There's some loudmouth general on the Official Washington press release circuit who is probably making life harder for diplomats, in saying he expects to have permanent bases in Afghanistan, just like in Okinawa, Korea and Germany.
Generals may be too busy administering bureaucratically intensive Iron Mountain activities to bone up on recent history. The granting of bases to the US was always with a veneer of sovereignty to paper over any sense of perpetual empire and hegemony as officially the New World Order (as purveyed by one District of Columbia).
That face-saving rhetoric was thin, as in hollow, but now that it's nakedly controverted, there's no way to restore the mask. The sugar coating has now dissolved away, leaving only the bitterness of strong medicine -- or was it really a toxic poison?
The nightmare has by now become official policy. "We're not trying to solve these problems, we're making them pillars of our institutions, our way of life" is the new line. The War on Terror, as many predicted, is to be hard-coded, with AQ, IS and the Taliban the now eternal justification for ongoing combat (with a fallback to China and North Korea).
The US military is now frankly admitting it has no plans to scale back, meaning what were once called "zones of insecurity" are actually its source of security, with many "fighting seasons" ahead (just like "football season"!). That's a meal ticket right there. War is indeed a racket, feeding on deliberately induced fears, inflamed to hatred by war-monger PR.
Keeping Okinawa a theme park and playground for US forces is tantamount to job security complete with R&R and that's what Iron Mountain is all about (i.e. military socialism). The military is the US jobs corps, with the least bang for the buck (in terms of dollars per livable lifestyle -- especially when lives lost or taken is factored in).
We have an Islamic bank in Whittier, part of Greater LA. If some people want a Sharia Court satellite channel where they voluntarily put their cases and relationships under the care of Judge Imam and his code, so what? It's not like there's a shortage of bandwidth. We have orthodox everything in New York City already. Lawyers are trained to merge management systems, like what US Airways and American are doing.
Some women really would prefer not to go to school, given learning from home is a viable option. More of the men might want to stay home as well. Lifestyles abound and the freedom to choose one is the freedom to practice and believe. Weren't those the rights the US military was pledged to protect in the first place? How was denying Taliban their religious freedom in any way a Constitutional value? What is the end goal with respect to that orthodoxy?
Culture wars should be fought (debated) through one's culture, whereas wanton dismemberment and execution ala Vietnam is the antithesis of really having one. Arguments around the dinner table are what's civilized (All in the Family), and tensions between generations over how best to adapt. Civilian life is hard work and trying to find short cuts through violence only postpones that work getting done. We end up back where we started, just with more haunting memories and yet deeper regrets.
Official Washington cannot be trusted to not say stupid things, is the (new?) global perception, heightened by the risks taken by political campaigners, on the Republican ticket especially. The Russians, in contrast, have their new network of intelligence centers, one in Algebra City, where supposedly they're sharing IT skills with their new-found friends. Iraqis have found a new way to fight back maybe?
Once the superpower mentality was allowed to reveal its innate slowness and complacency so directly, it became a farcical embarrassment. Public opinion has intuitively recoiled, at least in some hard currency markets. Is it good PR to fund scary clowns? Matters of taste are at stake as always, but then having standards for quality was never trivial.
In stating the Pentagon position is so weak in Afghanistan that it must be extended indefinitely, like in Korea, like in Germany, the general is projecting weakness on a global scale. The US clings to its supremacy more out of self-deception than reality. That's why it's called a complex. That's why the air is leaving the balloon. The executive branch especially, is way over-extended.
The US is less truly capitalist than a mixture of cowardly capitalist and military socialist. The military provides the "safety net" (full of holes) and a measure of social mobility, while the cowardly capitalist fears any government competition in the civilian sector (NGOs especially, but really anything well-managed and more multi-dimensional in its wealth-creating than "money driven" is perceived as a potential threat, Open Source included).
Bernie Sanders could probably create more space for his brand of "socialism" were his public attuned to the fact that they already live in the midst of a socialized wealth distribution system, called the US military. As long as one signs up to fight for cowardly capitalists, one has one's meal ticket punched indefinitely.
