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Mikhail Gorbachev is not a frivolous man. He was the Soviet leader who introduced the conceptual breakthrough of "mutual security" to Soviet-American relations, as well as the man who did more than any other individual to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion. In my opinion, he ranks as the greatest statesman of the twentieth century (something I was able to tell him personally, when we talked in St. Petersburg, Russia in May 2006).
So, when Mr. Gorbachev says, "Every US president has to have a war," and "I sometimes have the feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world," - as was reported by the Telegraph.co.uk on May 7, 2008 -- I take him seriously. More to the point, Gorbachev's assertions probably elicited widespread agreement, not only in Russia, but also across Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
For, as historian Michael Sherry has put it: "Measured by its actions rather than its self-image, the United States is a warrior nation more than any other modern power is." Lawrence R. Velvel has been blunter still: "The United States is a nation which seeks war." As evidence, Velvel adds: "Since Hitler invaded Poland, we have fought World War II, the Korean War, the Viet Nam war, secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, the first Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the second Gulf War. We have invaded, bombed, or 'quarantined,' among other places, Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, and Libya. We have 'declared' a world wide war on terrorists. We spend more on our military, some say, than all the rest of the world put together. "["Why We Seek War," The Long Term View Spring 2004]
Even worse, many of America's wars were unnecessary. According to historian John L. Harper: "History shows that the United States has had a strong propensity to become involved in conflicts which, though it would be misleading to call them 'wars of choice,' were unnecessary wars." In Professor Harper's interpretation, the U.S. has fought only five wars that strictly were "wars of necessity": the War of Independence, the Civil War, World War II, the initial phase of the Korean war, and the Afghanistan War (following the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorist attacks).
After identifying two "borderline" wars - World War I and the first Gulf War - the U.S. still fought six wars that Professor Harper believes were unnecessary: the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the second phase of the Korean War, the Vietnam war and Bush's invasion of Iraq. [John L. Harper, "Anatomy of a Habit: America's Unnecessary Wars," Survival, Summer 2005, pp. 58-59]
Moreover, each of "American's unnecessary wars adhere to a basic five-part pattern: (1) Each has been fought in the name of a broader mission that Providence has allegedly chosen the United States to carry out, (2) Self-deception has been at the heart of the decision to go to war, (3) each has been the handiwork "of a small, determined 'war party,'" (4) congressional opposition has been weak and the party in power calculates "that successful military action…[would] pay dividends at the polls," and (5) "More often than not, they have failed to advance the interests of the individuals and political parties who have advanced them." [Harper, pp. 59, 63, 69, 73, 76]
As Professor Harper concludes, "It should be a cause for serious reflection when contemplating military action in the future that the premises on which the United States decided to go to war in 1812, 1846, 1898, 1917, 1950, 1964-65 and 2002-03, were mainly false." [p. 79] Unfortunately, Harper's conclusion assumes that America's addiction to war is not the inevitable product of the very national characteristics that make Americans a uniquely warrior nation. More likely, as Geoffrey Perrett demonstrated in his book, A Country Made By War, America's wars "molded and mirrored its national identity."
Yet, consider the statement made in the May 2008 issue of Current History by a Russian scholar, Dmitri Trenin. "In recent years, Washington's attention has been largely focused on Russia's domestic evolution." Why? Because, "A country's external behavior is without question informed by its economic system, political order and system of values."
As "Exhibit One," supporting Trenin's observation, consider the assertions about Russia made by Republican presidential candidate, John McCain: "A decade and a half ago, the Russian people threw off the tyranny of communism and seemed determined to build a democracy and a free market and to join the West. Today, we see in Russia diminishing political freedoms, a leadership dominated by a clique of former intelligence officers, efforts to bully democratic neighbors, such as Georgia, and attempts to manipulate Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas. We need a new Western approach to this revanchist Russia. We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyberattacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom. We must also increase our programs supporting freedom and the rule of law in Russia and emphasize that genuine partnership remains open to Moscow if it desires it but that such a partnership would involve a commitment to being a responsible actor, internationally and domestically." [John McCain, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007]
Imagine that! The very Arizona Senator (the son and grandson of swashbuckling U.S. Navy Admirals) who irresponsibly voted to authorize the Bush administration's illegal, immoral, preventive-war invasion of Iraq -- and who still defends his immoral vote today -- also hypocritically insists that Russia must become a "responsible actor, internationally and domestically." Like most warmongering Americans, McCain hypocritically whitewashes America's many sins, but is quick to spot sins elsewhere.
