[Peace-discuss] Gravel's lament: Fighting another dumb war
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Tue Dec 15 09:06:27 CST 2009
I think this is accurate & insightful. A further motive for incriminating the
military for those who supported Obama is that it tends to exculpate him.
David Green wrote:
> Greenwald understands that we're not being told the truth, but instead
> of exploring the economic/geopolitical context, he jumps to the
> conclusion that military interests are driving the war(s), rather than
> that the military is used to secure (ownership class) "civilian
> interests.." It's analogous to saying that the Israel Lobby drives U.S.
> foreign policy. I don't believe that either argument is fundamentally
> correct.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
> *To:* David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
> *Cc:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>; peace-discuss Discuss
> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> *Sent:* Mon, December 14, 2009 11:23:52 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Gravel's lament: Fighting another dumb war
>
> I think you misinterpret what G. Greenwald says, namely that not to
> disclose the reasons for war cannot be justified (by any so-called
> decent democratic government). This is what he has argued in the main
> body of the piece. Hence it is no non sequitur. ---mkb
>
> On Dec 14, 2009, at 3:26 PM, David Green wrote:
>
>> It was disconcerting and disappointing to read this conclusion to
>> Glenn Greenwald's post today. It's a complete non sequitur--nothing in
>> the article leads to this conclusion:
>>
>> But -- as former Navy Commander Jeff Huber
>> <http://zenhuber.blogspot.com/2009/11/afghanistan-hurry-up-and-screw-up.html> and former
>> Marine Scott Ritter
>> <http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/our_murderers_in_the_sky_20091210/>,
>> among others, have both recently pointed out -- Dwight Eisenhower's
>> warning has come true: the military has become its own branch of
>> government, uncontrolled by anyone and almost entirely unaccountable.
>> It virtually always gets what it wants. The stated reasons for
>> fighting in Afghanistan make so little sense that Klein is almost
>> certainly right that the real causes are undisclosed. It's extremely
>> difficult to imagine a circumstance that could justify that.
>>
>> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/14-0
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
>> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>>
>> *To:* Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu
>> <mailto:brussel at illinois.edu>>
>> *Cc:* peace-discuss Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net
>> <mailto:peace-discuss at anti-war.net>>
>> *Sent:* Mon, December 14, 2009 3:15:48 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Gravel's lament: Fighting another dumb war
>>
>> Mort--
>>
>> I think you're right to hesitate over Hedges' notion of a "dumb war."
>>
>> I recently posted the following to Doug Henwood's economists' list:
>>
>> "American planners are not idiots. (We went to school with most of
>> them.) They
>> (essentially the same people through the last two administrations,
>> except for a
>> slight neocon detour) would not have poured people and money into their
>> 21st-century Middle East wars out of pique or madness. Their plans
>> were not
>> irrational -- just vicious.. Capitalism, imperialism, and geopolitics
>> provide an
>> adequate account. And, as [another member of the listserv] pointed
>> out, they're
>> winning."
>>
>>
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>> >
>> > The war is probably not considered "dumb" by the administration—they
>> have their own interests in it different from what they proclaim at
>> West Point or from Oslo—, but it is interesting to hear from Mike
>> Gravel again in this article by Chris Hedges. --mkb
>> >
>> >
>> > Gravel's assesment: / //“Obama comes on the scene,” he [Gravel]
>> added.. “He is
>> > endorsed in the course of the campaign by some 19 generals and
>> admirals. These people had no confidence in [George W.] Bush. They
>> recognized that Bush’s unilateralism and cavalier approach to torture
>> was injurious to the American military. They gravitated towards Obama.
>> It turned his head. He thought he could be commander in chief and he
>> could, he has the intelligence,
>> > but he does not have fortitude. He lacks courage.”/
>> >
>> >
>> > Here's the whole article:
>> >
>> >
>> > Gravel’s Lament: Fighting Another Dumb War
>> >
>> > by Chris Hedges
>> >
>> > I have spent enough time inside the American military to have tasted
>> its dark
>> > brutality, frequent incompetence and profligate ability to waste
>> human lives
>> > and taxpayer dollars. The deviousness and stupidity of generals, the
>> absurdity of most war plans and the pathological addiction to
>> violence—which is the only language most who command our armed forces
>> are able to understand—make the American military the gravest threat
>> to our anemic democracy, especially as we head toward economic collapse.
