(cont'd from above) [JVB] What do you do now? [SG] I have been working in the non-profit sector, mostly on liberal political and social justice issues. Right now, I am the field organizer for an environmental group concerned about nuclear energy risks. I should say that I am not a liberal. I find most liberals to be conservatives who want to be forgiven. [JVB] How do you feel about those years in the military? How do you feel about the military now? [SG] I've written quite a bit about how I felt about various aspects of my military life. There's no one monolithic impression. Parts of it I liked very much. The travel. The economic security. The exposure to other cultures. The highly physical nature of the life. Other aspects of it I hated. Bureaucratism. Institutionalized stupidity. The hegemonic sexism and homophobia. I don't regard military people as any more or less culpable for what they are sent to do, however, than anyone else. Lots of people like to stereotype the military, like to sit up on whatever privileged hilltop they can perch on and cast little stones of sanctimony at the military. These are people who say we live in a system, but they don't really believe it. In their most secret hearts, they've bought the whole bourgeois narrative about personal responsibility, individualism, the history of kings and generals, all of it. Now once someone understands the nature of that system, and they are in the military, well, then you've got a genuine role conflict. And that's my issue with the U.S. military. It is an instrument not of defense, but of control and plunder of peripheral peoples. [JVB] What do you think about Bush's build-up of the military? [SG] Bush is making more politically fatal mistakes than I can count these days. His so-called build-up of the military is one of them. He is not in fact building up the military, depending on how you define that. He is building up the weapons industry, at the behest of his mad military advisor, Donald Rumsfeld - a weird man who has convinced himself without a shred of evidence to support it, that he is a military genius. Rumsfeld has convinced himself that technology can replace human leadership and ingenuity on the battlefield, so he is prevailing on his intellectually challenged boss to buy lots of expensive toys. I write at length about this Rumsfeld Doctrine in "Full Spectrum Disorder," the book that's coming out in December from Soft Skull Press. This whole trend is being reinforced within the administration by his coterie of neo-con economists who think they can replicate the Reagan era recovery through military Keynesianism. Like I said, the sum of these errors will be far greater than their parts. Unfortunately, other people will pay with treasure and blood, and the whole clique will retire in comfort to write their bullshit memoirs and give lectures. The military itself, if you look at the humans who populate it, is undergoing the same kind of attacks on its living standards as the whole rest of the American working class, in order to pay for Rumsfeldâs killer drones and super-subs. [JVB] What do you think about him reducing veteran benefits? What do you think about his giving tax cuts to the rich while reducing vet benefits? [SG] I think it will bite him in the ass at the end of the day. The problem is, they have to cut. They are trapped on the runaway train of their own economic nostrums, their own overwhelming rich-white-boy hubris, and a very real, very deep crisis of capitalism itself. In response to a column I wrote recently taking Dubya to task for his inane 'bring 'em on' comment, I was flooded with supportive emails from pissed off vets and military families. They were all talking not only about the hypocrisy of this faux-cowboy preppy daring people to attack soldiers while he sat in the air conditioned White House, they expressed a profound sense of betrayal at benefits cuts, for active duty people and veterans. Bush's entire neo-con hallucination about world domination is based on the projection of military power, yet he manages to alienate the very people who will lay it all on the line. [JVB] What did you think about the invasion of Iraq? [SG] I think it has turned into a tremendous tar baby. And the more he fights this tar baby, the deeper he will become stuck in it prior to 2004. People know it had something to do with oil, but they don't understand the complexities of oil. Americans are not critical thinkers by and large. We suffer from a collective sociogenic learning disability based on the complete commodification of our consciousness by consumerism and electronic media. So we are not only bitterly unhappy and alienated, we are intensely stupid and attached to denial. So understanding what invading Iraq had to do with oil takes a little study. They didn't just go there to steal. There was a confluence of factors that were economic, strategic, and political. People like Andrew