Curiously, so does Professor Michael Cox, while excoriating "Europe's Enduring Anti-Americanism," in that very same issue of Current History. Professor Cox specifically condemns Europeans who attempt to explain America's invasion of Iraq - or any of its many other sins -- "as merely the external manifestation of forces lying at the root of American society." According to Professor Cox, "Despite its rationality, there can be little doubt that such thinking is "anti-American," in that it condemns precisely what it identifies as the defining features of American society."
Yet, the overwhelming evidence presented above suggests there's a recurring method to America's military madness - a method suggesting addiction. Not only in the number of wars fought and the number of unnecessary wars fought, but also in the five-part pattern detected in America's wars.
Professor Cox, himself, acknowledges the widespread belief among Europeans that one of the defining features of American society is the deeply embedded and nearly universal (and obnoxious) belief that the United States is the greatest country in the world. Such a belief not only has given the U.S. its often exercised excuse to promote its superior values abroad, but also the obligation to enforce them at gunpoint, if necessary.
Witness the warmongering implicit in the Bush administration's assertion that America's national security depends upon its ability to advance American-style freedom abroad. It differs little from the rationale used by President James Polk, when he sent forces to invade and occupy parts of Mexico. He was simply extending "the area of freedom."
Thus, it's little wonder that wise men, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, see something more permanent and nefarious at work. Is Iran next?
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While I Mostly Agree With The Article
I must take issue with a couple of points:
The War Of 1812 was necessary to the young country's survival. Seizure of merchant ships, conscription of their sailors, and the general strangling of American foreign trade would have doomed the US, had it not been responded to.
Involvement in the European theater during WW2 was entirely unnecessary. It was also unnecessary to fight Japan to the point of capitulation and occupation, and entirely unnecessary to use two of their cities for live nuclear weapons tests. Had we not fought the Spanish American war, we would never have attracted Japan's interest in the first place.
_______"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
--Steven Wright--
Why is that?
"Involvement in the European theater during WW2 was entirely unnecessary."
Germany declared war on the USA the day after Pearl Harbor, so how was involvement unavoidable?
I have to admit I never liked the fact that the second atomic bomb was dropped so quickly on Nagasaki, but I'm not yet convinced the Hiroshima bomb was wrong. During research for a term paper many decades ago, I came up with a lot of data reporting that an estimated one million American lives could have been lost invading the home islands of Japan. This takes into consideration the Japanese attitude of not surrendering, and fighting to the last, that was so prevalent up till that time. (No doubt the first atomic bomb would quickly change such attitudes anywhere.) And if this many American lives would have been lost, how many more Japanese lives would have been forfeit?
What sayeth you?
_______"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
Sayeth Me
So what if Germany declared war on us? They never had the capacity to invade the US (for that matter, neither did the Russians, except for the fact that they could've at one time taken Alaska back). What if the India declared war on us tomorrow? BFD! Powerful country, with no capacity to invade the world's most uninvadable country. The most the Germans could ever have done was to disrupt our shipping, which they did anyway, and which our navy handily contained. The same approach could have been taken towards the Japanese, after we had scared them off from Hawaii.
The "1 million US soldiers" argument for genocide against the Japanese (most of those actually killed were women, children, and the elderly) has always been a red herring. First, there was no need at all to invade Japan. They were already crippled militarily, and looking at having to fight the Soviets as well. They were far beyond posing any credible threat to the US. The main reason that they were so "intransigent" in surrender talks is that we kept moving the bar, adding new demands every time they agreed to a condition. The reason that was done was to provide an excuse for conducting nuclear tests on crowded cities (Hiroshima was a test to see whether a "gun-type" device would work at all, Nagasaki was a test to see what an implosion type device would do to an actual city).
