Pentagon expanding
Empire of Bases
1. The long-term trend in American foreign affairs detailed in Chalmers Johnson‘s must-read SORROWS of EMPIRE — the trend of Pentagon aggregation of policy-making power in Washington via the simple step-wise business of building more and more bases …
The trend, of course, continues. Something like thirteen “permanent” american bases have been built in Iraq since 3/19/2003. And recent reports tell us that the Pentagon :
– has decided to pursue not only Terrorists but Drug Lords in Afghanistan. Support Your Local Sheriffs. Build them each a base.
– is negotiating the lease of seven army bases in Columbia from the Bogota government. The obvious policy worry here is re Venezuela (as the Times headline over the AP story makes clear).
If Obama allows Gates-Mullen to start a public war (as opposed to the meaty tenderizing in progress since early in the Bush-Cheneytime) along the Columbia-Venezuela border …
I find I have nothing to append to that “if” aside from a repeat of a repetition:
The shrinking portion of Washington policymaking that one might deem Discretionary more and more is made by the Pentagon. This uptrend began with the world wars, has never significantly corrected, and Obama for the past 18 months has shown no inclination to curb the Pentagon’s enthusiasms whatsoever.
Sorrows of an empire nobody needs.
2. The stark choices ahead of every major power on the planet are to cooperate as the resource and climate problems escalate, or to revert to the romantic nationalist philosophy of war of the early Modern centuries. That romance died in 1914, was buried in 1945, but rose again (in accordance with scripture) circa 1991, when the Soviet Union fell.
Most americans of our time were raised to believe in cooperation, the obvious exceptions being the likes of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and baby Bill Kristol, who with their ilk daydream of Israel and the USA taking on all comers six-guns ablaze, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The view has some basis perhaps in Tel Aviv. Where one stands is a function of where one sits, by and large.
But why Washington has fallen in love with world war remains something of a mystery here. Profound and near perfect despair, one guesses, must underlie it. The Likud Lobby alone does not seem to have the punch.
3. OR:
Perhaps when presented with the grim spectacle of a Nation (i.e., a people) pulling itself apart — as the American people have been since Reagan was installed to jumpstart Globalization — perhaps a self-destructive, incoherent foreign policy is precisely what one should expect.
3(a) The incoherence might be superficial. Might make perfect sense from an eccentric and very unpatriotic point of view held by Owner-Operators.
3(b) Or the incoherence might be deep, reflecting fundamental differences among factions of Owner-Ops — a covert struggle of the sort that erupted into the public space in the assassinations of the 60s. Watergate. The Iran-Contra octopus (which may well have included the murder of Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme).
On the home front, the governmental reaction to Hurricane Katrina comes to mind. Again: what one might expect as the Owner-Operators cut ties to the body of the Nation.
And: An EPA director telling New York firemen and steelworkers on September 12, 2001 that the air over the smoking pile of the Trade Center is fine. Keep digging for gold, boys.
3(c) In either case — 3a or 3b — Joe Sixpack and Soccer Mom are not part of the conversation, or likely of the solution.
Which only feeds the anti-political, antisocial atmosphere where everybody’s hustlin’, Working Hard and Playing Hard, to leave the nine of ten hindmost behind.
A vicious downward spiral. Diagnosed in excellent eccentric books across the decades …
The Spoiled Child of the Western World, by Henry Fairlie, 1976. The Honey and the Hemlock, by Eli Sagan, 1991. Losing Our Souls, by Edward Pessen, 1993. A Nation Gone Blind, by Eric Larsen, 2006.
Obama is certainly the best chance to break the trend since Kennedy. Perhaps given the constellation of events, his chances are better than Kennedy’s were. But …
Chalmers Johnson concludes his little talk (video above) by suggesting that for Americans with a little cash on the side a condo in Vancouver — Canada — might not be a bad idea.
4. OR:
Let’s blame the whole mysterious mess of American foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union on my favorite martians — shall we?
Macavelli says:
Really interesting, however was hard to read due to the width of this website :/
August 11th, 2009 at 8:24 pm