McKillop and Michael Hudson have written at length on these points. The main point is that the US economy has been converted into a credit and debt scam aimed against the rest of the world, and backed up by military force. But the scheme is falling apart as the rest of the world is losing the ability and willingness to pay. The US economy is dreadfully weak, with the real material economy now gutted by parasitic speculation, and the only source of strength left is the military, which they are now trying to use to gain control over the world's energy supply. [JVB] About the fact that we now know that Bush lied about WMD's? [SG] Every thing this administration has told the public has been a lie from the very beginning. The way you determine whether on not the Bush cabinet is lying is by whether or not their lips are moving. They started with a fraudulent election, consolidated by a right-wing judicial fiat. They had planned the invasion of Afghanistan as a first step for developing a standing military presence in the region the summer prior to 9/11. They'd even informed the Pakistanis of their intention to invade in October. Then the 9/11 hijackers fly in like a scourge against the nation, but like Santa Claus for the Bush's neo-con clique. All the plans were put on fast forward, and the pretext was now available for advancing a very aggressive domestic agenda for the development of a police state infrastructure. September 11th was a neo-con wet dream. [JVB] What about Afghanistan? [SG] Afghanistan and now Iraq have fore-grounded the just deserts of overweening pride and plain imperial racism. They underestimated their putative enemies, failed utterly to understand the cultures they were invading, and maintained an unshakable faith in the ability of high technology to deliver stable apolitical military victories. Now they have a dual quagmire. [JVB] Bin Laden? About the fact that we didn't find him and now no one is even focused on him at all? [SG] That's because he was never the issue. Controlling the region as a way to position for economic war against Europe and China was... and is. [JVB] What about the Patriot Act? What about the Military Tribunals? The Guantanamo detainees? The "unlawful enemy combatants"? Do you think the Bush Administration is violating the Constitution? The Geneva Conventions? (Other international laws?) [SG] This is the most lawless administration in living memory, and that's a real accomplishment given the parade of arch criminals who have occupied the Executive Branch for the last 100 years. There is a wealth of material available on the net and elsewhere warning us about the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act has one major flaw. Once the decision is made to apply it generally, instead of against scapegoat populations, the U.S. government will be faced with the most heavily armed population in the world. There's a certain grim poetic justice there. The tribunals and detentions are just plain exercises of impunity against every internationally recognized standard of legal practice in the world. This is also well known. The Geneva Conventions forbid unilateral invasions in the absence of a real and immediate threat. Period. It's unequivocal. People say we should be cautious with the term fascism. I agree. We are now faced with a wannabe fascist administration. They would do well to recount how Mussolini ended up. [JVB] How do you feel about Bush's war on terror? [SG] Bill Blum once said that the difference between a terrorist and a superpower is that the latter has an Air Force. This whole slogan, 'war on terror', is used to tar any government that fails to comply with the U.S. diktat. They actually allege that Cuba sponsors terrorism. That's preposterous, and everyone damn well knows it. (cont'd)
(cont'd from above) [JVB] You're aware of the allegations that Bush went AWOL while he was enlisted? [SG] I've read them. [JVB] What do you think of that? [SG] I don't really care. I sort of avoid that whole chicken-hawk thing, even though it has wide appeal. It's pretty gendered, for one, and it tacitly endorses an ideology of militarism. What Bush is doing would be wrong and stupid even if he had a chest full of combat ribbons to rival Smedley Butler. That doesn't mean I won't out him when he sits in D.C. and says shit like "Bring 'em on." [JVB] Do you think this war is race-based? [SG] Politics is economics by other means, and war is politics by other means. Let's get this straight right now. Our entire system was constructed from day one on the subjugation, exploitation, or extermination of whole peoples. There has to be a cover story about that kind of practice, a justification. Racism provides that justification. Frontal racism, like slavery and Jim Crow, and implicit racism like 'white man's burden' and 'exporting democracy.' In that sense, not only this war, but this entire society is race-based. [JVB] Is there is anything you would like to add? [SG] Just that we need to bring all the US troops home immediately, and allow the Afghans and Iraqis to determine their own futures. And that we need to try in every way possible to politically destroy the Bush government. They are both stupid and reckless, and that is a dangerous combination. -------- Source of article: http://truthout.org/docs_03/073103A.shtml
