Endless War

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Michael

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Key Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, leave no doubt that Endless War is official U.S. Doctrine

"I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war. But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless.”
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- Glenn Greenwald (2014)

Never ending war is really perfect if you think about it from a Statist's POV. An endless War. Near limitless political power. An ocean of functionally illiterate cannon-fodder to play with. Plus, once the entire economy is on a War footing - everyone gets to live poorer except those Crony-Capitalists in key industries that make the State's murder devices.

Not to mention, ask any Keynesian (like Paul Krugman - who dreams of using War to 'turn the economy around' (see: Paul Krugman: Fake Alien Invasion Would End Economic Slump (VIDEO]) and they'll all back up the need of the State and war and you. Yes, even heaping glory and praise on our idiotic CONgressmen and women (See: Nobel Peace Prize).

Yes, of course, our Political "Servants" are total sociopaths. But, meh. Welcome to rule by the Chattel Class. Listen to one of our psychopaths-in-chief: Former CIA director Leon Panetta (30-year war). Reminds me of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the dream of all Statists: A never ending War.

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” he says, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere"
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- Leon Panetta (2014)

The underbelly of the Progressive Socialism, is the Police State needed to enforce it. A Police State requires a never ending War. It's that simple. Keep the Chattel Class slightly afraid, tax them to death, rinse, repeat.

Of course, in a free society, free people trade with one another using law (that protects your body as YOUR body and that upholds contract) in an agreed upon money. It's pretty simple. Laborers don't have to pay a labor-tax to the state in a free society. It's understood that free people are the ones who actually provide one another with the goods and services needed and that the use of force against innocent people is not needed nor desired. As a matter of fact, a social need (good or service) in a free society is an opportunity to trade. People spend most of their productive lives either preparing for, looking for or trying to meet these needs. Of course, you need a sort of type of person who wants to be free, wants to work, is mostly honest - everything America isn't. No, Americans like things for 'free'. And they like magic nice-sounding intentions expressed in simple catchy-phrases.

Change We Can Believe In.
I am not a Crook.
Hope and Change.
I'm really good at killing people.

Progressive Socialism sounds like propaganda because it is. The State is, by it's very nature and at it's core - the use of force against innocent humans. That's how it delineates itself from the private sector - by it's inherent immorality. Well, 101 years of Progressive Socialism have robbed us of unimagined prosperity and given us never ending war needed to maintain the oxymoron that is Progressive Socialism.

Enjoy the New Economy the Progressive Sociopaths have given us and the Endless War that's needed to prop it up.
 
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Leon Panetta, the long-time Democratic Party operative who served as Obama’s Defense Secretary and CIA Director, said this week of Obama’s new bombing campaign: “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war.” Only in America are new 30-year wars spoken of so casually, the way other countries speak of weather changes. He added that the war “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” And elsewhere: not just a new decades-long war with no temporal limits, but no geographic ones either. He criticized Obama – who has bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries plus the Muslim minority in the Phillipines (almost double the number of countries Bush bombed) – for being insufficiently militaristic, despite the fact that Obama officials themselves have already instructed the public to think of The New War “in terms of years.”

Then we have Hillary Clinton (whom Panetta gushed would make a “great” president). At an event in Ottawa yesterday, she proclaimed that the fight against these “militants” will “be a long-term struggle” that should entail an “information war” as “well as an air war.” The new war, she said, is “essential” and the U.S. shies away from fighting it “at our peril.” Like Panetta (and most establishment Republicans), Clinton made clear in her book that virtually all of her disagreements with Obama’s foreign policy were the by-product of her view of Obama as insufficiently hawkish, militaristic and confrontational.

At this point, it is literally inconceivable to imagine the U.S. not at war. It would be shocking if that happened in our lifetime. U.S. officials are now all but openly saying this. “Endless War” is not dramatic rhetorical license but a precise description of America’s foreign policy.

Just yesterday, Bloomberg reported: “Led by Lockheed Martin Group (LTM), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.” Particularly exciting is that “investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq”; moreover, “the U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.” ISIS is using U.S.-made ammunition and weapons, which means U.S. weapons companies get to supply all sides of The New Endless War; can you blame investors for being so giddy?

