OMNI NEWSLETTER ON US MILITARISM: IT’S THE WAR DEPARTMENT, March 23, 2011, compiled by Dick Bennett [All the posts of this Blog seek to expose the enormous lie of the “Defense Department” and to return it to its true title, the “War Department.”]
Contents
Peace Studies vs. Security Studies
It’s the War Department
Permanent War
Civilian and Military
War/Pentagon Spending (2)
Resistance: Cost of Wars Sign
Holbrooke, Hero of War Department
Books on US Warfare State
PEACE STUDIES
I read the other day that Johan Galtung, maybe the world's greatest thinker about peace studies, said that Security Studies were for domination and wars, and Peace Studies for alternatives and solutions. (http://www.transcend.org/)
IT’S THE WAR DEPARTMENT
(This was written around 2000. US empire and aggressions have escalated since then, and in 2011, now under a Democratic president, our nation occupies two large countries and is bombing three more—Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya.)
We can all name instances of U.S.
In 1947, gearing up for the Cold War, the U. S. U. S.
William Blum in Killing Hope discusses 54 US military and CIA invasions and interventions since WWII. Following are my categories of those wars against health, prosperity, and peace with some examples from his book.
1. Violent land and air invasions in violation of international laws and treaties and against U.S.
Violation of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8); violation of the War Powers Resoution of 1973 (50 USCA Sec. 1541-1548. Sec. 2 ©); violation of treaties (UN Charter) which are “the supreme law of the land” (Article VI, Section 2).
2. Violent land and air invasions in violation of international laws and treaties and against U. S. laws not resulting in the overthrow of the nation but causing enormous suffering and property damage:
3. Chemical Warfare in violation of numerous treaties: Korean War , Vietnam War,1st and 2nd Iraq
See Endicott and Hagerman, and numerous books on the Vietnam War.
4. Terroristic bombings of sovereign nations in violation of international laws and treaties:
5. Assistance to a military coup in toppling a foreign government disliked by the US.:
6. Assisting a right-wing government to repress a rebellion:
7. Assassination of the leader of a foreign nation, directly or in complicity:
Diem of South Vietnam , Allende of Chile
Violation of Executive Order prohibiting assassination or conspiracy to assassinate (Exec. Order 12,333, Sec. 2-305; see also US Army Field Manual 27-10 [1956]).
8. Attempted assassination :
Castro of Cuba , Kaddafy of Libya , Saddam Hussein of Iraq
Violation of Executive Order prohibiting assassination or conspiracy to assassinate (Exec. Order 12,333, Sec. 2-305; see also US Army Field Manual 27-10 [1956]). Blum, Killing Hope, p. 453, lists 33 foreign leaders the US
9. Overthrow of the government of a foreign nation via electoral subversion:
10. Training of foreign soldiers for repression in their countries resulting in atrocities: The School of the Americas , Fort Benning , GA.
11. Attempted alteration of a foreign government via electoral subversion:
too many to list!
None of these actions had anything to do with defense of the United States , but everything to do with the arrogance of power and US
Note on the “just war” doctrine of 8 principles:
The doctrine requires that for the licit employment of lethal force, four criteria must be present simultaneously: 1) the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; 2) all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective (violence the last resort); 3) there must be serious prospects of success; and 4) the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. Not one of the above depredations meets these criteria.
Note on the alleged threat to the U.S.
One reaps what one sows. Our leaders, by massively and repeatedly attacking the world, have created the precedent for attacks upon us. If the U.S. U. S.
See below for a short list of books that examine the US
To receive an “It’s the WAR Department” bumper sticker, send a stamped and addressed envelope to Dick Bennett, 2582 Jimmie Ave. , Fayetteville , AR , 72703-3420 . E-mail: jbennet@uark.edu
PERMANENT WAR
John Cory, “The Normal of War” [the bombing of Libya
John Cory writes: "War is so normal, so mundane, that we just accept it - like checking the daily weather report - cloudy, with a chance of gloom and death ... No worries though, this will be a short intervention. A matter of days and then it will be handed off to NATO supervision. A few missiles, a few bombs on carefully selected targets and it will all be over. Clean. Distant. Uninvolved. Death by technology. No muss, no fuss. Long war, short war, and in-between war. One size fits all. Step right up. War is our new normal."
The Civilian and the Military by Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.
By elaborating on the role of the civilian and the military in American history up through the mid-twentieth century, the author helps us understand why the growing power and importance of the armed forces over many aspects of national and international policy is alarming for thoughtful citizens and policy makers today.
