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Banned
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Originally Posted by Seaver
Tied together when we have a common enemy.
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RE: "a common enemy"
Do doubts ever creep in, Seaver? Ever, ever?
Can anyone recall, or post an example of when the US mainland was ever commonly, or familiarly referred to frequently, before these guys, as "the homeland"?
Quote:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/034...g,47830,1.html
The Widening Crusade
Bush's War Plan Is Scarier Than He's Saying
by Sydney H. Schanberg
October 15 - 21, 2003
.....yet if the Bush White House is going to use its preeminent military force to subdue and neutralize all "evildoers" and adversaries everywhere in the world, the American public should be told now. Such an undertaking would be virtually endless and would require the sacrifice of enormous blood and treasure.
With no guarantee of success. And no precedent in history for such a crusade having lasting effect......
...For those who would dispute the assertion that the Bush Doctrine is a global military-based policy and is not just about liberating the Iraqi people, it's crucial to look back to the policy's origins and examine its founding documents.
The Bush Doctrine did get its birth push from Iraq—specifically from the outcome of the 1991 Gulf war, when the U.S.-led military coalition forced Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait but stopped short of toppling the dictator and his oppressive government. The president then was a different George Bush, the father of the current president. The father ordered the military not to move on Baghdad, saying that the UN resolution underpinning the allied coalition did not authorize a regime change. Dick Cheney was the first George Bush's Pentagon chief. He said nothing critical at the time, but apparently he came to regret the failure to get rid of the Baghdad dictator.
A few years later, in June 1997, a group of neoconservatives formed an entity called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and issued a Statement of Principles. "The history of the 20th Century," the statement said, "should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire." One of its formal principles called for a major increase in defense spending "to carry out our global responsibilities today." Others cited the "need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values" and underscored "America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles." This, the statement said, constituted "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."
Among the 25 signatories to the PNAC founding statement were Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), Donald Rumsfeld (who was also defense secretary under President Ford), and Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's No. 2 at the Pentagon, who was head of the Pentagon policy team in the first Bush presidency, reporting to Cheney, who was then defense secretary). Obviously, this fraternity has been marinating together for a long time. Other signers whose names might ring familiar were Elliot Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Norman Podhoretz.
Three years and several aggressive position papers later—in September 2000, just two months before George W. Bush, the son, was elected president—the PNAC put military flesh on its statement of principles with a detailed 81-page report, <a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf">"Rebuilding America's Defenses."</a> The report set several "core missions" for U.S. military forces, which included maintaining nuclear superiority, expanding the armed forces by 200,000 active-duty personnel, and "repositioning" those forces "to respond to 21st century strategic realities."
The most startling mission is described as follows: "Fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." The report depicts these potential wars as "large scale" and "spread across [the] globe."
Another escalation proposed for the military by the PNAC is to "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions."
As for homeland security, the PNAC report says: "Develop and deploy global missile defenses <h3>to defend the American homeland</h3> and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world. Control the new 'international commons' of space and 'cyberspace,' and pave the way for the creation of a new military service—U.S. Space Forces—with the mission of space control."
Perhaps the eeriest sentence in the report is found on page 51: "The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, <h3>absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor."....</h3>
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Quote:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=798
On Crackpot Realism: An Homage to C. Wright Mills
February 18, 2003
Robert Higgs
....Between those two volumes, however, he wrote a little book called The Causes of World War Three (Simon and Schuster 1958). In that passionate and ideologically inspired tract, Mills explicated a concept that I have called to mind frequently over the years—never more however than in the past year and a half—the concept of “crackpot realism.”
For Mills, this signified a frame of mind characteristic of what another elite theorist, Thomas R. Dye, has called “the serious people” of the governing circles. Such people are to be distinguished from the glad-handing, back-slapping buffoons who seek and gain election to public office. The electoral office seekers are specialists: they know how to get votes, but as a rule they know nothing about how to “run a railroad,” whether that railroad be a business, a government agency, or any other sort of large operating organization. So, after the election, the elected office holders always turn to the serious people to run the show—the Dick Cheneys and the Donald Rumsfelds, to pick not so randomly from the current corps.....
Among the more timeless of his insights, I believe, is his understanding of crackpot realism. I extract a few lines here to illustrate his thinking about this matter (taken from pp. 86–88 of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0873323572/theindepeende-20">The Causes of World War Three</a>). <h2>As you read these thoughts, consider whether they might be as applicable today as they were forty-five years ago:</h2>
In crackpot realism, a high-flying moral rhetoric is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands. In fact, the main content of “politics” is now a struggle among men equally expert in practical next steps—which, in summary, make up the thrust toward war—and in great, round, hortatory principles. (p. 86)
. . . The expectation of war solves many problems of the crackpot realists; it also confronts them with many new problems. Yet these, the problems of war, often seem easier to handle. They are out in the open: to produce more, to plan how to kill more of the enemy, to move materials thousands of miles. . . . So instead of the unknown fear, the anxiety without end, some men of the higher circles prefer the simplification of known catastrophe. (p. 87)
. . . They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out—except war—which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war—as they used to be. For they still believe that “winning” means something, although they never tell us what. (p. 88)
. . . Some men want war for sordid, others for idealistic, reasons; some for personal gain, others for impersonal principle. But most of those who consciously want war and accept it, and so help to create its “inevitability,” want it in order to shift the locus of their problems. (p. 88)
Besides Mills’s own writings, readers interested in his ideas may wish to read the well-done biography by Irving Louis Horowitz, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029149703/theindepeende-20">C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian</a> (The Free Press 1983).
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Last edited by host; 12-24-2007 at 04:20 PM..
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