It is really disgusting that the main feature of the summit meeting at Camp David with the South Koreans and the Japanese is having military maneuvers with them every year.
It may be disgusting, but it is certainly not surprising, is it Steve?
Along with the AUKUS agreement, all that is happening is the creation of a "NATO" for the Pacific. This one to deal with the Threat of China just like the original one was created after WW II to deal with the Threat of the USSR and European Communism.
What threat was that from China? Oh yeah that pesky balloon. But at least the 800 billion dollar "defense" budget managed to shoot it down, a little awkwardly, but still.
That's what we have a Federal Reserve System and its and Treasury's printing presses for, Clif: To enable the magic of Deficit Spending and endless piling on of the National Debt.
On Friday, November 22, 1963, i was a 17-year old high school senior hotshot co-captain of the football team thinking about tomorrow’s Home Coming Game with our arch cross-town rival, and this evening’s Pep Rally scheduled in the school gym.
Around 2:30, our Vice Principal ~ who had obviously been crying ~ stepped briefly into the classroom and motioned to our teacher of English Composition and Literature, Mr Cowie, to step outside the room.
When he returned, Mr Cowie ~ a Brit who had lost his left leg below the hip in the course of surviving Dunkirk
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain ], and had migrated to the US shortly after World War II ended ~ Mr Cowie very somberly and sadly informed us that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas, that all classes were immediately suspended, and that the Pep Rally and Game had been cancelled until further notice.
As we got ready to leave, he advised us to be very careful, and to realize, acknowledge, and accept that “Today is the end of the world as you know it, my friends…,” and that we needed to “prepare yourselves to deal with it.”
The second time i heard that phrase was on September 11, 2001, when my Wife ~ getting home from her shift as an Emergency Room Nurse Manager ~ gave me a big hug, and stated quite matter-of-factly: “This is definitely the end of the world as we know it, Love; definitely the end of that world.”
And the last time i and we all encountered TEOTWAWKI was The COVID Event of 2020, and the reaction, response, and actions taken by this nation’s federal, state, and local governments to deal with it. [Which, incidentally, failed completely.]
Today, this nation ~ and the entire planet ~ is hard up against the edge of another EOTWAWKI moment, from a variety of sources: economic, ecologic, military, and above all, political. But this time, that End Of The World could be literal and physical, and not merely rhetorical and metaphysical.
When the US Dollar loses its status as the World’s Reserve Currency, America and Americans will be doing more than just paying “the real costs of increased Inflation,” Ray.
THAT is the biggest meta-strategic Threat that China and Russia ~ along with the rest of BRICS and all those nations in the Global South being courted by it ~ present to the United States and its disintegrating Global Order.
And of course, America's response and solution to that looming disaster is and will continue to be to start a new War someplace. Or even better, several Wars in a variety of places.
For those here at BV unfamiliar with this whole issue, here are three different perspectives on it well worth the read and ponder:
Why Does Turning Against a War Never Include Admitting Who Was Right All Along?
August 19, 2023
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 19, 2023
The better part of a year into the current phase of the war in Ukraine, General Mark Milley accidentally blurted out that peace talks might be a good alternative to an endless bloody war for the same results. Now it’s becoming more acceptable in Washington, D.C., to anonymously whisper that he was right. But we’re lifetimes away from it becoming acceptable to mention that every single principled peace advocate on Earth had expressed that opinion openly and clearly several months earlier. It hasn’t even yet become acceptable to admit who was right about any past wars. The Korean War comes to mind as a vastly more destructive debacle. Smart people predicted what would happen at the start but have not been listened to the slightest bit more in the years after millions were killed by those with lives that matter, of whom tens of thousands would “die for a tie.”
As we hit the 1.5-year point in the current catastrophe in Ukraine — and other wars, larger and smaller, roll on without end — the polls are beginning to do what they always do. With Afghanistan and with Iraq, after about this much time you began to have U.S. majorities declare that the wars never should have been started. With Ukraine, this indicates a certain ability to care about (white) people who are not from the United States, but more so an ability to recognize that wars and militaries cost money. That could yet prove an incredibly valuable breakthrough. With Afghanistan and Iraq, the polls showed, for years, strong majorities both sure that the war they’d cheered and drooled and screamed for should never have happened and hesitant about ending it. This was principally a result of the doctrine of troopism: Thou shalt kill more troops so as not to have already killed troops in vain. But with Ukraine, it’s weapons (or, in the misleading media narrative, dollars) being sent, not troops. Nobody is proposing to send more weapons for the sake of the weapons already sent. So, there is the possibility of the U.S. public really turning against this war more quickly. (Of course it’s a public of the other partisan makeup, so we’ll have to see what that means.)
When the public turns against a war, the corporate media begins searching for wise voices. These are the voices of people who’ve supported disastrous war after sadistic horror after losing debacle for decades but who made some comment about certain reservations they might have had about this particular war. Maybe they accidentally exclaimed something about the financial cost in the presence of a reporter, or they put their name on a report at a weapons-funded stink tank about the greater importance of planning a war on China, or whatever. Today you have people shamelessly campaigning for Congress on their record of helping to destroy Iraq and murder a million Iraqis. And one reason why is that there was never any acknowledgement of the many individuals who were right about that war before it was begun, or even of the majority of voters who in 2006 said they were voting to end that war but ended up electing a Democratic Congress that esclated the war instead.