Second, the US troops amassed around Japan were never intended to be an invasion force at all, but rather an occupying force after the Japanese surrendered, which is exactly what happened. Not that there was any need to occupy an impoverished, eviscerated and utterly broken country in the first place. It is also almost laughable that a country that had almost no military left, virtually no remaining defense industry, and very few remaining soldiers could possibly have inflicted a million casualties on the armed to the teeth and vastly powerful US military.
_______"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
--Steven Wright--
It always used to be half a million
When I was growing up the story ran that the atomic bombs spared half a million US lives because it forestalled an invasion of the Japanese mainland. But inflation being what it is . . .
I believe the figure of half a million first apeared in an article published in the January 1947 edition of Harper's Magazine, written by Stimpson, the then US Secretary for War. Before that, unofficial esitimates varied between about 20,000 to 60,000. Bear in mind also that the defence of Honshu was largely down to woman and schoolchildren with pointed sticks, all the men of fighting age being either dead or overseas, and the industrial base fucked by constant bombing.
The reason for the article was probably the growing dissatisfaction with the US military. Partly reaction to war, perhaps, partly reaction to steadily leaking news about what Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like after the atomic bombs (the cities were sealed off from journalists by McArther's occupation forces). A need was felt to boost the military's image and make a rearguard defence of the atomic bombs.
Nazi Germany engulfed Europe
long before the USA even got into a war that had already been waged for several years. Without American resources, troops and bombers Germany just might have had the time and resources to indeed mount an attack on the USA across the Atlantic. The American Army Air Force alone bombed Germany into submission by virtually destroying their ability to have the resources to continue waging war. Remember near the end of the war Germany was shooting V2 rockets at England, and flying jets. Without the necessity to use up so many resources fighting America as well, in conjunction with all the resources destroyed by the American military, Germany would have had a lot longer time to regroup, arm and fight.
As far as Japan, I believe that Ken Burn's recent documentary "War" also stated that perhaps one million American lives would have been lost invading Japan. I'm no expert on what would or wouldn't have happened at the end of the war in Japan, but I'm not in agreement that US forces would have just kept Japan surrounded, waiting to be an occupying force. The sentiment in our nation was to get the war over and ASAP. We might never know what would have occurred if there had been no Manhattan Project, and atomic bombs weren't an option.
_______"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
Also keep in mind
that there was an obsessive emperor worship and religious element to the Japanese mentality that encouraged suicide as a tactic, and it was often believed death was preferable to surrender. We saw the awesome threat of such tactics as kamikaze fighters (who fortunately had only limited resources at the time), and presently see its effectiveness in the Middle East, and on 9/11. If any such mentality could be encouraged on a national level, and in large numbers (as in the last ditch defense of a nation) the results could be rather daunting.
_______"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
Suicide Attacks
They scare the shit out of civilians, but are amazingly ineffective as a military tactic. If suicide attacks really were that effective, the Palestinians would have brought the Israeli military to its knees long ago.
_______"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
--Steven Wright--
You Give Us Too Much Credit
Hitler was already essentially defeated before we even hit the shores of France. He made the same fatal mistake as Napoleon--he attacked Russia. Bad move. The Soviet Army was already in eastern Germany by the time we hit the beaches at Normandy.
The Anglo-American air strikes were basically punitive, and killed tens of thousands of civilians. The German army was already on its knees. The jets you speak of were ME-262's, a beautiful but very limited aircraft. The Junkers Jummo 004 engine that powered them was only good for 4 hours of flight time, and had to be overhauled after 10 hours. Hitler had developed them and the V-2 at the expense of other projects, including his "nuclear weapons" program, which turned out to consist of a single crude stack reactor that would have taken decades to produce enough U-238 to make an actual bomb.
He was also out of money, and the populace was starving and on the verge of revolt.
The idea of any sort of transatlantic, or even transpacific invasion of the US is laughable. We would have sunk their ships as they approached, as long as we weren't already involved too much elsewhere. Even then, the well-armed US populace would have picked their soldiers off like pigeons as they tried to land. Casualties would be sustained, but the invasion would have been futile.
The million casualties myth is perpetuated to assuage our national conscience of having committed several absolutely horrific war crimes (don't forget the weeks of firebombings that preceded the nukes, which almost completely decimated their industrial capacity). Like I said before, no invasion was actually necessary in the first place. We could have simply left them to the mercies of the Koreans, Chinese, and Soviets.