I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless. Both Bush and Obama officials have explicitly said that the war will last at least a generation. The nature of the “war,” and the theories that have accompanied it, is that it has no discernible enemy and no identifiable limits. More significantly, this “war” fuels itself, provides its own inexhaustible purpose, as it is precisely the policies justified in the name of Stopping Terrorism that actually ensure its spread (note how Panetta said the new U.S. war would have to include Libya, presumably to fight against those empowered by the last U.S. war there just 3 years ago)
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-- Glenn Greenwald (2014)
 
I'd agree that what Hillary said is true because WW1, WW2, Korea war, Vietnam war were all started by DEMOCRATS.
 
Why are you talking specifically about Democrats only, why are you attempting to connect Democrats with Socialism, and why are you once again confusing Socialism with Statism in general and a Police State in particular?

Is the complete alignment of your language and obsessions with rightwing corporate propaganda, designed to abet a corporate capitalist takeover of political power and removal of governmental taxation and oversight, a coincidence?

cosmic said:
I'd agree that what Hillary said is true because WW1, WW2, Korea war, Vietnam war were all started by DEMOCRATS
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The notion that anyone in the US started WWI or WWII is bizarre.

As far as the Korean and Vietnam wars: That was back when the Confederacy was still rejecting the Party of Lincoln. Since the Klan and its fellow travelers transferred their allegiance to the Republican Party, the warmongering has found its base there.
 
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As long as we're reviewing history, we might notice that Panetta and Clinton (quoted in the OP) both started out as Republicans, and both switched Parties at about the time Nixon's racebaiting "Southern Strategy" was taking hold and bringing the Confederacy into the Republican camp. A fairly large number of American politicians switched Parties in those couple of decades culminating in Reagan's re-election as President, although Clinton may have had other motives than the standard ones.

Also: observing that the anti-terrorist domestic and military involvements launched under Reagan, continuing through Bush and Clinton, and ballooning in W's apotheosis of the Reagan era, committed the US to endless war - perfectly timed to replace the unexpectedly finite Cold War and benefitting no one except the capitalist corporate powers - has been bumper sticker common and boilerplate analysis among lefties and progressives since the Star Wars days if not before.
 
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iceaura said:
Why are you talking specifically about Democrats only, why are you attempting to connect Democrats with Socialism, and why are you once again confusing Socialism with Statism in general and a Police State in particular?
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Let me be clear: Both Republicans and Democrats are Statists. Both are Warmongers. Both support Spying on the State's Citizens/Property. Both emphatically support the Police State and would like nothing better than to use it more often against the Citizens they rule over.

And they will.
 
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Key Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, leave no doubt that Endless War is official U.S. Doctrine
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I disagree pretty vehemently with that.

It looks to me like like an extreme-libertarian adaptation of traditional Marxist rhetoric. Marxists have long insisted that pretty much every idea and everything that happens, certainly everything that they don't like, is part of the so-called 'ideological superstructure', intended to both justify and obscure existing class-relationships. In other words, no matter what people are ostensibly talking about, the supposedly real underlying subject is whatever the Marxists want to talk about. Everything revolves around them and their interests.

This 'Endless War as ideological superstructure to justify and obscure Statism' idea looks like pretty much the same thing. Once again, everything revolves around ourselves and our own agendas. The ostensible overseas objects of our discussion, in this case the Islamists and their own radically different views, actions and agendas, drop out of the discussion entirely. The implication is that somehow we invented them, for our own nefarious domestic purposes.

I think that style of thinking is typically foolish, self-absorbed and unrealistic, whether it's coming from the Marxist-inspired left (who pioneered it) or (in this instance) the libertarian right.
 
joepistole said:
Seriously? That doesn't mean they were responsible for or caused those wars. It wasn't Democrats who declared war on the US. Democrats didn't create the Nazis.
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I asked you to tell us who were the Presidents when war was declared and nothing more. If you will address that you will find that every war I stated were started by a Democrat even if another country started the wars the President had to declare war in order to fight in it.
 
Yazata said:

I disagree pretty vehemently with that.

It looks to me like like an extreme-libertarian adaptation of traditional Marxist rhetoric. Marxists have long insisted that pretty much every idea and everything that happens, certainly everything that they don't like, is part of the so-called 'ideological superstructure', intended to both justify and obscure existing class-relationships. In other words, no matter what people are ostensibly talking about, the supposedly real underlying subject is whatever the Marxists want to talk about. Everything revolves around them and their interests.