Of course, there were people inside the military establishment admitting privately (but not so privately) that the “surge” in Iraq wouldn’t accomplish its purported goals, and pointing out problems with the war from before day one — never moral problems, of course, but real and accurate and fairly obvious problems with foreign occupations. And of course there have been people on both sides of the current war in Ukraine privately (but with leaks) pointing out that there’s no victory in sight for either side. One of the reasons that peace activists have such an incredible streak of accuracy is that they look at what militaries are whispering and leaking, rather than believing highly improbable hype. But in the media’s “first draft of history” every intelligent person alive is supposed to have believed stupid stories about speedy victories, so that Milley’s accidentally saying the quiet part aloud is not understood as blurting out something forbidden but as actually grasping some unique insight into a problem the world’s thinkers were otherwise universally failing to comprehend.
But the people who get wars right time after time after time do so not simply by being willing to say what the corporate communications system forbids, but also by considering factors outside of how much money can be made off weapons, how many votes can be gained from machismo, how many interviews can be garnered by wartime rhetoric, or even how many years and bodies will be required to achieve some purpose. Other factors often considered include the increased risk of nuclear apocalypse, the financial tradeoffs, the impediments created to global cooperation on non-optional crises, the environmental destruction, the damage to politics and society at home, and of course the possibilities for resolution without killing, with better results possible prior to more death and destruction and bitterness and the building up of propaganda by each side about the other.
I’ve been reading a new book called My Country Is the World, a collection of speeches and interviews and articles by Staughton Lynd. Here’s someone who was right about the war on Vietnam prior, during, and after. And as a reward he was driven out of academia and erased. For some years in the 1960s he was able to find a voice in corporate newspapers and television. The transcript in the book of a debate with William F. Buckley is an exchange of opposing worldviews that never happens in U.S. media today — not because the “two sides” isolate, but because Buckley’s views are now pretty well established as the only possible views by every media outlet with money.
In Jonathan Eig’s new biography of Martin Luther King, there’s a part, near the end, where some of King’s friends and allies are upset at how willing he is to go against the advice of all of them, and yet how concerned he is not to displease others. When King wants to keep an appointment with Staughton Lynd, Bayard Rustin exclaims “Who the hell is Staughton Lynd?” The whole damn country might ask that. He’s certainly not someone with a national holiday, children’s books, monuments, and so forth. But, tweak the details, and he’s someone who has already eloquently debunked the next war the Pentagon comes up with. He’s one of thousands about whom we really should be asking, in all seriousness, and with the intention of educating ourselves: who the hell are they?
Thank You for posting this, Dennis. Particularly the reference to Staughton Lynd. i'd heard only Of him, and knew nothing about him. Just Kindled his book and am looking forward to it. ~ j
Yet another outstanding Thought-Provoker, Bill. Thank You for sharing it at this time.
i'm curious: Have You ever done a piece explaining the Seven Reasons Why ~ over these past 78 years ~ We Have Not Won Any Of All Those Wars We Can't Stop Making?
callous disregard for human life, especially death among the enemy! and no such concern as collateral damages!
one more observation, when Eisenhower describe the military industrial complex it was it was the weapons, over the next decades of cost overruns, delays and compromise of manufactured quality, the military industry has achieved success in developing the business model of doing contracted support.
to the extent that in the global war on terror the contractor sustainment of weapons that are not that reliable, the buyers ran out of money to buy repair processes, and the all volunteer force cost so much that the military industrial complex makes hundreds of billions 'keeping them flying', and steaming and treading!
Speaking of those “Merchants of Death” of the 20th century ~ those industrialists and bankers who drove America into World War I and were brought to Americans’ attention in the 1930s [and quickly forgotten] ~ here is A CANDLE IN A TIME OF DARKNESS about America’s MODs of the 21st century… :
THE MERCHANTS OF DEATH WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL (November 10-13, 2023)
The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal (November 10-13, 2023) will hold accountable — through testimony of witnesses — U.S. weapons manufacturers who knowingly produce and sell products which attack and kill not only combatants but non-combatants as well. These manufacturers may have committed Crimes Against Humanity as well as violated U.S. Federal criminal laws. The Tribunal will hear the evidence and render a verdict.
To reach the largest possible audience and to maximize international participation, the testimonies of the witnesses for the Tribunal will be video-recorded throughout the upcoming year as investigative teams identify witnesses and elicit their testimony. This will include testimonies from the victims of war, military and weapons analysts, lawyers, journalists, and moral philosophers and theologians.
These recorded testimonies will then be presented to the Tribunal and a world-wide audience (via the internet) during the weekend of November 11, 2023. The opening session with the Tribunal members will be live (and livestreamed) providing an opportunity to introduce each Tribunal member, review the purpose of the Tribunal, the charges at issue, and the naming of the defendants. Similarly, the final session of the weekend will be live with Tribunal members discussing the evidence and offering their opinions and recommendations.
Teams of college and university students led by their professors and lawyers will conduct many of the aforementioned video interviews around the world. We will ask corporate directors of weapons manufacturers to sit for recorded interviews. A video library of these testimonies will be assembled over the course of the next year. The video testimonies will then be reviewed by lawyers and analysts to select those that are most pertinent.
By presenting prerecorded videos of the witnesses rather than live testimonies, we will create a structured and unique presentation of the evidence to the Tribunal. Technical interruptions and other delays during the Tribunal will be minimized. Additionally, the gathering of video evidence can begin soon.
Bill: Earlier, You responded to my proposed NO WAR-FOR-PROFIT AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES with: “Jeff, I remember reading in a newspaper from the 1930s about efforts to take the profit motive out of war. It was a great idea then, a great idea today, but those who profit from war are calling the shots, pun intended.”