By elaborating on the role of the civilian and the military in American history up through the mid-twentieth century, the author helps us understand why the growing power and importance of the armed forces over many aspects of national and international policy is alarming for thoughtful citizens and policy makers today.
Despite Talk of Cuts, Pentagon Spending Still Going Up
Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy News
Excerpt: "The proposal still foresees military spending growing by three percent next year, to $553 billion, not including spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Defense Spending Is Much Greater than You Think
By Robert Higgs
Saturday April 17, 2010 at 2:50:18 PM PDT
Saturday April 17, 2010 at 2:50:18 PM PDT
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When President Obama presented his budget recently for fiscal year 2011, he proposed that the Pentagon’s outlays be increased by about 4.5 percent beyond its estimated outlays in fiscal 2010, to a total of almost $719 billion. Although many Americans regard this enormous sum as excessive, few appreciate that the total amount of all defense-related spending greatly exceeds the amount budgeted for the Department of Defense.
In fiscal year 2009, which ended last September, the Pentagon spent $636.5 billion. Lodged elsewhere in the budget, however, other lines identify funding that serves defense purposes just as surely as—sometimes even more surely than—the money allocated to the Department of Defense. On occasion, commentators take note of some of these additional defense-related budget items, such as the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program, but many such items, including some extremely large ones, remain generally unrecognized.
Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, many observers probably would agree that its budget ought to be included in any complete accounting of defense costs. After all, the homeland is what most of us want the government to defend in the first place.
Other agencies also spend money in pursuit of homeland security. The Justice Department, for example, includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which devotes substantial resources to an anti-terrorist program. The Department of the Treasury claims to have “worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice and the intelligence community to disrupt targets related to al Qaeda, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as to disrupt state sponsorship of terror.”
Much, if not all, of the budget for the Department of State and for international assistance programs ought to be classified as defense-related, too. In this case, the money serves to buy off potential enemies and to reward friendly governments who assist U.S. U.S.
Two big budget items represent the current cost of defense goods and services obtained in the past. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which is authorized to spend about $124 billion in the current fiscal year, falls in this category. Likewise, a great deal of the government’s interest expense on publicly held debt represents the current cost of defense outlays financed in the past by borrowing from the public.
To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2009, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $636.5 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.7 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $51.7 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $36.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $95.5 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $54.9 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2009 total by nearly half again, to $901.5 billion.
Finding out how much of the government’s net interest payments on the publicly held national debt ought to be attributed to past debt-funded defense spending requires a considerable amount of calculation. I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year’s ratio of narrowly defined national security spending—military, veterans, and international affairs—to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 67.6 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2009. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government’s net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending. The total amount so attributed comes to $126.3 billion.
Adding this interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $1,027.8 billion, which is 61.5 percent greater than the Pentagon’s outlays alone.
In similar analyses I conducted previously for fiscal 2002 and for fiscal 2006, total defense-related spending was even greater relative to Pentagon spending alone – it was 73 percent greater in fiscal 2002 and 87 percent greater in fiscal 2006. In fiscal 2009, the ratio was held down in large part by the reduced cost of servicing the government’s debt, owing to the extremely low interest rates that prevailed on government securities. This situation cannot last much longer. As interest rates on the Treasury’s securities rise, so will the government’s cost of servicing the debt attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays.
For fiscal 2010, which is still in progress, the president’s budget estimates that the Pentagon’s spending will run more than $50 billion above the previous year’s total. Any supplemental appropriations made before September 30 will push the total for fiscal 2010 even farther above the trillion-dollar mark.
Although I have arrived at my conclusions honestly and carefully, I may have left out items that should have been included—the federal budget is a gargantuan, complex, and confusing collection of documents. If I have done so, however, the left-out items are not likely to be relatively large ones. (I have deliberately ignored some minor items, such as outlays for the Selective Service System, the National Defense Stockpile, and the anti-terrorist activities conducted by the FBI and the Treasury.
For now, however, the conclusion seems inescapable: the government is currently spending at a rate well in excess of $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes. Owing to the financial debacle and the ongoing recession, millions are out of work, millions are losing their homes, and private earnings remain well below their previous peak, but in the military-industrial complex, the gravy train speeds along the track faster and faster.