This 'Endless War as ideological superstructure to justify and obscure Statism' idea looks like pretty much the same thing. Once again, everything revolves around ourselves and our own agendas. The ostensible overseas objects of our discussion, in this case the Islamists and their own radically different views, actions and agendas, drop out of the discussion entirely. The implication is that somehow we invented them, for our own nefarious domestic purposes.

I think that style of thinking is typically foolish, self-absorbed and unrealistic, whether it's coming from the Marxist-inspired left (who pioneered it) or (in this instance) the libertarian right.
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cosmictraveler said:
I asked you to tell us who were the Presidents when war was declared and nothing more. If you will address that you will find that every war I stated were started by a Democrat even if another country started the wars the President had to declare war in order to fight in it.
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LOL, yeah you want to cherry pick your way through history. Sorry, that isn't my style.
 
joepistole said:
LOL, yeah you want to cherry pick your way through history. Sorry, that isn't my style.
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No I'm not I've posted 4 MAJOR wars that were declared by Democratic Presidents and that's not "cherry picking" that's letting people know the truth which I guess you can't understand. Millions of Americans were killed during these wars and if you think that is frivolous then you'd better take another look at yourself and your views.
 
cosmictraveler said:
No I'm not I've posted 4 MAJOR wars that were declared by Democratic Presidents and that's not "cherry picking" that's letting people know the truth which I guess you can't understand. Millions of Americans were killed during these wars and if you think that is frivolous then you'd better take another look at yourself and your views.
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Oh yes you are.

You don't want to acknowledge the circumstances, the fact that those Democratic presidents were responding to acts and declarations of war by other countries. And it was Congress which declared war in response to war declarations issued by those countries. You think it wrong for Democratic presidents to respond to war declarations and attacks from foreign countries? In the case of WWII only one congressman voted against the war.

FDR wasn't responsible for Nazi Germany or the Japanese attack on Pear Harbor and the war declarations from those countries.

Gee, I wonder why your list excluded Republican presidents like George Bush I & II or Reagan, et al.
 
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cosmictraveler said:
I asked you to tell us who were the Presidents when war was declared and nothing more.
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Declared by whom? In the case of World War I, there was the 1914 assassination of the Austrian nobleman by a Serb in Bosnia, Russia telling Austria to lay off the Serbs, Germany telling Russia not to mess with the Austrians, and both Britain and France declaring war when shooting involving their ally Russia started. The US didn't enter the war until its final months, in 1918.

In the case of World War II, I seem to recall it starting in 1939 when Germany attacked Poland. The US didn't enter the war until the end of 1941, after Japan had attacked us and Germany declared war on us in support of their Axis ally.

If you will address that you will find that every war I stated were started by a Democrat
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An argument might be made that the US should have maintained an isolationist policy and remained aloof from World War I. Given Pearl Harbor and the Axis declarations of war against us, it's hard to see how isolationism would have been viable in 1941.

But the point I want to make is that any suggestion that it was the United States that created these wars in order to further some hidden domestic agenda is just historically ridiculous. That's true whether we imagine that the agenda was the furtherance of capitalism (as the Marxists would have it) or the furtherance of statism.

In other words, the universe doesn't revolve around our own domestic obsessions. There are lots of other people out there with obsessions of their own. Sometimes their actions impact us, whether we welcome it or not.
 
Mod Hat — On misrepresenting sources

From the topic post:

Not to mention, ask any Keynesian (like Paul Krugman - who dreams of using War to 'turn the economy around' (see: Paul Krugman: Fake Alien Invasion Would End Economic Slump (VIDEO]) and they'll all back up the need of the State and war and you.

(Boldface accent added)​

From the cited Huffington Post article:

Speaking with Zakaria and Harvard economist Ken Rogoff, he made the same case he has been making for years--that deficits are not the top economic concern of the day. Krugman noted that the effort of World War II helped end the Great Depression, and joked that something similar was needed today.

• • •​

Of course, Krugman is just using a space invasion as an example. But that hasn't stopped some people from framing his comments as part of a giant conspiracy by a shadowy group of elites to enslave the world through a fake alien attack.

(Boldface accent added)​

Members are reminded: It is absolutely inappropriate to deliberately misrepresent sources.

If you cannot make an argument honestly, the best advice is to just skip it.
 
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