Thank You for directing me back to the 30s and those efforts. It tells me that taking the profit motive out of war was indeed a great idea then. And more importantly, that it is an even greater idea today.
But any attempt to sell that idea back in the 30s was doomed to fail from the outset.
By the mid-30s, America’s and Britain’s Ruling Financial/Political Class were already making plans to make happen the only thing that would or could get America and Britain out of The Great Depression: Another War just like the last one; only with even more World to be involved this time.
And by then, things were moving along quite well in Germany and Italy in Europe, and with Japan in East Asia, to make the likelihood of that Second World War more and more likely.
[Note: And reflecting on it, one can only wonder if that was the intent of America’s RF/PC in the first place: To make a Great Depression happen so as to ultimately have a Second World War. The settlement at Versailles to end the First World War certainly set the stage for Germany’s role in making a Second one virtually inevitable; at least in Europe.]
And it is important to remember what happened to those who questioned war as a profit-maker; particularly those who condemned the role of industrialists and bankers in getting the United States into “The Great War” ~ aka “The War to end all War” ~ in the first place, the so-called “Merchants of Death” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_death ].
Particularly when they went public with it. As in The Nye Committee:
“The Nye Committee, officially known as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, was a United States Senate committee (April 12, 1934 – February 24, 1936), chaired by U.S. Senator Gerald Nye (R-ND). The committee investigated the financial and banking interests that underlay the United States' involvement in World War I and the operations and profits of the industrial and commercial firms supplying munitions to the Allies and to the United States. It was a significant factor in public and political support for American neutrality in the early stages of World War II… .
“THE COMMITTEE DOCUMENTED THE HUGE PROFITS THAT ARMS FACTORIES HAD MADE DURING THE WAR. IT FOUND THAT BANKERS HAD PRESSURED WILSON TO INTERVENE IN THE WAR IN ORDER TO PROTECT THEIR LOANS ABROAD. ALSO, THE ARMS INDUSTRY WAS AT FAULT FOR PRICE-FIXING AND HELD EXCESSIVE INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY LEADING UP TO AND DURING WORLD WAR I.[6]
“According to the United States Senate website: ‘THE INVESTIGATION CAME TO AN ABRUPT END EARLY IN 1936. THE SENATE CUT OFF COMMITTEE FUNDING AFTER CHAIRMAN NYE BLUNDERED INTO AN ATTACK ON THE LATE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON. NYE SUGGESTED THAT WILSON HAD WITHHELD ESSENTIAL INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS AS IT CONSIDERED A DECLARATION OF WAR. Democratic leaders, including Appropriations Committee Chairman Carter Glass of Virginia, unleashed a furious response against Nye for 'dirtdaubing the sepulcher of Woodrow Wilson.' Standing before cheering colleagues in a packed Senate Chamber, Glass slammed his fist onto his desk until blood dripped from his knuckles.” [16]
“In her memoir, Appointment On The Hill (p. 169), Dorothy Detzer, an intimate eye-witness to the Committee's processes, summarizes: ‘The long exhaustive investigation ... produced A SORDID REPORT OF INTRIGUES AND BRIBERY; OF COLLUSION AND EXCESSIVE PROFITS; OF WAR SCARES ARTIFICIALLY FOSTERED AND [DISARMAMENT] CONFERENCES DELIBERATELY WRECKED.’ The ‘recommendations, accompanying the committee's reports to the Senate, were presented in a series of interlocking legislative measures ... The Neutrality Bill, providing for an embargo on arms and loans to nations at war, was the only legislation even partially enacted into law. But even it was crippled by its 'half-measure' provisions.” (p. 171). Source:[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee ; EMPHASES added ]
So the 1930s were not a very good time to try to sell “No War For Profit” to the American People.
One wonders if trying to sell it today would fare any better. Think there are any politicians in DC ~ or any who want to get there ~ who'd be interested in having a Nye Committee in their own name?
“Western governments invaded Iraq, dismantled Libya, interfered without success in Yemen and Syria. Yet North Korea causes all the trouble?” - Fuad Alakbarov, Exodus
Bill: Regarding Suggestion 3 for Capping the Wellsprings of War ~ “It’s time to make war a non-profit, last resort activity” ~ consider this, written and posted on Veterans Day, 2010, a couple of months after Tom Dispatch and CBS posted Your article... :
A NO WAR-FOR-PROFIT AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES: A Veterans’ Day 2010 Weekend Reflection, with an Indecent Proposal and a Question
“It was the Eleventh Minute of the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month.....”
And next Year, 2011, it will be “of the Eleventh Year....” Ninety-three years to the minute since “The End” of “The War To End All War,” in many otherWays and Wise known as World War I.
As a retired Centurion of The Empire ~ beginning, in this lifetime at least, Once Upon A Time, long, long, so Very Long ago in a place called Viet Nam ~ I spent my entire professional life (some 28 years total, 22 on active duty) studying and waging war, or preparing myself and others to wage war. And during that lifetime, War has not changed. At all. Only the Battlefields have changed. And the Weapons. And the Enemies. And, above All, The Victims..... :
“...the Names of the Places, and the Faces of the Wives and the Sons, and the Daughters;
of the Pain, and the Horror, and the cost-price dis-efficiencies and externalities
of the Slaughters...”
But the Perpetrators of War have not changed. Nor have the Perpetuators. And certainly not the Justifiers. But beyond all Them, what (and thus who) really hasn’t really changed in any way at all are The Beneficiaries of War: The Chosen Ones; those who, by War, expropriate Wealth and Power, so as to extract and consume and generate even more Power and more Wealth, so as to extract and obliterate even more. And More. And ever and even MORE, and MORE… . These Ones have most definitively, definitely, and decidedly NOT Changed. At all.
