Letter Never Sent

From A Symposium on Citizenship and Military Service by ELLIOTT ABRAMS and ANDREW J. BACEVICH in PARAMETERS:
US Army War College Quarterly (Summer 2001):

Elliot Abrams is, of course, the infamous democrat-turned-republican Neocon creep Bush appointed to the National Security Council

• First, the mythic tradition of the citizen-soldier is dead, its fate sealed by changes in the nature of modern war, in the aims of US national security strategy since the end of the Cold War, and in the aspirations and expectations of American citizens. Given the changing relationship between the individual and the state, spurred particularly by the cultural revolution touched off in the 1960s, the federal government has effectively forfeited its ability to compel citizens to serve in the military. Conscription has become and will remain implausible. To an increasing extent, the individual, not the state, determines the terms under which service is rendered.
• Second, the identity of the “soldier as warrior” has become obsolete. It does not adequately describe the actual function–or, more accurately, the broader range of functions–of American military men and women in the aftermath of the Cold War. As such, it misleads citizens, creates false expectations among would-be recruits, and breeds cynicism among those already in uniform. Certainly, the US military establishment must retain the ability to “fight and win the nation’s wars.” But warfighting as such is not the task immediately confronting those dispatched to succor hungry Kurds or Somalis, occupy Haiti, separate ethnic groups in the Balkans, or pursue a “strategy of engagement” in places like the former Soviet bloc, Central Asia, Latin America, or, indeed, Yemen. Even the limited bombing campaigns that over the past decade have become the preferred US means of employing force–although providing airmen personal experiences approaching something like “combat”–are quite distinct from war as such.

  Some more relevant identity–a refashioning of what it means to be an American soldier–is in order. The reality of US military history offers a rich trove of experience from which to forge just such an identity. For the greater part of that history, the American soldier’s assigned role has not been the passive one of holding himself in readiness to wage war, but the active one of attending to the nation’s existing priorities. Over time, those priorities changed, but they included fighting Native Americans, exploring the West, developing the nation’s economic infrastructure, opening markets abroad, governing colonies and protectorates, advancing the cause of public health, and building the Panama Canal. The relevance of this history to the current quasi-imperial role of US forces is all but self-evident. In the experiences of bluejackets and blue-coated and khaki-clad soldiers of old lies an identity as servants of the nation that may convey more accurately and more compellingly the vital role that the present-day military plays, however much traditionalists may bridle at that role.

Reads to me as completing the transformation of the military from defensive force to totalitarian/fascist borg-like entity.

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From Posse Comitatus and Nuclear Terrorism in PARAMETERS: US Army War College Quarterly:

Although Posse Comitatus as a matter of law may be rapidly weakening, the principles embodied in the act serve an important and essential role within the American constitutional system. Even during a domestic nuclear terrorist incident, further erosions of Posse Comitatus are neither necessary nor advisable. Advocates of an expanded military role correctly note that many of the homeland defense missions they envision for the Army have a firm constitutional basis, including the Preamble’s call to “insure domestic tranquility” and “provide for the common defense.”[14] However, these analysts sometimes fail to acknowledge the Founding Fathers’ significant concerns regarding the effects of a large standing army on a democratic government. As evidenced by the Second and Third Amendments to the Constitution, the Framers clearly preferred a small standing army to be augmented by a “well-regulated militia” in times of crisis over a larger, permanent military force. George Washington, the first American Commander-in-Chief, endorsed a standing army only under limited conditions: “`Altho’ a large standing army in time of peace hath ever been considered dangerous to the liberties of a country, yet a few troops, under certain circumstances, are not only safe, but indispensably necessary.”[15] The Anti-Federalists went further, calling standing armies “that bane to freedom, and support of tyrants, and their pampered minions; by which almost all the nations of Europe and Asia, have been enslaved.”[16]

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Bush signed an executive order making it easier for immigrants who serve in the military to become citizens of the United States. Essentially, all foreigners serving in the military are granted immediate eligibility. This means that the best way to become a US citizen is to join the war machine and fight other poor third-worlders.

This shows how desperate the military is to entice people to join their mercenary ranks. No one in their right mind would ever enlist in the military. It’s not as if the US even uses the military to defend the United States. Most often the military is used to enforce global economic policy and to engage in drug interdiction efforts. The military also routinely engages in ‘nation building’ which is the practice of setting up US-friendly regimes around the world. This is what is taking place in Afghanistan. The systematic cleansing of the country to produce a pliant vassal state.