Generals may be too busy administering bureaucratically intensive Iron Mountain activities to bone up on recent history. The granting of bases to the US was always with a veneer of sovereignty to paper over any sense of perpetual empire and hegemony as officially the New World Order (as purveyed by one District of Columbia).
That face-saving rhetoric was thin, as in hollow, but now that it's nakedly controverted, there's no way to restore the mask. The sugar coating has now dissolved away, leaving only the bitterness of strong medicine -- or was it really a toxic poison?
The nightmare has by now become official policy. "We're not trying to solve these problems, we're making them pillars of our institutions, our way of life" is the new line. The War on Terror, as many predicted, is to be hard-coded, with AQ, IS and the Taliban the now eternal justification for ongoing combat (with a fallback to China and North Korea).
The US military is now frankly admitting it has no plans to scale back, meaning what were once called "zones of insecurity" are actually its source of security, with many "fighting seasons" ahead (just like "football season"!). That's a meal ticket right there. War is indeed a racket, feeding on deliberately induced fears, inflamed to hatred by war-monger PR.
Keeping Okinawa a theme park and playground for US forces is tantamount to job security complete with R&R and that's what Iron Mountain is all about (i.e. military socialism). The military is the US jobs corps, with the least bang for the buck (in terms of dollars per livable lifestyle -- especially when lives lost or taken is factored in).
We have an Islamic bank in Whittier, part of Greater LA. If some people want a Sharia Court satellite channel where they voluntarily put their cases and relationships under the care of Judge Imam and his code, so what? It's not like there's a shortage of bandwidth. We have orthodox everything in New York City already. Lawyers are trained to merge management systems, like what US Airways and American are doing.
Some women really would prefer not to go to school, given learning from home is a viable option. More of the men might want to stay home as well. Lifestyles abound and the freedom to choose one is the freedom to practice and believe. Weren't those the rights the US military was pledged to protect in the first place? How was denying Taliban their religious freedom in any way a Constitutional value? What is the end goal with respect to that orthodoxy?
Culture wars should be fought (debated) through one's culture, whereas wanton dismemberment and execution ala Vietnam is the antithesis of really having one. Arguments around the dinner table are what's civilized (All in the Family), and tensions between generations over how best to adapt. Civilian life is hard work and trying to find short cuts through violence only postpones that work getting done. We end up back where we started, just with more haunting memories and yet deeper regrets.
Official Washington cannot be trusted to not say stupid things, is the (new?) global perception, heightened by the risks taken by political campaigners, on the Republican ticket especially. The Russians, in contrast, have their new network of intelligence centers, one in Algebra City, where supposedly they're sharing IT skills with their new-found friends. Iraqis have found a new way to fight back maybe?
Once the superpower mentality was allowed to reveal its innate slowness and complacency so directly, it became a farcical embarrassment. Public opinion has intuitively recoiled, at least in some hard currency markets. Is it good PR to fund scary clowns? Matters of taste are at stake as always, but then having standards for quality was never trivial.
In stating the Pentagon position is so weak in Afghanistan that it must be extended indefinitely, like in Korea, like in Germany, the general is projecting weakness on a global scale. The US clings to its supremacy more out of self-deception than reality. That's why it's called a complex. That's why the air is leaving the balloon. The executive branch especially, is way over-extended.
The US is less truly capitalist than a mixture of cowardly capitalist and military socialist. The military provides the "safety net" (full of holes) and a measure of social mobility, while the cowardly capitalist fears any government competition in the civilian sector (NGOs especially, but really anything well-managed and more multi-dimensional in its wealth-creating than "money driven" is perceived as a potential threat, Open Source included).
Bernie Sanders could probably create more space for his brand of "socialism" were his public attuned to the fact that they already live in the midst of a socialized wealth distribution system, called the US military. As long as one signs up to fight for cowardly capitalists, one has one's meal ticket punched indefinitely.