Since long, long, so Very Long before that eleventh minute of that eleventh hour of that eleventh day of that eleventh month, the Perpetrators, Perpetuators, Justifiers, and Beneficiaries ~ especially The Beneficiaries ~ of War have not changed.
So, one might be moved to ask: So What? Now What?
So. imagine ~ if you Can and Dare ~ if even for but a moment, that there are no Beneficiaries. That the answer to the simply elegant and ultimately eloquent Question of “War: CUI BONO?” is, quite simply elegantly and ultimately eloquently, “NoBody.”
EnVision, if You can, a world in which NoBody gains AnyThing , at All, from War. At least not AnyThing Economic or Political; at least not Wealth or Power. EnVision, if You dare, a World in which no employee, supervisor, manager, executive, stockholder; no politician, bureaucrat, advisor, political appointee, general or underlinging warrior; no imam or priest or rabbi nor any of their various and variously true believers; no conqueror, emperor, führer, or other self- (or media-)proclaimed would-be/wannabe god-on-Earth (or his Designated Liege)...... NoBody gains AnyThing from, by, through, with, as a result of, or because of War. NoBody. AnyThing. At all.
Because if you can imagine that World: then, perhaps you will thus begin to Begin to see exactly How and Why, then, that the Perpe-trators, Perpetuators, and Justifiers of War could and would be castrated: and thus rendered inert, irrelevant, and bankrupt; defeated, disarmed and dismantled, destroyed, dispersed, and disappeared.
And, even more importantly, you would begin to Begin to understand exactly Why and How, then, that the Beneficiaries of War would and could be not merely similarly castrated and rended and thus rendered inertly nil, but indeed also thus crucified on a Cross of Gold, made in their own image and fashioned by their own hand.
And that finally and thus, with NoBody to benefit, gain, or otherWays profit from War, that there would Be No War.
So What? Now What? Any Suggestions? Oh, and the Question is: When will You weary of the all the BullShit?
Happy Veterans Day. See you at 11:11:11 on 11.11.11. /s/
Appendix: A No War-For-Profit Amendment to the Constitution of The United States
1. Any and/or All organizations or individuals doing business with the Military-Industrial-FatherLand Security Complex (MIFLS-C) will and thus must be publicly-held NON-PROFIT enterprises.
2. No individual, bank, and/ or any other financial or other institution (including foreign nations’ and their money-lenders) doing business with the MIFLS-C may earn any interest or other profit from loans, bonds, or any other fiduciary instruments used by the Government of The United States to finance or otherwise “pay for” this nation’s Wars-by-Credit Card of the 21st century.
3. No print, electronic, and/or internet-based news or otherwise info-entertainment media organization may be owned and/or operated by any organization or individual doing business with the MIFLS-C.
Jeff, I remember reading in a newspaper from the 1930s about efforts to take the profit motive out of war. It was a great idea then, a great idea today, but those who profit from war are calling the shots, pun intended.
And because we have people in government who are bullies and war gives them license to bully others. We saw how Covid gave bullies license to lock down the rest of us and impose useless masking rules. It's the same with war only more so.
Lots of folks make lots of money of war and that's why here in the US its a 100 plus billion dollar industry. We pay. They make $$$$$ And the 'other' die.
i agree completely, Alex: There is a very definite psychological dimension at work here. But dollars and cents accounting plays the dominant role in actually making all of America's wars happen.
Altho of course, there is a psychological dimension to that fact of life, as well.
I listened to the first 30 minutes, Ray. I think the colonel is exaggerating Ukraine's casualties and underestimating Russian ones. History suggests that the casualties are probably similar for both sides since it's symmetrical warfare. Certainly, the war didn't start well for Russia, nor is it going well right now for Ukraine.
I agree with the colonel that the war was avoidable and that diplomatic efforts should be made to end it before it escalates further.
One thing: the colonel doesn't share his sources for his estimates of casualties etc.
It is really disgusting that the main feature of the summit meeting at Camp David with the South Koreans and the Japanese is having military maneuvers with them every year.
It may be disgusting, but it is certainly not surprising, is it Steve?
Along with the AUKUS agreement, all that is happening is the creation of a "NATO" for the Pacific. This one to deal with the Threat of China just like the original one was created after WW II to deal with the Threat of the USSR and European Communism.
What threat was that from China? Oh yeah that pesky balloon. But at least the 800 billion dollar "defense" budget managed to shoot it down, a little awkwardly, but still.
I would add to your points that our ability to finance war is unlimited, confirmed by the profligate funding of the Ukraine war.
Yes, it seems money for war comes out of nowhere. Who says alchemy is dead?
We turn dead bodies into gold.
That's what we have a Federal Reserve System and its and Treasury's printing presses for, Clif: To enable the magic of Deficit Spending and endless piling on of the National Debt.
That was the long answer, Ray.
Here's the short answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iwK0IFgZyQ&list=RDMM&start_radio=1&rv=8NhFEfOWhvc .
On Friday, November 22, 1963, i was a 17-year old high school senior hotshot co-captain of the football team thinking about tomorrow’s Home Coming Game with our arch cross-town rival, and this evening’s Pep Rally scheduled in the school gym.
Around 2:30, our Vice Principal ~ who had obviously been crying ~ stepped briefly into the classroom and motioned to our teacher of English Composition and Literature, Mr Cowie, to step outside the room.