>> >
>> > Barack Obama, who is as mesmerized by the red, white and blue bunting
>> draped around our vast killing machine as the press, the two main
>> political parties and our entertainment industry, will not halt our
>> doomed imperial projects or
>> > renege on the $1 trillion in defense-related spending that is
>> hollowing out the country from the inside. A plague of unchecked
>> militarism has seeped outward from the Pentagon since the end of World
>> War II and is now sucking our marrow dry. It is a familiar disease in
>> imperial empires. We are in the terminal stage. We spend more on our
>> military—half of all discretionary spending—than all of the other
>> countries on Earth combined, although we face no explicit threat.
>> >
>> > Mike Gravel, the former two-term senator from Alaska and 2008
>> presidential candidate, sat Saturday on a park bench in Lafayette Park
>> facing the White House. Gravel and I were in the park, along with Rep.
>> Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney and other anti-war
>> activists, to denounce the wars in
>> > Iraq and Afghanistan at a sparsely attended rally. [Click here
>> <http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/kucinich_nader_hedges_protest_at_the_white_house_20091213/%20>
>> > for video clips of speeches by Kucinich, Hedges and Nader.] Few
>> voices in American politics have been as consistent, as reasoned and
>> as moral as his, which is why Gravel, on a chilly December morning, is
>> in front of the White House, not inside it.
>> >
>> > “I suspect that from the get-go he had an inferiority complex with
>> respect to
>> > the military,” Gravel, who was a first lieutenant in the Army, said
>> of the president. “It is the same problem [Bill] Clinton had by not
>> serving in the military, by not having an actual experience. You don’t
>> have to go into combat, you just have to get into the military and
>> recognize at the lower reaches how incompetent the military can be. So
>> not having that experience, and only dealing with generals, who of
>> course learn to be charming—it’s the sergeants who inflict the pain—he
>> has this aura about the military. We have acculturated the nation to a
>> military culture. This is the sadness of it all because that sustains
>> the military-industrial complex.”
>> >
>> > “Obama comes on the scene,” he added. “He is endorsed in the course
>> of the campaign by some 19 generals and admirals. These people had no
>> confidence in [George W.] Bush. They recognized that Bush’s
>> unilateralism and cavalier approach to torture was injurious to the
>> American military. They gravitated towards Obama. It turned his head.
>> He thought he could be commander in chief and he could, he has the
>> intelligence, but he does not have fortitude. He lacks courage.”
>> >
>> > Time is rapidly running out. The massive bailouts, stimulus packages,
>> giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no
>> longer afford, will leave the country struggling to finance nearly $5
>> trillion in debt by 2010. This will require the United States to
>> auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the
>> oil-rich states walk away from our
>> > debt, which is inevitable, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer
>> of last
>> > resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as 2 trillion new
>> dollars in the
>> > last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it print
>> trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely
>> hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. A backlash by a
>> betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared
>> > intellectually and psychologically for collapse, will tear apart the
>> social fabric, unleash chaos and violence, and strengthen the calls
>> for more draconian measures by our security apparatus and military.
>> >
>> > Obama uses the veneer of intellectualism to promote the dirty
>> politics of Bush.. The president spoke in Oslo, when he accepted the
>> Nobel Prize, of “just
>> > war” theory, although the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not meet
>> the criteria laid down by Thomas Aquinas or traditional Catholic
>> just-war doctrine. He spoke of battling evil, dividing human reality
>> into binary poles
>> > of black and white as Bush did, without examining the evil of
>> pre-emptive war, sustained military occupation and imperialism. He
>> compared al-Qaida to Hitler, ignoring the difference between a protean
>> group of terrorists and a nation-state with the capacity to overwhelm
>> its neighbors with conventional military force. “The instruments of
>> war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,” Obama insisted in
>> Oslo. The U.S., he said, has the right to “act unilaterally if
>> necessary” and to launch wars whose purpose “extends beyond
>> self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor.”
>> Obama’s policies, despite the high-blown rhetoric, are as morally
>> bankrupt as those of his predecessor.