Hiring poor rubes to fight in the army is a common practice of corrupt states. In the last years of the Roman Empire, Gallic and Germanic barbarians were given Roman citizenship to fight in the legions of Rome. This had some unforseen consequences down the road.

Found via From the Wilderness: Machiavellian passages from “THE GRAND CHESSBOARD – American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives,” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997. This is how the people that own the US think. The puppet-masters behind the scenes.

“…The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power… (p. xiii)

“… But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. (p. xiv)

“The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia – and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. (p.30)

“America’s withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival – would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy.” (p. 30)

“In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31)

It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.” (p.35)

“Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;… second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above…” (p. 40)

“…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)

“Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.” (p.55)

“Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures.” (p. 121)

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“If the lie is big enough and told often enough, it will be believed.” – Joseph Goebbels

Lifted from Ethel the Blog:

Former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison deconstructs the myth of the “generous offer” that Arafat rejected to supposedly sink the Camp David summit in July 2000.

…
This failure of understanding is the primary reason the peace process collapsed at the Camp David summit in July 2000. The myth of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “generous offer” has created the widespread misapprehension that Yasir Arafat rejected out of hand, without even offering a counterproposal, an extremely good deal that he should clearly have accepted. Arafat’s rejection supposedly proved, according to the prevailing wisdom, that the Palestinians were unwilling to conclude any deal that would allow Israel to live in peace and that they were still irreconcilably opposed to Israel existence.
According to the myth, Barak’s proposal would have given the Palestinians, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is fond of repeating, “95 percent of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem, with all the settlements gone”. In fact, what Barak actually offered at Camp David was to withdraw from 89-90 percent of the West Bank, not 95 percent; to give the Palestinians sovereignty in a few non-contiguous neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, not half of Jerusalem; and, far from assuring that all the settlements would be gone, to annex to Israel settlements housing fully 80 percent of the 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and 100 percent of the 170,000 settlers in East Jerusalem.

The resulting Palestinian “state” would have been broken up in the West Bank into three almost completely non-contiguous sections, each connected only by a narrow thread of land and each surrounded by Israeli territory, plus Gaza. This so-called state would have been a colony, not a state–with no real independence, no ability to defend itself, no control over its borders, no control over its water resources, no easy way even for its citizens to reach one section from another, and a capital made up of separate neighborhoods not contiguous to each other or to the rest of the state. Israel would never have agreed to live in a disjointed, indefensible state like this, but Israel and the United States thought it fine to offer this to the Palestinians. This Israeli offer, made with U.S. support and participation, turned the promise of Resolution 242 on its head.
…

Related

• German Propaganda Archive Very interesting reading.

• A PALESTINIAN “HOLOCAUST?” Clearly by someone unsupportive of the Palestinian cause. Brings up the point about who gets to claim to be the biggest victim of history. Who holds claim to the word ‘holocaust’? Almost 6 million European jews were killed during WWII, but then a similar number of Slavs were killed as well. How come we never hear about the Slavic holocaust? 20 million Soviet Russians died, 3-15 million Chinese, 4.5 million Germans, 2 million Japanese, 1.5 million Bengalese, 1.3 million Yugoslavians, 500,000 Italians, 500,000 French, less than 500,000 British, and 300,000 Americans. Can any one group claim to be the principal victim?? There was no Schindler’s List made for the 15 million Chinese who were killed as a result of WWII.
• Turning Points and Casualties of WW2

You have to admire this guy’s ability to challenge the system when all conceivable odds are against him. Color me impressed. From the Post:

Moussaoui says that because Brinkema and his court-appointed standby lawyers won’t let him pursue his theory in court, he must take it to the public. “I have relevant information and proof relating to conduct of the FBI regarding the Sept. 11,” Moussaoui wrote Monday in seeking permission to appear before Congress. In a separate motion to speak to a grand jury, Moussaoui agrees “to be chain, handcuff, leg cuff, stun belt, 20 or so marshals, as long as I can say what I know about Sept. 11 attack.” …

In another motion, Moussaoui said he wants to tell the story to the American news media, if they are willing to pay, but he doubts they want to hear it. “America you are bankrupt,” Moussaoui writes. “Long have passed the time of Deep Throat. Now it is deep bribe.”