National Security Outlays in Fiscal Year 2009 (billions of dollars) | |
Department of Defense | 636.5 |
Department of Energy (nuclear weapons & environ. cleanup) | 16.7 |
Department of State (plus intern. assistance) | 36.3 |
Department of Veterans Affairs | 95.5 |
Department of Homeland Security | 51.7 |
Department of the Treasury (for Military Retirement Fund) | 54.9 |
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (1/2 of total) | 9.6 |
Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays | 126.3 |
Total | 1,027.5 |
Source: Author’s classifications and calculations; basic data from U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011 and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. | |
RESISTANCE TO WAR SPENDING
[Actually, every revelation of facts and truth, every exposure of the Pentagon and US
ONGOING COST OF WAR SIGN
There is a link within the email about how to set one up in your own town. They have outlined what they did - http://www.binghamtonbridge.org/?q=node/1131
WHY WARS, WHY MASS SLAUGHTER? NATIONALISM and the WAR DEPARTMENT
Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust, and War by Richard Koenigsberg
But what if destruction and self-destruction are the fundamental purpose of warfare? This is the conclusion that I have reached. More precisely, perhaps warfare is undertaken as a form of sacrifice—a gigantic potlatch—whereby human beings give over their bodies and possessions to objects of worship with names like France, Germany, Japan, America, etc.
We would prefer not to know that this is the case. We still exist within the heart of the storm. Nationalism is a living religion, so powerful that we barely conceive of it as a religion. Yet Carolyn Marvin in her ground-breaking Blood Sacrifice and the Nation (1999) develops a theory similar to the one I present in this book. She shows how warfare and sacrifice function to support and sustain the idea of the nation.
I explore this idea in Chapter III of this book, “As the Soldier Dies, So the Nation Comes Alive,” as well as in Chapter V, in which I examine parallels between the First World War and the Aztec performance of warfare as a ritual sacrifice. Are we in the Western World similar to the Aztecs in that we sacrifice human beings in the name of our Gods?
Sadly, it would appear that this is the case. The difference is that the Aztecs were aware that warfare was a sacrificial ritual, whereas we in the West are not yet aware of this. One objective of this book is to help us to become conscious of the central role of sacrifice in our political rituals.
Marvin writes about blood sacrifice in war as the “totem secret.” The fact that nations create warfare as a sacrificial ritual is something that we are not supposed to know. Indeed, we don’t wish to know that this is the case. What would it mean if people were to become aware that warfare is an institution whose purpose is to sacrifice—or kill—people?
Hitler nearly understood this. He realized that nations have the right to kill. The purpose of this book is to provide documentation showing how nations act in the name of killing or sacrificing people. We understand that nations have the right to kill, but assume there are specific reasons why states find it necessary to go to war.
But what if it turns out that the production of sacrificial violence and victims is an essential function of the nation-state? What if wars are waged not for specific reasons, rather in order to produce opportunities for killing and dying? What if it turns out that killing (producing sacrificial victims) is one of the fundamental purposes of collective acts of violence? If we become capable of knowing this, will it make a difference?
EXAMPLE OF THE WAR DEPARTMENT WARRIOR OF US NATIONAL SECURITY STATE
“Richard Holbrooke represented the worst side of the foreign policy establishment”
by Stephen Zunes, Huffington Post (15 December 2010)
The many accolades coming out following the sudden death on Monday of veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke and his death bed conversion in opposing the Iraq
Holbrooke got his start in the Foreign Service during the 1960s in the notorious pacification programs in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. This ambitious joint civilian-military effort not only included horrific human rights abuses, but also proved to be a notorious failure in curbing the insurgency against the US-backed regime in Saigon . This was an inauspicious start in the career of someone Obama appointed as his special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan to help curb the insurgency against those US-backed governments.
In the late 1970s, Holbrooke served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. In this position, he played a major role in formulating the Carter administration's support for Indonesia 's occupation of East Timor and the bloody counterinsurgency campaign responsible for up to a quarter-million civilian deaths. Having successfully pushed for a dramatic increase in US
Later, in reference to his friend Paul Wolfowitz, then the US ambassador to Indonesia, Holbrooke described how "Paul and I have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."
In a particularly notorious episode while heading the State Department's East Asia division, Holbrooke convinced Carter to release South Korean troops under US command in order to suppress a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju
He also convinced President Jimmy Carter to continue its military and economic support for the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines
In the late 1990s, as the US
As special representative to Cyprus in 1997, Holbrooke unsuccessfully pushed the European Union to admit Turkey
Holbrooke is perhaps best known for his leadership in putting together the 1995 Dayton Accords, which formally ended the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Though widely praised in some circles for his efforts, Holbrooke remains quite controversial for his role. For instance, the agreement allowed Bosnian Serbs to hold on to virtually all of the land they had seized and ethnically cleansed in the course of that bloody conflict. Indeed, rather than accept the secular concept of national citizenship that has held sway in Europe for generations, Holbrooke helped impose sectarian divisions that have made the country - unlike most of its gradually liberalizing Balkan neighbors - unstable, fractious and dominated by illiberal ultra-nationalists.