Thanks for a great read bung. Here are some key exerts: " ....If I have a main message, it's that I'm from inside the military system, and now I am from inside the political left, and I want to build a bridge between the left and the military. Not militarism, but the people in the military..... [SG] Well, there was a common denominator that it took me a couple of decades to figure out. We were engaged in conflicts against poor people. I didnât realize it at the time â Haiti was the watershed actually â but this is the military role in an imperial state. While the national chambers of commerce in these places, with their eager compradors, assisted US corporations to drain the value out of these countries, the militaryâs job, often through the surrogate militaries of the host nation as we called it, is to stand guard against all those masses of people in the host nation from whom the value was being drained in labor and resources. If you steal enough from people, they hit a point where they become rebellious, and to continue stealing, you have to use people with guns.... So understanding what invading Iraq had to do with oil takes a little study. They didn't just go there to steal. There was a confluence of factors that were economic, strategic, and political. People like Andrew McKillop and Michael Hudson have written at length on these points. The main point is that the US economy has been converted into a credit and debt scam aimed against the rest of the world, and backed up by military force. But the scheme is falling apart as the rest of the world is losing the ability and willingness to pay. The US economy is dreadfully weak, with the real material economy now gutted by parasitic speculation, and the only source of strength left is the military, which they are now trying to use to gain control over the world's energy supply. [JVB] About the fact that we now know that Bush lied about WMD's? [SG] Every thing this administration has told the public has been a lie from the very beginning. The way you determine whether on not the Bush cabinet is lying is by whether or not their lips are moving. They started with a fraudulent election, consolidated by a right-wing judicial fiat. They had planned the invasion of Afghanistan as a first step for developing a standing military presence in the region the summer prior to 9/11. They'd even informed the Pakistanis of their intention to invade in October. Then the 9/11 hijackers fly in like a scourge against the nation, but like Santa Claus for the Bush's neo-con clique. All the plans were put on fast forward, and the pretext was now available for advancing a very aggressive domestic agenda for the development of a police state infrastructure. September 11th was a neo-con wet dream. [JVB] What about Afghanistan? [SG] Afghanistan and now Iraq have fore-grounded the just deserts of overweening pride and plain imperial racism. They underestimated their putative enemies, failed utterly to understand the cultures they were invading, and maintained an unshakable faith in the ability of high technology to deliver stable apolitical military victories. Now they have a dual quagmire. [JVB] Bin Laden? About the fact that we didn't find him and now no one is even focused on him at all? [SG] That's because he was never the issue. Controlling the region as a way to position for economic war against Europe and China was... and is.....
Yeah, thanks for the analysis from a high school grad who rose all the way to be a sargeant in the army before he got kicked out and now is some sort of low rent Ed Asner. I'm sure he is in a position to have much better information and strategic worldview than losers like Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Hey, power to the people. Bung, to paraphrase, you are too smart for this type of stuff.
Without a doubt he has better insight. Bush, Powell Cheney and Rumsfeld will look even dumber than LB Johnson and MacNamara (sp?) in the light of history.
Lodging a 3rd party protest vote isn't really my style. While the Libertarians do come closest to my beliefs, I cite the example of the 2000 presidential election. A significant percentage of American hippies found the Al Gore wasn't tree-hugging collectivist enough for them, so they voted for Nader instead. Had they just voted for Gore, he'd be president right now. If we had the European Parliamentary system, where earning just 1 or 2% of the votes is enough to get a measurable share of power, I'd almost certainly vote Libertarian every time.