When he returned, Mr Cowie ~ a Brit who had lost his left leg below the hip in the course of surviving Dunkirk
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation ], and then lost his entire family in The Battle of Britain
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain ], and had migrated to the US shortly after World War II ended ~ Mr Cowie very somberly and sadly informed us that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas, that all classes were immediately suspended, and that the Pep Rally and Game had been cancelled until further notice.
As we got ready to leave, he advised us to be very careful, and to realize, acknowledge, and accept that “Today is the end of the world as you know it, my friends…,” and that we needed to “prepare yourselves to deal with it.”
The second time i heard that phrase was on September 11, 2001, when my Wife ~ getting home from her shift as an Emergency Room Nurse Manager ~ gave me a big hug, and stated quite matter-of-factly: “This is definitely the end of the world as we know it, Love; definitely the end of that world.”
And the last time i and we all encountered TEOTWAWKI was The COVID Event of 2020, and the reaction, response, and actions taken by this nation’s federal, state, and local governments to deal with it. [Which, incidentally, failed completely.]
Today, this nation ~ and the entire planet ~ is hard up against the edge of another EOTWAWKI moment, from a variety of sources: economic, ecologic, military, and above all, political. But this time, that End Of The World could be literal and physical, and not merely rhetorical and metaphysical.
When the US Dollar loses its status as the World’s Reserve Currency, America and Americans will be doing more than just paying “the real costs of increased Inflation,” Ray.
THAT is the biggest meta-strategic Threat that China and Russia ~ along with the rest of BRICS and all those nations in the Global South being courted by it ~ present to the United States and its disintegrating Global Order.
And of course, America's response and solution to that looming disaster is and will continue to be to start a new War someplace. Or even better, several Wars in a variety of places.
For those here at BV unfamiliar with this whole issue, here are three different perspectives on it well worth the read and ponder:
* DE-DOLLARIZATION: WHAT HAPPENS IF THE DOLLAR LOSES RESERVE STATUS? at https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/de-dollarization-what-happens-if-the-dollar-loses-reserve-status .
* THE U.S. DOLLAR CONQUERED THE WORLD. IS IT AT RISK OF LOSING ITS TOP SPOT? at https://www.npr.org/2023/06/12/1181062016/dollar-reserve-currency-debt-ceiling-sanctions-china .
* WHAT HAPPENS IF THE DOLLAR LOSES RESERVE STATUS at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happens-dollar-loses-reserve-status-veritasgrouplimited/ .
Goes without saying, Bill, that this essay from 2007 is even more accurate and meaningful now than it was then.
Why Does Turning Against a War Never Include Admitting Who Was Right All Along?
August 19, 2023
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 19, 2023
The better part of a year into the current phase of the war in Ukraine, General Mark Milley accidentally blurted out that peace talks might be a good alternative to an endless bloody war for the same results. Now it’s becoming more acceptable in Washington, D.C., to anonymously whisper that he was right. But we’re lifetimes away from it becoming acceptable to mention that every single principled peace advocate on Earth had expressed that opinion openly and clearly several months earlier. It hasn’t even yet become acceptable to admit who was right about any past wars. The Korean War comes to mind as a vastly more destructive debacle. Smart people predicted what would happen at the start but have not been listened to the slightest bit more in the years after millions were killed by those with lives that matter, of whom tens of thousands would “die for a tie.”
As we hit the 1.5-year point in the current catastrophe in Ukraine — and other wars, larger and smaller, roll on without end — the polls are beginning to do what they always do. With Afghanistan and with Iraq, after about this much time you began to have U.S. majorities declare that the wars never should have been started. With Ukraine, this indicates a certain ability to care about (white) people who are not from the United States, but more so an ability to recognize that wars and militaries cost money. That could yet prove an incredibly valuable breakthrough. With Afghanistan and Iraq, the polls showed, for years, strong majorities both sure that the war they’d cheered and drooled and screamed for should never have happened and hesitant about ending it. This was principally a result of the doctrine of troopism: Thou shalt kill more troops so as not to have already killed troops in vain. But with Ukraine, it’s weapons (or, in the misleading media narrative, dollars) being sent, not troops. Nobody is proposing to send more weapons for the sake of the weapons already sent. So, there is the possibility of the U.S. public really turning against this war more quickly. (Of course it’s a public of the other partisan makeup, so we’ll have to see what that means.)
When the public turns against a war, the corporate media begins searching for wise voices. These are the voices of people who’ve supported disastrous war after sadistic horror after losing debacle for decades but who made some comment about certain reservations they might have had about this particular war. Maybe they accidentally exclaimed something about the financial cost in the presence of a reporter, or they put their name on a report at a weapons-funded stink tank about the greater importance of planning a war on China, or whatever. Today you have people shamelessly campaigning for Congress on their record of helping to destroy Iraq and murder a million Iraqis. And one reason why is that there was never any acknowledgement of the many individuals who were right about that war before it was begun, or even of the majority of voters who in 2006 said they were voting to end that war but ended up electing a Democratic Congress that esclated the war instead.
Of course, there were people inside the military establishment admitting privately (but not so privately) that the “surge” in Iraq wouldn’t accomplish its purported goals, and pointing out problems with the war from before day one — never moral problems, of course, but real and accurate and fairly obvious problems with foreign occupations. And of course there have been people on both sides of the current war in Ukraine privately (but with leaks) pointing out that there’s no victory in sight for either side. One of the reasons that peace activists have such an incredible streak of accuracy is that they look at what militaries are whispering and leaking, rather than believing highly improbable hype. But in the media’s “first draft of history” every intelligent person alive is supposed to have believed stupid stories about speedy victories, so that Milley’s accidentally saying the quiet part aloud is not understood as blurting out something forbidden but as actually grasping some unique insight into a problem the world’s thinkers were otherwise universally failing to comprehend.