Had we not been involved in the European war, the Soviet Union would have, at least temporarily, stretched to the Iberian Peninsula, and we could have had good relations with them and no cold war. Bad for Western Europe, good for us. That is, if we ever really wanted to be a peaceful nation, which we never have been.
_______"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
--Steven Wright--
Agreed...
I also feel the need to point out that any tactical air strike was deemed a success if it fell within three MILES of the intended target. There where times where Germany couldn't figure out which city was being bombed, let alone what the intended target within that city was to be. It was for this reason that the RAF abandoned tactical bombings and turned, instead, to punitive bombings designed to target the factory workers instead of the factories.
The US wasn't much different, same technology that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn... or fall within a mile of the farm with any degree of certainty.
Any look at WW2 from a outside source shows, clearly, that the US did squat in Europe bar move the date of Germany's defeat forward a year or two. They where already beaten, spent, by a war they couldn't win against Brittan and the insane drive into Russia.
The US just turned up for the photo shoot....
_______None at the moment, any ideas?
What sayeth you?
Even though your question appears directed at JMadison, here's my 2 cents.
Hiroshima first. Was an invasion of the japanese home islands, at that point in the war, even necessary? Japan, the only member of the axis alliance still standing, was no longer a credible offensive threat to anyone. An invasion was not necessary to liberate occupied countries, as was the case on D Day. With the surrender of germany, japan was now the allies sole focus. Add the full military might of those forces no longer required in europe, to the allied forces that had already pushed the imperial army/navy back to the home islands, and clearly, the handwriting was on the wall as far as japan's prolonging the war.
The estimate of one million american lives lost during an invasion is just that, an estimate, and a suspect one at that. America lost about 400K dead during their entire involvement in WWII. What metrics are required to make the case that america would suffer another 2 1/2 times that number during an invasion of japan. Was the military's estimate intentionally high so as to justify dropping the bomb?
And finally, even if the estimate was accurate, and an invasion actually was unavoidable, the bottom line of that decision was to drop a nuclear weapon on a civilian population. And that was crossing a line that was and is, indefensible.
Now Nagasaki. A war crime of unimaginable proportion. This was nothing more than the "field trial" of the other a-bomb design, known as Fat Man.
Agreed...
Let us not forget that the US knew very well that Japan was looking to surrender! They wanted a conditional surrender that would spare the lives of the emperor and the military leaders and have other conventions. While the US wouldn't accept such a surrender, indeed I wouldn't seeing what some of those leaders did (particularly to Australian non-combatants), but it shows the intention of surrender was already there BEFORE the bombs where dropped.
I firmly believe the dropping of the bombs wasn't to end the war but to give Russia second thoughts about claiming even more land for themselves. Russia came out of world war 2 with the means to spread through the crippled Europe and Asia areas. They didn't for the simple reason: The US had these new bombs and had shown a willingness to use them. Even after Russia learned the technology the threat was still enough to keep any large scale war at bay and instead focused on 'war by proxy.'
We called it the cold war.
_______None at the moment, any ideas?
War economies and collapse.
It is called a war economy for a reason: So much money is shunted through the military industrial complex that, should said complex fail, the economy will die within the next heart beat. Not depress, but out right collapse to never recover. Hence the MIC needs to be kept vibrant, needs to be kept in the black and with greater and greater profits at that. In a war economy that is the number one objective, profits to the MIC, because it will end the nation if they don't profit.
How does the MIC profit? Well the blood of others of cause. A defensive nation can only go so far with their military. Once they have enough arms they don't need to buy anymore. The best the MIC can hope for in such cases is 'upgrades' to the technology, which are expensive to research and have the same problem. Once the nation has the upgrades they don't buy any more.
And with the invention of nuclear weapons large military forces became even less of a necessary. Nuclear weapons ensure you can enter into MAD with other nations. There is no need for a massive military, outfitted and equipped by the MIC, when you have weapons able to end the world. You can shrink your military, knowing that no nation in the world is going to be insane enough to challenge you even if your left with a handful of nuclear attack subs, ten thousand men and some aging fighters.