Empire of Novices The Bush "dream team" is making the impetuous Clinton look like Rommel. By MAUREEN DOWD - NY Times WASHINGTON - The Bush foreign policy team always had contempt for Bill Clinton's herky-jerky, improvised interventions around the world. When it took control, it promised a global stewardship purring with gravity, finesse and farsightedness. But now the Bush "dream team" is making the impetuous Clinton look like Rommel. When your aim is remaking the Middle East, you don't want to get stuck making it up as you go along. Even officials with a combined century of international experience can behave with jejeunosity - if they start believing their own spin. The group that started out presuming it could shape the world is now getting shoved by the world. Our unseen tormentors are the ones who seem canny and organized, not us. As they move from killing individual U.S. soldiers and Iraqis to sabotaging power plants, burning oil pipelines, blowing up mosques, demolishing the U.N. headquarters and now hitting the Baghdad police headquarters, our enemies seem better prepared and more committed to creating chaos in Iraq - and Afghanistan - than we are to creating order. They've also proved more adept at putting together an effective coalition than the Bush team: a terrifying blend of terrorists from other countries, Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam fighters, radical Shiites and Saddam remnants, all pouring into Iraq and united by their hatred of America. If we review the Bush war council's motives for conquering Iraq, the scorecard looks grim: We wanted to get rid of Osama and Saddam and the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We didn't. They're replicating and coming at us like cockroaches. According to Newsweek, Osama is in the mountains of Afghanistan, plotting to use biological weapons against America. If all those yuppies can climb Mount Everest, at 29,000 feet, can't we pay some locals to nab Osama at 14,000 feet? Bushies thought freeing Iraq from Saddam would be the first step toward the Middle East road map for peace, as well as a guarantee of greater security for Israel. But the road map blew up, and Israel seems farther away from making peace with the Arabs than ever. The U.S. has now pathetically called on Yasir Arafat to use his power to help after pretending for more than a year that he didn't exist. Rummy wanted to exorcise the stigma of Vietnam and prove you could use a lighter, faster force. But our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan may not banish our fears of being mired in a place halfway around the world where we don't understand the language or culture, and where our stretched-thin soldiers are picked off, guerrilla-style. The neocons wanted to marginalize the wimpy U.N. by barreling past it into Iraq. Now the Bush administration is crawling back to the U.N., but other nations are suspicious of U.S. security and politics in Iraq. Dick Cheney and Rummy wanted to blow off multilateralism and snub what Bushies call "the chocolate-making countries": France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. But faced with untold billions in costs and mounting casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are beginning to see the advantages of sidekicks that know the perils of empire. The Pentagon wanted to sideline the C.I.A. and State and run the war and reconstruction itself. Now, overwhelmed, the Pentagon's special operations chiefs were reduced to screening a 1965 movie, "The Battle of Algiers," last week, as David Ignatius reported in The Washington Post, to try to learn why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers. The neocons hoped democracy in Iraq would spread like a fever in the Mideast, even among our double-dealing friends like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But after the majestic handoff of democracy to the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, it seems the puppets (now nervous about bodyguards) don't even want to work late, much less govern. As one aide told The Times, "On the Council, someone makes a suggestion, then it goes around the room, with everyone talking about it, and then by that time, it's late afternoon and time to go home." The vice president wanted to banish that old 60's feeling of moral ambivalence, of America in the wrong. Our unilateral move in Iraq, with the justifications on W.M.D. and Qaeda links to Saddam getting shakier each month, has made us more hated around the world than ever.
I agree with her perceptive and strongly reasoned column. Bush was a fool to take 9/11 seriously. A genius like Clinton would have just laughed it off while fiddling with some babe in the Oval Office (maybe even Maureen???). Koffi Annan and the UN could have handled this whole terrorism thing much better than our pathetic leaders have done. Also, they could have solved the Palestinian issue as well. No Israelis, no problemo, right? See how easy it is? I look forward to Dowd's new book, written with another big thinker, Al Franken, titled "MacArthur and Eisenhour Were Big Fat Dummies." After all, they took years to subdue and then administer Japan and Germany. And they were a lot less squeamish than we are now about dealing with people in the occupied countries who don't want to get with the program. I think the only responsible thing we could do now is to withdraw from Iraq. If we can't remake a country that was under the grip of a Stalin-like dictator for 25 years in three or four months, then we should just throw in the towel. Maybe let the French give it a shot, and get that Iraqi nuclear program back on track. Hopefully we can get some real leader like Howard Dean or John F. Kerry , who served in Vietnam I understand, in power. Then we can return to dismantling the CIA and Defense Department and put our trust in reliable security measures like the UN and international treaties. after all, the most important thing is how countries around the world feel about us.
That is about as good a rule as anyone can come up with. One possible complication is that some tax raisers have wised up and realized that telling the truth severely hurts their chances of being elected. Some like Clinton will just flat out lie, and promise a tax cut that turns into a tax increase the minute they are safely in office, or like Bush 41 cave in to pressure. I am seeing a new tactic, which is to run as a "fiscal conservative." Typically this means "big government liberal." The "fiscal conservative" part is they claim to want to eliminate the deficit, whcih of course will require some temporary "sacrifice" from those already paying the lion's share of taxes. A true "fiscal conservative" would be looking to cut spending, but these socialists in disguise will never agree to that. Instead, they are favor "investments in our people", also known as "tax and spend vote buying schemes."