthrowing the Mubarek dictatorship more or less marked the end of this program, except that the weapons are still going to the two countries, requiring a counter-coup by a military government which will continue to "play  ball" with the Americans and Zionists.  So, not only are these weapons unnecessary, unwanted, and dangerous to America's goals of peace in the Middle East.  They are immune from any budget cuts which support them - for exactly the same reasons that Malmstrom's 50-year-old Minuteman strategic nuclear missile "deterrent" is "safe" from budget cuts.  Because each District, Senator, and Representative is abolutely held at gunpoint by local business interests like our "military affairs committee" to keep wasting money on war and destruction, or the "deterrence" thereto - a deterrence, incidentally, which no one believes in or can explain and justify under any sort of cross-examination. 

Such are the "long-term objectives" of the war mongers and profiteers.  Naomi Klein had it right.  Disaster Capitalism - destroy and build again, making profits every step of the way..

And it's like that "by proxy" syndrome among doctors - they  cause illnesses so they can feel good about curing them (and demand more outrageous payments from "insurance" or whatever).  

Then there's simple bellicosity - these guys like to fight and destroy.  Sort of like the caricatures of the Vikings, but most cultures had them.  We'd now call them "sociopaths", although some would never hurt a fly outside of the battlefield.  Yet, even the worst wars a century ago were wholesome in comparison to the wholesale mindless slaughter of civilians with carpet-bombing, white phosphorus, Hellfire drones,  DU shells, and countless other weapons regularly deployed by we "leaders of the civilized world,"  all the while threatening a nuclear holocaust if anyone objects or wishes to deny our hegemony over their lives and resources.  

Pretty good racket.  One thing I learned of great importance from Shirer's work on the Third Reich was that the Nazis modeled their organization on the Prohibition Era American gangsters - especially Chicago, with a large German population.  Since Shirer was himself part of that, he understood the Nazis and the logic of their actions probably better than anyone else, German or American.  

Now, NATO has taken up where the Nazis left off.  Instead of being a defensive alliance against the supposed threats from "the Evil Empire" Soviet Union (which no longer exists), they have decided to adopt the Ostpolitik of Hitler, not Willie Brandt.  Its goal is to once again establish Full Spectrum Dominance over everything, and what will be the outcome?  Why, World War III, of course, but it's their own fault if they don't surrender first, right?  

Whatever happened to the Fulbright's, the Dulles's, the Kissinger's, and others who got away with all this stuff?  Well, they didn't flaunt it.  They didn't keep outraging world opinion by wantonly slaughtering innocent people.  That only works with the most brutalized and irrational people - like the American voters, maybe. 

We need to  reset.  Start over.  Dissolve the Federal Government and whatever states are dependent on it.  If we want a new federation of sane, peaceful, civilized countries, we can "unite" whatever states want to join whatever federations.  But we've got to "de-Nazify" our government and leaders, first.  And remove the sociopaths from power - those  who think nothing of killing thousands or millions of people for money, or simply because they are "different", branded as "militants" or "Jihadists."  

Some of our leaders are merely political cowards, and claim that "they (lobbyists, AIPAC, etc.) made me do it."  Obama may be in that category.  But God doesn't take excuses.   If what you are doing fundamentally violates the most sacred laws of God and Man, you will be punished, along with your family and country.  Please don't condemn us to any more Hells on Earth, Mr. President...