Be Careful What You Wish For

What would you think and say if it became clear that the Pentagon were to find itself fighting for its life, like the financial markets are today?

It's tempting to say that one could only wish, but it's also true that one needs to be careful what one wishes for.

Here's an essay which should spawn some really good discussion. It speculates about the demise of the Pentagon.

What would happen to our economy if suddenly the Pentagon stopped buying weapons of war?

One needs only look at the percentage of the work force employed directly or indirectly in the design, manufacture and sale of such weapons. Without those jobs the unemployment rate would skyrocket, resulting in virtually instant Depression.

Weapons are for fighting, which requires an enemy. The unravelling of the USSR deprived us of Enemy No. 1, the Evil Empire of Ronald Reagan, initiator of the arms buildup of all time.

As is true in most kinds of unhealthy, self defeating behavior there is usually a co-dependency at work. The US and the USSR were co-dependents, enablers of each other's apparent self destructive behavior. But at the same time that behavior created millions of jobs in both lands.

The neocons have found a way to declaw the threat of being deprived of our enemies as defined by countries. They have declared war on terrorism, which by definition has no end. In that sense the neocons have become our enemy from one point of view, and our benefactor from another.

In the abstract it seems we should have as our work the banishing of war. In reality that would, as our economy is presently constituted, be our undoing.

And even beyond that, the human species, as descended from other species of Nature, continues to act as if its survival is dependent upon intimidating, if not destroying, others. This is the ultimate in co-dependency; Survival of the Fittest, through Natural Selection, the prime mover of Darwinian Evolution.

It's baffling that so-called Conservatives have become the champions of destruction at the expense of conservation. They eschew Survival of the Fittest as a science but publicly practice it in the socio/economic sphere. The Conservative mantra and ideology is, You're Own Your Own. Social justice is for wimps. And these are the same folks who claim Jesus as their personal lord and savior, conveniently ignoring the give-your-enemy-your-shirt nature of his message and teachings.

Further considering this through the lens of politics, it's unrealistic to expect that much will change, especially quickly, regardless of who becomes President and the size of the majorities in both houses of Congress. Politicians and the military/industrial complex reward each other in the process of insuring that we remain a superpower, under the guise of national security, but actually in order to spread our hegemony over the globe for the purpose of intimidation, leading to the theft of resources

Talk about co-dependency!!

The neocons, abetted by their bought-and-paid-for politicians, continue to fan the flames of ethnic hatred around the world, thus preparing future battlefields for Beta testing their new toys. This is a brilliant strategy as seen from the point of view of arms manufacturers and the military. It is no longer dependent on one or a few countries to be enemies. In fact it's others' behavior which is targeted, with no need to be concerned about boundaries of sovereign countries. Behavior requires other people to exhibit it. If the neocons don't like a peoples' behavior, they are branded as terrorists.

As it's been observed many times, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Carl Jung provided a way to evaluate behavior; consider the results; beneficent or destructive? And you'll know it when you see it.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the conflict is defined as a war on terrorism, not a war on those countries. The wars just happen to be within their borders.

To take it even farther, it's not really a war on terrorism. That's merely a euphemism for an attempt to grab resources which exist inside borders; in the case of Iraq it's oil. The big irony is that the neocons wanted Iraq's oil so badly that they undermined the retaliatory move against Afghanistan as the enabler of the 911 attacks in order to invade Iraq for its oil.

For a really good education on this topic, check out Resource Wars, by Michael T. Klare, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, New York, 2001. It was written and published before 911, but seems anticpatory of it.

Leanderthal, Lighthouse Keeper