But the people who get wars right time after time after time do so not simply by being willing to say what the corporate communications system forbids, but also by considering factors outside of how much money can be made off weapons, how many votes can be gained from machismo, how many interviews can be garnered by wartime rhetoric, or even how many years and bodies will be required to achieve some purpose. Other factors often considered include the increased risk of nuclear apocalypse, the financial tradeoffs, the impediments created to global cooperation on non-optional crises, the environmental destruction, the damage to politics and society at home, and of course the possibilities for resolution without killing, with better results possible prior to more death and destruction and bitterness and the building up of propaganda by each side about the other.
I’ve been reading a new book called My Country Is the World, a collection of speeches and interviews and articles by Staughton Lynd. Here’s someone who was right about the war on Vietnam prior, during, and after. And as a reward he was driven out of academia and erased. For some years in the 1960s he was able to find a voice in corporate newspapers and television. The transcript in the book of a debate with William F. Buckley is an exchange of opposing worldviews that never happens in U.S. media today — not because the “two sides” isolate, but because Buckley’s views are now pretty well established as the only possible views by every media outlet with money.
In Jonathan Eig’s new biography of Martin Luther King, there’s a part, near the end, where some of King’s friends and allies are upset at how willing he is to go against the advice of all of them, and yet how concerned he is not to displease others. When King wants to keep an appointment with Staughton Lynd, Bayard Rustin exclaims “Who the hell is Staughton Lynd?” The whole damn country might ask that. He’s certainly not someone with a national holiday, children’s books, monuments, and so forth. But, tweak the details, and he’s someone who has already eloquently debunked the next war the Pentagon comes up with. He’s one of thousands about whom we really should be asking, in all seriousness, and with the intention of educating ourselves: who the hell are they?
https://davidswanson.org/why-does-turning-against-a-war-never-include-admitting-who-was-right-all-along/
Thank You for posting this, Dennis. Particularly the reference to Staughton Lynd. i'd heard only Of him, and knew nothing about him. Just Kindled his book and am looking forward to it. ~ j
Yet another outstanding Thought-Provoker, Bill. Thank You for sharing it at this time.
i'm curious: Have You ever done a piece explaining the Seven Reasons Why ~ over these past 78 years ~ We Have Not Won Any Of All Those Wars We Can't Stop Making?
Maybe here, Jeff? From 2013
https://bracingviews.com/2013/07/26/the-u-s-militarys-limited-critique-of-itself-ensures-future-disasters/
Roger that and Thankee, Bill. Will take a look at it in bit; got some Boat Chores need attending to.
callous disregard for human life, especially death among the enemy! and no such concern as collateral damages!
one more observation, when Eisenhower describe the military industrial complex it was it was the weapons, over the next decades of cost overruns, delays and compromise of manufactured quality, the military industry has achieved success in developing the business model of doing contracted support.
to the extent that in the global war on terror the contractor sustainment of weapons that are not that reliable, the buyers ran out of money to buy repair processes, and the all volunteer force cost so much that the military industrial complex makes hundreds of billions 'keeping them flying', and steaming and treading!
Speaking of those “Merchants of Death” of the 20th century ~ those industrialists and bankers who drove America into World War I and were brought to Americans’ attention in the 1930s [and quickly forgotten] ~ here is A CANDLE IN A TIME OF DARKNESS about America’s MODs of the 21st century… :
THE MERCHANTS OF DEATH WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL (November 10-13, 2023)
The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal (November 10-13, 2023) will hold accountable — through testimony of witnesses — U.S. weapons manufacturers who knowingly produce and sell products which attack and kill not only combatants but non-combatants as well. These manufacturers may have committed Crimes Against Humanity as well as violated U.S. Federal criminal laws. The Tribunal will hear the evidence and render a verdict.
To reach the largest possible audience and to maximize international participation, the testimonies of the witnesses for the Tribunal will be video-recorded throughout the upcoming year as investigative teams identify witnesses and elicit their testimony. This will include testimonies from the victims of war, military and weapons analysts, lawyers, journalists, and moral philosophers and theologians.
[Note: Selected clips of Green Party Presidential candidate Dr Cornel West’s Interview for the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal is available at https://merchantsofdeath.org/2022/11/25/cornel-west-interview-clip-for-merchants-of-death-war-crimes-tribunal/ .
And i’m curious, Bill: Have You provided an Interview for the Tribunal? Your January 31, 2023 Tom Dispatch article “Can the Military-Industrial Complex Be Tamed?” is posted at https://merchantsofdeath.org/2023/02/02/can-the-military-industrial-complex-be-tamed/ ]
These recorded testimonies will then be presented to the Tribunal and a world-wide audience (via the internet) during the weekend of November 11, 2023. The opening session with the Tribunal members will be live (and livestreamed) providing an opportunity to introduce each Tribunal member, review the purpose of the Tribunal, the charges at issue, and the naming of the defendants. Similarly, the final session of the weekend will be live with Tribunal members discussing the evidence and offering their opinions and recommendations.
Teams of college and university students led by their professors and lawyers will conduct many of the aforementioned video interviews around the world. We will ask corporate directors of weapons manufacturers to sit for recorded interviews. A video library of these testimonies will be assembled over the course of the next year. The video testimonies will then be reviewed by lawyers and analysts to select those that are most pertinent.
By presenting prerecorded videos of the witnesses rather than live testimonies, we will create a structured and unique presentation of the evidence to the Tribunal. Technical interruptions and other delays during the Tribunal will be minimized. Additionally, the gathering of video evidence can begin soon.
