McCain and the American Empire

On NBC’s Today Show (Wednesday, June 12, 2008) Senator John McCain was asked by Matt Lauer when he thinks US troops will return from Iraq. McCain replied, “That’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.”

No, Senator, it is NOT fine.

It is precisely the fact that American troops are in nearly 130 countries around the world that is so woefully wrong. According to the web site, globalsecurity.org, there are an estimated 350,000 US troops stationed around the world “performing a variety of duties from combat operations, to peacekeeping, to training with foreign militaries”.

Why? Why are they there?

The reason, clearly, is to support a de facto US Empire and protect American business interests by the constant, visible display of military might. By sustaining and promoting the policies of empire, the United States has turned its back on democracy and skillful diplomacy and statesmanship thus alienating much of the world and dramatically increasing the ranks of the Al Qaeda network of terrorists and similar groups.

Let it not be asserted that the US troops in Guatemala, Germany or Japan are there to protect US citizens. They are not. Troops are stationed in those far-flung nations to protect corporate interests and to intimidate the local government and the population. All but the most cursory reading of the history of US military personnel on foreign soil will provide the reader with little evidence that ordinary US citizens benefit from their presence. (The exact opposite is true as will be stated below.) Troops are stationed in Okinawa for the same reason the Roman legions occupied Gaul or Britain: to maintain an empire. And it is well known that for similar reasons much of the world considers the United States of America the single largest threat to world peace and stability; a greater threat than Al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah or Hamas.

Furthermore, by spending more than $620 Billion each year to support a US global military presence - nearly $350 million a day in Iraq alone - US social programs (e.g. education, job training, health care, social security, EPA, etc) are continually gutted, ignored or abandoned in direct opposition to the expressed will of the American people. Ordinary US citizens are therefore, by the existence of a phenomenally bloated military budget, deprived of the benefits and services they desire from their government and for which they pay taxes.

The choice is simple: support a failing system of global military empire-building with an ever increasing, crushing debt or re-build our society with a fraction of what successive administrations have spent year on year to subjugate, murder, torture, control and deleteriously influence the lives of innocent people while enriching the wealthy.

This ain’t rocket science.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/global-deployments.htm

Our Creepy Veep on the Warpath in Bizarr-o World

It’s time for another visit to Bizarr-o World, my friends. Break out the thorazine, open a fresh party pack of chocolate-covered Prozac and enjoy the fun as America’s zaniest bunch of psychopaths try for the trifecta of World Political Disasters.

Dan Froomkin wrote an article entitled ‘Cheney on the Warpath Again?’ for the Friday, April 11, 2008 on-line edition of the Washington Post. (Imagine that; the press may actually be getting savvy to the fact that Cheney, Bush, and the gang are role-playing ‘Armegeddon’.) In the article, Froomkin quotes our curmudgeonly VP telling Sean ‘the Bean’ Hammity that Iran was filled with nasty apocalyptic zealots who might have a nuclear bomb sometime soon. (Hmm, this rings a bell.) Of course, the only appropriate action hinted at by our creepy Veep is - wait for it - showing them who’s the boss in Bizarr-o World. He started off by sowing his black magic seeds of ‘FEAR!’.

Quothe the Cheney:

"But Ahmadinejad is I think a very dangerous man. On the one hand, he has repeatedly stated that he wants to destroy Israel. … mutual assured destruction in the Soviet-U.S. relationship in the Cold War meant deterrence, but mutual assured destruction with Ahmadinejad is an incentive.”

So, let me get this straight, Dicky-doodle: the president of Iran is even crazier than you are. Is that what you’re saying?

Cuz, he doesn’t have any nuclear weapons. He doesn’t have any fissile material. And he hasn’t even had a weapons program for 5 years according to the latest report by the National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE reported "with high confidence" that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program until 2003, but that this was discovered and Iran stopped it. (Naughty Billies!) It also assessed that the earliest date by which Iran could make a nuclear weapon would be late 2009 but that this is "very unlikely" given that Iran appears "less determined" to develop nuclear weapons than US intelligence had previously thought. In other words, no nukes and nearly a zero level chance of producing one.

On the other hand, Mr C, at last count - I suspect counting them over and over is how you fall asleep in the wee hours - how many nuclear devices are there currently in the DOD inventory, cringing from your clammy touch? An estimated 5,736 active stockpile warheads scattered round the US (and elsewhere) – give or take. That’s what I’d call a very active nuclear weapons program. It’s been going on since the ’Manhattan Project’ without abatement for over 60 years.

Oh, and not to mention – and in polite, elitist intellectual company one simply doesn’t, you know – courtesy of the super sense of fair play and the hyper-sensitivity to anti-Semitism that are the hallmarks of US foreign policy - the state of Israel is the 5^th largest nuclear power in the world. It has between 200 and 300 nuclear warheads just waiting for the ‘okay’ from Washington should an Arab or Iranian dare look cross-eyed at them.

And you think that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all of his advisors are crazy enough to try to build a nuclear bomb and use it to destroy the Zionist State precisely, explicitly, because they, the Iranians, would then be annihilated by US and Israeli retaliation, destroying 6,000 years of history, culture and tradition and subjecting the Iranian population of over 70 million to a nuclear holocaust? Even when we’re talking about apocalyptic zealots – and that’s talking way crazy – nuking Israel and assuring self-induced annihilation is straight out looney-tunes. We’re well past thorazine party favors, booby. That’s more of your Bizarr-o world up-is-down, black-is-white, thinking at work there.

What is beyond question is that Vee-Pee Dick (in the role of Iago) leads a faction of officials in the Pentagon, State Department and elsewhere, who argue that before Dubya hands over the keys to 1600 (none too soon), the US should kick some more boo-tay there in oil-rich Asia, destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, punish them for not keeping the Shah in power and thwarting U.S. aims in Iraq.

(Which are what again? Oh, yeah, the ‘democracy’ thing.)

Froomkin added that some observers suspect Cheney of encouraging Israel to attack Iran as a proxy while he was there spreading sunshine and love from an Israeli check-point two weeks ago and accusing Hamas of trying to scuttle ‘peace talks’. (Those words must curdle in the man’s mouth.)

And Twisted Dick thinks Ahmadinejad is a very dangerous man? Oh, yeah…

So, if this Mahmoud joker is actually planning to pull a nuclear weapon out of his burnoose and use it on Israel, he must be without a doubt, top-to-bottom, upside-downside, backwards and forwards a whole lot crazier than you are, Sour-Puss Dick.

And if you think we are stupid enough to fall for that ol’ WMDs gag again, you ought to try re-doubling your dose of Prozac and start thinking how you’re going to spend your yard time in Leavenworth, Dicky-boy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/04/11/BL2008041102216_pf.html

BBC News, Tuesday, 8 April 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4031603.stm

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Wpngall.html

Petition to Begin Impeachment Proceedings