>> >
>> > “The first time I met him I felt there was arrogance with a touch of
>> cynicism,” Gravel said of the president. “Now the cynicism and the
>> arrogance have overwhelmed his intelligence. Like Clinton, he is into
>> power.”
>> >
>> > Gravel’s shining moment as a politician occurred in 1971 when Daniel
>> Ellsberg, a military analyst, handed the secret Pentagon Papers to The
>> New York Times. The newspaper published portions of the document,
>> which painted a
>> > picture of a failing war at odds with official pronouncements. The
>> Justice Department swiftly blocked further publication and moved to
>> punish newspaper publishers who revealed its contents. Gravel
>> responded by reading large portions of the Pentagon Papers into the
>> Congressional Record. His courageous
>> > public release of the papers made it possible for the publication to
>> resume.
>> > Gravel also launched in 1971 a one-man five-month filibuster to end
>> the peacetime military draft, forcing the Nixon administration to cut
>> a deal that
>> > allowed the draft to expire in 1973. He was a feisty and blunt
>> candidate in 2008 who lambasted the Democratic Party and its major
>> candidates for being in
>> > the service of corporations, especially the arms industry. His
>> outspokenness
>> > saw him banned by the Democratic leadership from later primary debates.
>> >
>> > “Obama has wasted an opportunity to be a great president,” Gravel
>> lamented. “More than 50 percent of the American people do not buy into
>> this war. He could have stood up and said ‘we are getting out.’ Forget
>> the Congress. Forget the Republicans.. Forget the hawks. Forget
>> mainstream media, including The New York Times and The Washington
>> Post, which are hawks. He would have weathered that storm because he
>> would have had the American people on his side. And what did he do? He
>> caved in to the leadership of [David] Petraeus and [Stanley A.]
>> McChrystal and adopted a scenario that is a total loser.”
>> >
>> > “When he hugs his children at night, when he puts them to bed, he has
>> got to begin to think there are little girls like this in Afghanistan
>> who are being killed and maimed,” Gravel told me. “If he can’t have
>> that kind of a thought then his arrogance knows no boundaries. I saw
>> this in the Senate during the Vietnam War. People detach themselves
>> from the immediacy of the crime. They vote for the money. They vote
>> for the policy. The picture of people dying is distant. My God, if you
>> are sitting next to me and a bomb explodes and your arm is ripped off
>> that is not distant. It is immediate. I saw the film by Robert
>> Greenwald, “Rethink Afghanistan.”
>> <http://rethinkafghanistan.com/videos.php> It rips your heart out. And
>> America under the leadership of Obama is a party to this crime. Close
>> your eyes. Listen to the media. Listen to the pundits. Listen to the
>> rhetoric. It is Vietnam all over again. What is the difference between
>> our vital interests
>> > and the domino theory? We could leave Afghanistan and it would be as
>> significant as when we left Vietnam.”
>> >
>> > “Don’t be hoodwinked by Obama going to Dover [Air Force Base] to
>> watch the caskets or going to Arlington to salute the graves, with his
>> snappy salute,” Gravel says. “Adolf Hitler lionized soldiers dying.
>> This is the old idea that
>> > it is honorable to die. It is not honorable to die in vain. People
>> died in vain in Vietnam. They are dying in vain in Iraq and
>> Afghanistan. And more people will die in vain because of the
>> leadership of Barack Obama.”
>> >
>> > “They don’t hate us because we are free,” Gravel said of the
>> insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. “They hate us because we are
>> killing them.”
>> >
>> >
>> > Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.
>> >
>> > /Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com
>> <http://truthdig.com/> <http://www.truthdig.com/>. Hedges graduated
>> from Harvard Divinity School and
>> > was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York
>> Times.
>> > He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us
>> > Meaning
>> >
>> > <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400034639?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1400034639
>> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400034639?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1400034639>>,
>> > What Every Person Should Know About War
>> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743255127?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0743255127
>> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743255127?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0743255127>>,
>> > and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
>> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>
>> His most
>> > recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
>> Triumph of Spectacle
>> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568584377?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1568584377
>> <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568584377?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1568584377>>.
>> > /
>>
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