An outline of the presentation is as follows:… [ Continued at https://merchantsofdeath.org/about/ ].
And to provide detailed background and context, an article entitled “War for Profit: A Very Short History” is available at https://merchantsofdeath.org/2023/05/10/war-for-profit-a-very-short-history/ .
Yes, I have, Jeff.
Roger that, Bill. Looking forward to it. Have a Great Sunday.
Bill: Earlier, You responded to my proposed NO WAR-FOR-PROFIT AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES with: “Jeff, I remember reading in a newspaper from the 1930s about efforts to take the profit motive out of war. It was a great idea then, a great idea today, but those who profit from war are calling the shots, pun intended.”
Thank You for directing me back to the 30s and those efforts. It tells me that taking the profit motive out of war was indeed a great idea then. And more importantly, that it is an even greater idea today.
But any attempt to sell that idea back in the 30s was doomed to fail from the outset.
By the mid-30s, America’s and Britain’s Ruling Financial/Political Class were already making plans to make happen the only thing that would or could get America and Britain out of The Great Depression: Another War just like the last one; only with even more World to be involved this time.
And by then, things were moving along quite well in Germany and Italy in Europe, and with Japan in East Asia, to make the likelihood of that Second World War more and more likely.
[Note: And reflecting on it, one can only wonder if that was the intent of America’s RF/PC in the first place: To make a Great Depression happen so as to ultimately have a Second World War. The settlement at Versailles to end the First World War certainly set the stage for Germany’s role in making a Second one virtually inevitable; at least in Europe.]
And it is important to remember what happened to those who questioned war as a profit-maker; particularly those who condemned the role of industrialists and bankers in getting the United States into “The Great War” ~ aka “The War to end all War” ~ in the first place, the so-called “Merchants of Death” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_death ].
Particularly when they went public with it. As in The Nye Committee:
“The Nye Committee, officially known as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, was a United States Senate committee (April 12, 1934 – February 24, 1936), chaired by U.S. Senator Gerald Nye (R-ND). The committee investigated the financial and banking interests that underlay the United States' involvement in World War I and the operations and profits of the industrial and commercial firms supplying munitions to the Allies and to the United States. It was a significant factor in public and political support for American neutrality in the early stages of World War II… .
“THE COMMITTEE DOCUMENTED THE HUGE PROFITS THAT ARMS FACTORIES HAD MADE DURING THE WAR. IT FOUND THAT BANKERS HAD PRESSURED WILSON TO INTERVENE IN THE WAR IN ORDER TO PROTECT THEIR LOANS ABROAD. ALSO, THE ARMS INDUSTRY WAS AT FAULT FOR PRICE-FIXING AND HELD EXCESSIVE INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY LEADING UP TO AND DURING WORLD WAR I.[6]
“According to the United States Senate website: ‘THE INVESTIGATION CAME TO AN ABRUPT END EARLY IN 1936. THE SENATE CUT OFF COMMITTEE FUNDING AFTER CHAIRMAN NYE BLUNDERED INTO AN ATTACK ON THE LATE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON. NYE SUGGESTED THAT WILSON HAD WITHHELD ESSENTIAL INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS AS IT CONSIDERED A DECLARATION OF WAR. Democratic leaders, including Appropriations Committee Chairman Carter Glass of Virginia, unleashed a furious response against Nye for 'dirtdaubing the sepulcher of Woodrow Wilson.' Standing before cheering colleagues in a packed Senate Chamber, Glass slammed his fist onto his desk until blood dripped from his knuckles.” [16]
“In her memoir, Appointment On The Hill (p. 169), Dorothy Detzer, an intimate eye-witness to the Committee's processes, summarizes: ‘The long exhaustive investigation ... produced A SORDID REPORT OF INTRIGUES AND BRIBERY; OF COLLUSION AND EXCESSIVE PROFITS; OF WAR SCARES ARTIFICIALLY FOSTERED AND [DISARMAMENT] CONFERENCES DELIBERATELY WRECKED.’ The ‘recommendations, accompanying the committee's reports to the Senate, were presented in a series of interlocking legislative measures ... The Neutrality Bill, providing for an embargo on arms and loans to nations at war, was the only legislation even partially enacted into law. But even it was crippled by its 'half-measure' provisions.” (p. 171). Source:[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee ; EMPHASES added ]
So the 1930s were not a very good time to try to sell “No War For Profit” to the American People.
One wonders if trying to sell it today would fare any better. Think there are any politicians in DC ~ or any who want to get there ~ who'd be interested in having a Nye Committee in their own name?
F-16s have touched down in Ukraine.
Great, we will see how they "perform" in real combat now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b0V78uT2nI
“Western governments invaded Iraq, dismantled Libya, interfered without success in Yemen and Syria. Yet North Korea causes all the trouble?” - Fuad Alakbarov, Exodus
Bill: Regarding Suggestion 3 for Capping the Wellsprings of War ~ “It’s time to make war a non-profit, last resort activity” ~ consider this, written and posted on Veterans Day, 2010, a couple of months after Tom Dispatch and CBS posted Your article... :
A NO WAR-FOR-PROFIT AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES: A Veterans’ Day 2010 Weekend Reflection, with an Indecent Proposal and a Question
“It was the Eleventh Minute of the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month.....”
And next Year, 2011, it will be “of the Eleventh Year....” Ninety-three years to the minute since “The End” of “The War To End All War,” in many otherWays and Wise known as World War I.
