[Peace-discuss] (no subject)

[Morton K. Brussel]

And while the article below warns us about the military and its  
budget, that doesn't include the budgetand perniciousness of our  
government contractors… There's another article about that on  
Commondreams.com by Jesse Jackson (of all people).


Published on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 by the News-Journal (Florida)
Armed to the Teeth, America Marches Toward Military State
by Pierre Tristam

President Bush's 2008 budget includes a $625 billion request for the  
military, up from $295 billion the year Bush was elected -- a 112  
percent increase. Its about $100 billion more than all other military  
budgets in the world, combined. Plenty of attention is being paid the  
exhausted military fighting Bush's various wars. There's no denying  
it. It's overstretched and undermanned. It makes you think the  
Pentagon needs more money, not less.

But little attention is paid the flip-side of that story -- the  
squandering of money on defense contractors' swindles, whether it's  
the superfluous $66 billion F-22 fighter jet program -- one of three  
jet fighters in development -- or the $9 billion-a-year missile  
shield, which, one test aside, hasn't gotten much past its middle  
school science project concept since Ronald Reagan fancied it a  
quarter century and $160 billion ago.

The military is strapped by its own doing. Lawmakers are complicit.  
Job-producing military contracts are seeded throughout the land's  
congressional districts like above-board bribes.

But lawmakers couldn't get away with it if the military weren't the  
subject of a misplaced, ill-informed and dangerous public infatuation  
that's been changing American society for the worse since the early  
1980s -- the period when Reagan built up the military into the creepy  
colossus it's been since. As Andrew Bacevich, author of "The New  
American Militarism," wrote, "The ensuing affair had and continues to  
have a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued in utter  
disregard of any consequences that might ensue. Few in power have  
openly considered whether valuing military power for its own sake or  
cultivating permanent global military superiority might be at odds  
with American principles."

Misuse of the military abroad and its escalating burdens on taxpayers  
are well documented. The consequences of the infatuation on civilian  
society are documented less well, because the effects are more subtle  
than convoys of tanks down Main Street. The consequences are more  
diffuse, more pernicious. There is, for example, the increasing role  
the military is playing in domestic life, secretly and not-so  
secretly, crumbling almost a century and a half old prohibition  
against military meddling in civilian business.

Five years ago the Pentagon established a "Northern Command" over the  
United States, the first time such a command was based on the  
mainland, ostensibly to coordinate responses to terrorist attacks.  
The Pentagon is actively engaged in domestic intelligence gathering,  
something that would have been thought outright illegal a generation  
ago. In December, the president signed a law that gave him the  
authority to declare martial law virtually at will.

Militarization is happening in more direct ways. Last week, the  
Associated Press circulated a story about the Pentagon selling  
surplus hardware to police agencies. The story projected a happy,  
fortunate circumstance. The tone was approving. The suggestion  
rewarding.

A picture featured a young police officer called Shane Grammer  
holding up a massive M-16 rifle with at least two scopes and a  
muffler-size barrel, a Chevrolet Blazer behind him, also military  
surplus, cluttered up with soldiers' helmets, camouflage and gear.  
The officer was a member of the Litchfield, Pa., Police Department.  
Litchfield is a minuscule township of 500 families. Who does Officer  
Grammer intend to use his M-16 against?

The difference between police agencies and military units is becoming  
difficult to distinguish. They love their helicopters, they love  
their night raids, their SWAT teams, their chases, their drawn guns.

We often hear about how "attitude" is in itself a trigger of violence  
among gang members. What we don't often hear about, but endure,  
because the media are too busy writing cute features about military  
surplus property in the hands of local police agencies, is the same  
attitude from police -- the very same approach: Look at an officer  
the wrong way and you might be in jail before the rooster crows once.  
All of that military hardware brings with it an attitude all its own,  
a sense of power and presumption that has to be exercised. At this  
rate, a police state would be a blessing. What we're heading toward  
is a military state, perpetually at war abroad, but also perpetually  
mobilized at home down to the tiniest mom-and-pop police agency.  
Uniforms are the new cult, force the presumed solution to order's  
challengers. The law can wait.

When a society is no longer exclusively and vigilantly civil, its  
claim to be a civilized society, let alone a civilizing one, is in  
peril. Other countries have been discovering that about the United  
States. We're discovering it at home, too, every time a police shield  
is flashed with the presumptive power of an M-16 burst.

Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at  
ptristam at att.net or through his personal Web site at  
www.pierretristam.com.


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