As with previous US officials regarding their relations with Iraq 's Saddam Hussein and Panama 's Manuel Noriega, Holbrooke epitomizes the failed US Serbia , Holbrooke successfully argued that the Clinton administration should back Milosevic, in recognition of his role in the successful peace deal over Bosnia
In response to increased Serbian oppression in Kosovo just a couple years later, however, Holbrooke became a vociferous advocate of the 1999 US-led bombing campaign, leading to victory of the hard-line KLA in Kosovo. Meanwhile, in Serbia , the bombing creating a nationalist reaction that set back the reconstituted pro-democracy in Serbia
Scott Ritter, the former chief UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector, who correctly assessed the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and predicted a disastrous outcome for the US invasion, observed, "not only has he demonstrated a lack of comprehension when it comes to the complex reality of Afghanistan (not to mention Pakistan), Holbrooke has a history of choosing the military solution over the finesse of diplomacy." Noting how the Dayton Accords were built on the assumption of a major and indefinite NATO military presence, which would obviously be far more problematic in Afghanistan and Pakistan than in Europe , Ritter added: "This does not bode well for the Obama administration."
Ironically, back in 2002-2003, when the United States had temporarily succeeded in marginalizing Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, Holbrooke was a strong supporter of redirecting American military and intelligence assets away from the region in order to invade and occupy Iraq
It was unclear, then, why Obama chose someone like Holbrooke for such a sensitive post. Indeed, as the past two years have shown, Holbrooke's efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan
BOOKS
In Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, Me: Common Courage, 1995), the author William Blum lists all of the instances of use of US armed forces abroad from 1798 to 1945 (pp. 444-452).
A few of the many more books on US militarism and imperialism: T. D. Allman, Unmanifest Destiny: Mayhem and Illusion in American Foreign Policy—from Monroe Doctrine to Reagan’s War in El Salvador; Loren Baritz, Backfire; William Boyer, Education for Annihilation; Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy; Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide; Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The Washington Connection & Third World Fascism; Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time and The Children are Dying; Fred Cook, The Warfare State; Bill Davidson, Jane Fonda; David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail; James Donovan, Militarism U.S.A.; Endicott and Hageman, The U. S. and Biological Warfare; Mansour Farhang, U.S. Imperialism: From the Spanish-American War to the Iranian Revolution; J. W. Fulbright, The Pentagon Propaganda Machine and The Arrogance of Power; Joseph Gerson, The Deadly Connection: Nuclear War & U.S. Intervention; John Galbraith, How to Control the Military; James Gibson, Warrior Dreams; Graham and Gurr, Violence in America; William Greider, Fortress America; Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism; William Hartung, And Weapons for All; Juergen Heise, Minimum Disclosure: How the Pentagon Manipulates the News; Edward Herman, The Real Terror Network; John Hersey, Hiroshima; Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America; Sam Keen, Faces of the Enemy; Michael Klare, American Arms Supermarket; Knoll and McFadden, eds., American Militarism 1970; Sidney Lens, The Day Before Doomsday, The Forging of the American Empire, and The Military Industrial Complex; Robert Lifton, Home from the War; Jack Manno, Arming the Heavens: The Hidden Military Agenda for Space, 1945-1995; Walter Millis, An End to Arms; Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, School of Assassins; Michael Parenti, The Sword and the Dollar; Nancy Peters, ed., War after War; Poiner and O’Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous; Betty Reardon, Sexism and the War System; Joseph Rotblat, Nuclear Weapons; Lisa Shirc, Keeping the Peace; Gene Sharp, Civilian-Based Defense; Michael True, To Construct Peace; Miles Wolpin, America Insecure; Roland Worth, Jr., No Choice But War: The U. S. Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific; Mark Zepezauer, The CIA’s Greatest Hits. Some recent books: Burbach and Tarbell, Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire (2004); James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (2006); Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis:The Last Days of the American Republic (2006); Arundhati Roy, War Talk (2003); Sardar and Davies, Why Do People Hate America?(2002); Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005).
NOTE FROM A VIETNAM
This was a popular phrase among GI's in Vietnam
"we are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary, for the ungrateful".
END OF NEWSLETTER ON THE US
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