As a retired Centurion of The Empire ~ beginning, in this lifetime at least, Once Upon A Time, long, long, so Very Long ago in a place called Viet Nam ~ I spent my entire professional life (some 28 years total, 22 on active duty) studying and waging war, or preparing myself and others to wage war. And during that lifetime, War has not changed. At all. Only the Battlefields have changed. And the Weapons. And the Enemies. And, above All, The Victims..... :
“...the Names of the Places, and the Faces of the Wives and the Sons, and the Daughters;
of the Pain, and the Horror, and the cost-price dis-efficiencies and externalities
of the Slaughters...”
But the Perpetrators of War have not changed. Nor have the Perpetuators. And certainly not the Justifiers. But beyond all Them, what (and thus who) really hasn’t really changed in any way at all are The Beneficiaries of War: The Chosen Ones; those who, by War, expropriate Wealth and Power, so as to extract and consume and generate even more Power and more Wealth, so as to extract and obliterate even more. And More. And ever and even MORE, and MORE… . These Ones have most definitively, definitely, and decidedly NOT Changed. At all.
Since long, long, so Very Long before that eleventh minute of that eleventh hour of that eleventh day of that eleventh month, the Perpetrators, Perpetuators, Justifiers, and Beneficiaries ~ especially The Beneficiaries ~ of War have not changed.
So, one might be moved to ask: So What? Now What?
So. imagine ~ if you Can and Dare ~ if even for but a moment, that there are no Beneficiaries. That the answer to the simply elegant and ultimately eloquent Question of “War: CUI BONO?” is, quite simply elegantly and ultimately eloquently, “NoBody.”
EnVision, if You can, a world in which NoBody gains AnyThing , at All, from War. At least not AnyThing Economic or Political; at least not Wealth or Power. EnVision, if You dare, a World in which no employee, supervisor, manager, executive, stockholder; no politician, bureaucrat, advisor, political appointee, general or underlinging warrior; no imam or priest or rabbi nor any of their various and variously true believers; no conqueror, emperor, führer, or other self- (or media-)proclaimed would-be/wannabe god-on-Earth (or his Designated Liege)...... NoBody gains AnyThing from, by, through, with, as a result of, or because of War. NoBody. AnyThing. At all.
Because if you can imagine that World: then, perhaps you will thus begin to Begin to see exactly How and Why, then, that the Perpe-trators, Perpetuators, and Justifiers of War could and would be castrated: and thus rendered inert, irrelevant, and bankrupt; defeated, disarmed and dismantled, destroyed, dispersed, and disappeared.
And, even more importantly, you would begin to Begin to understand exactly Why and How, then, that the Beneficiaries of War would and could be not merely similarly castrated and rended and thus rendered inertly nil, but indeed also thus crucified on a Cross of Gold, made in their own image and fashioned by their own hand.
And that finally and thus, with NoBody to benefit, gain, or otherWays profit from War, that there would Be No War.
So What? Now What? Any Suggestions? Oh, and the Question is: When will You weary of the all the BullShit?
Happy Veterans Day. See you at 11:11:11 on 11.11.11. /s/
Appendix: A No War-For-Profit Amendment to the Constitution of The United States
1. Any and/or All organizations or individuals doing business with the Military-Industrial-FatherLand Security Complex (MIFLS-C) will and thus must be publicly-held NON-PROFIT enterprises.
2. No individual, bank, and/ or any other financial or other institution (including foreign nations’ and their money-lenders) doing business with the MIFLS-C may earn any interest or other profit from loans, bonds, or any other fiduciary instruments used by the Government of The United States to finance or otherwise “pay for” this nation’s Wars-by-Credit Card of the 21st century.
3. No print, electronic, and/or internet-based news or otherwise info-entertainment media organization may be owned and/or operated by any organization or individual doing business with the MIFLS-C.
###
Jeff, I remember reading in a newspaper from the 1930s about efforts to take the profit motive out of war. It was a great idea then, a great idea today, but those who profit from war are calling the shots, pun intended.
And because we have people in government who are bullies and war gives them license to bully others. We saw how Covid gave bullies license to lock down the rest of us and impose useless masking rules. It's the same with war only more so.
To stay on subject:
Lots of folks make lots of money of war and that's why here in the US its a 100 plus billion dollar industry. We pay. They make $$$$$ And the 'other' die.
Surely there is a psychological dimension that helps explain events. It's not all dollars and cents accounting.
i agree completely, Alex: There is a very definite psychological dimension at work here. But dollars and cents accounting plays the dominant role in actually making all of America's wars happen.
Altho of course, there is a psychological dimension to that fact of life, as well.
OK.
The psychology of war. Why do we prefer war over diplomacy. The logic please.
The same reason kids play king of the hill. The desire to be dominant. "We won't back down", which is reasoning that sustains many a war.
That explains the psychology of the Leaders and their Staffs [civilian and military] who perpetrate and perpetuate war, Alex.
But what is the psychological explanation for why the American People so easily and readily go along with all the Bullshit?
Make that close to a Trillion dollar a year industry, Dennis; not a mere 100 plus Billioner.
Oops.
Off a few 000s
My bad.
Thanks for the correction.
I listened to the first 30 minutes, Ray. I think the colonel is exaggerating Ukraine's casualties and underestimating Russian ones. History suggests that the casualties are probably similar for both sides since it's symmetrical warfare. Certainly, the war didn't start well for Russia, nor is it going well right now for Ukraine.
I agree with the colonel that the war was avoidable and that diplomatic efforts should be made to end it before it escalates further.
One thing: the colonel doesn't share his sources for his estimates of casualties etc.