So to keep the MIC in the black, profitable, you need OFFENSIVE wars. Ammo needs to be replaced, missiles are always one use items, equipment gets damaged even if it isn't in the line of fire and those that are tend to be even worse off. Everything is used and must be replaced... at a cost. The blood shed is a small price, for those in charge but never those that do the bleeding, to ensure the economy is kept on life-support.
The problem is war economies can never be self sustained. History has proven time and time again this is the case. War will always end and it doesn't matter how victorious you are in the battle field once that end comes about. Wars can never be sustained forever. You either win, you lose, or you end up in a 'cold war' situation in the end.
All of them leave the MIC with tons of hardware in the backlogs with no one to buy it. The MIC then goes into the red and the economy with it. No nation has survived such a economical death. Throughout history every single major nation that ended up a war economy has splintered and fractured because of this fact.
It is the natural occurrence of a empire, the way empires die, and will still be the normal even when we are fighting over whole worlds and even whole systems. Empires will be founded, form war economies so they can forcefully grow... then stalemate and die....
_______None at the moment, any ideas?
Ike
I think it's important to remember that Ike first wrote "Military Industrial Congressional Complex" before shortening it to Military Industrial Complex.
We should put the Congressional bit back in there. They're part of the problem. Congress is supposed to be our lobby, not the war-profiteers'. I realize they want to create jobs in their states, but there are other ways beyond attracting weapons manufacturers. Green technologies, for example.
We just need a few good congressmen to turn their backs on the MICC and get out of the stranglehold of the blackmailing war-profiteers.
_______Rational apprehension of dangers is necessary; fear is not. - B. Russell
Indeed...
War economies are never sustainable but they aren't the only economy models to look at. Many other exist, from putting research first right through to ensuring you have the worlds strongest manufacturing base. Even putting environmental issues first would create an economy that is sustainable, maybe more so then any other economy base.
The problem of course is the other economy models don't involve kicking the world around, taking other peoples resources for profit and are, generally, long term investments. They are not as exciting or as quickly profitable as war.
_______None at the moment, any ideas?
$
First off, thanks for a good piece that moves us away from the tiresome Clinton/Obama story.
Secondly, if we give up wars we'll have nothing to export.
Michael Cox's belief in Europe's "enduring anti-Americanism" is just a pathetic victim card, similar to the "anti-Semitism" victim card any time Israel is fairly criticized.
It serves to move the spotlight from the subject - America - to the critic. Suddenly America's problem is not the issue; at fault is the negative attitude of those who raise the issue. It's a feeble strategy used by those who realize they cannot refute the charges, so instead seek to change the subject, and do so by going on the offensive. Some call it Rovian. I call it an inability to reason or debate coherently, which seems to be an earmark of reactionary thought.
I read enough European press to see no "enduring anti-Americanism". What I do see is an ability to use critical thought and the ability to look at America's actions with eyes unclouded by America's self-important messianic sentiment. They, unlike our feckless journalists, are able to ask why. Perhaps they dislike many of our leaders (along with much of what we call our culture), but they don't broadly dislike American ideals and values.
The only anti-Americanism I see is that espoused by the right-wing. They seek to douse the beacon of idealism, justice, democracy and balance of power. For them a one-party state made up of "deciders" who refuse to be bound by laws, constitutions, treaties and human rights is the ideal. Theirs is the fundamental anti-Americanism. Europe is right to point it out, no matter how much the Michael Cox's bleat.
_______Rational apprehension of dangers is necessary; fear is not. - B. Russell
it's not just for economic reasons
Economics is only part of it.Since this country began,and the early settlers battled the frontier and the Indians for possession of the land , there's been a sense of needing to fight.The nation wouldn't know who it was without something to pit itself against,which is why William James wrote " The Moral Equivalent of War" .And why the neocons thought the nation would go soft without an enemy.
Another writer who made a case that America is addicted to war for reasons both psychological and economic was James A. Michener. In his 1972 novel
" The Drifters", he outlined many ways in which militarism is an integral part of American society, in ways we often don't even recognize.
I absolutely agree....
"Mikhail Gorbachev....ranks as the greatest statesman of the twentieth century...."
The unilateral decision, made by the soviet union, to end their participation in the 40 year period of belligerence known as the cold war, had the potential to become a watershed moment. The world had a genuine opportunity to reverse the insane trend towards greater and ever more dangerous nuclear proliferation.
Instead of seizing that rare opportunity to make substantial reductions to the possibility of nuclear war, america decided to beat its collective chest, declare saint ronnie to be the slayer of the 'red menace', and almost immediately begin scouring the earth for a new enemy to vanquish.
I don't know, nor do I particularly care, whether gorbachev made the decision based on a humanistic world vision or merely the cold stark reality of economics. Either way, he did make the decision. And what may have grown from that moment was squandered, by the crack addicts who make up the american military industrial complex.
Number 5 Is the Kicker
"More often than not, they have failed to advance the interests of the individuals and political parties who have advanced them."
_______Russ Wellen is an editor at Freezerbox and OpEdNews. He guest-blogs at AlterNet and is a staff blogger at Scholars & Rogues. He frequently writes about national security, nuclear deproliferation and the enduring enigma that is the American mind.
To the list of unnecessary
To the list of unnecessary wars I would add Afghanistan and the Filipino-American War. Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. Osama bin Laden hasn't been in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion. The one nation with anything to do with 9/11 is Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi and the majority of 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, al Qaeda is funded by Saudi money, and the third target of the 9/11 attacks was a military target. It wasn't a terrorist attack at all, it was more like a military attack by Saudi Arabia.
The Filipino-American war was the racist follow up to the Spanish-American war. The US tricked the Filipinos into helping to fight Spain by promising them their independence. Of course, when they realized they had traded one colonial power for another the Filipinos naturally wanted to fight the US. After a bloody war, the Filipinos found themselves ruled by the US until World War II.
Addicted to war?
For some time, I suspected that the U. S. appetite for conflict may have been inspired the by its three largest ethnic blocks, specifically the Germans, the Irish, and the English, all well known shit-stirrers, at least until recently. (I have family from all three of these countries, so no slur is intended here!) However, Canadians are very similar in background to most U.S. citizens, and they definitely are among the least pugnacious people in the world.
Also, once I thought it might be the crusading religious backgrounds of most of us. Religion has caused more wars EVERYWHERE than almost anything else. However, it doesn't appear to be the central reason for our bellicose nature today.
I believe now that the corporatocracy of this country is the central reason for all these wars. We're a bunch of greedy little bastards and we need to face this fact NOW! Something must change. This latest administration is proof-positive that corporate America is the final and central culprit in America's love affair with war. It's time to throw these clowns OUT!
The cost of war makes it essential
The Military Industrial Complex has become so vast that it has become necessary to get involved in some conflict every 20 to 40 years max. Congress is partially to blame for this situation. They have located some of the war industry in every state. For any one state to lose that capasity would cost it thousands of jobs. From the armed forces themselves to the companies that manufacture their toys for them are involved even NASA. Boing, Lockheed, Raytheion, the Carlyle Group, the World Bank, The International Monitary Fund are all involved. Without an enemy, without a bogeyman the whole thing would colaspe like a house of cards. However the government isn't going to let that happen. The republician party was at s loss when communism failed. They jumped right on the bandwagon of needing to militarize space. Then 9-11 lays an endless conflict at their door. Why do we fight? Follow the money.
Addicts
Bankrupt, wasted, beggars for a fix rave in withdrawal. The world passes them by. Eh?
_______loonygopher
Never underestimate
America's ability to pick a fight.
Finding a fix isn't a problem for us just yet.
And when we do a B&E on some country to get money for the next fix, we'll be getting that fix as we pay for it! (No... that was the Iraq plan. Damn!)
Maybe if we sell all our aluminum cans to China? (Already did it? Fuck!!)
There's always civil war. We've never been shy about killing each other, so that should keep us set us up (until we run out of meat.)
"Why We Fight"
is a documentary that I would recommend everyone rent. The point that really came through to me as I watched it was that the Military Industrial Complex and all its ancillary industries have become so large, that they cannot afford for their NOT to be war! How's that for a Catch22?
_______"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."