Dissident Veteran For Peace

All excerpts below are from the December 2017 version of George Washington's 1796 "Farewell Address" as prepared by the United States Senate Historical Office (S. PUB. 115-5). By way of introduction I will say it seems to me as if modern American politicians, with rare exceptions, have considered Washington's advice and decided to do the exact opposite.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts. (pp. 5-6)

Comment: As I pondered the above passage I could not help but think about the Civil War and the disputes that preceded it. Undoubtedly, Washington had the tensions that slavery entailed in the American body politic in mind, too, as he wrote these words. It would seem that Washington was of the school of thought that the Union was indissoluble and individual States were not at liberty to secede.

... overgrown military establishments ... under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and ... are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. (p. 8)

Comment: This passage is part of Washington's ongoing discourse on the importance of the "national Union". Lincoln's decision to build an overgrown military establishment to force the Confederate States back into the union comes to mind.

... you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a Constitution of government better calculated than your former [i.e. the Articles of Confederation] for an intimate Union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. 

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. (pp. 10-12)

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state ... Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. 

... It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy. 

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another (pp. 13-14)

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. (pp. 16-17)

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate. (p. 17)

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all—religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? ...

In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest ...

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions—by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained—and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. (pp. 18-21)

Comment: At least since the Wilson administration America's leaders have rejected Washington's advice, betrayed their oath of office, and formed or maintained a "passionate attachment" with the Zionist lobby and the Jewish state to the great detriment of the people of the region and to America herself.

Labels: George Washington, Israel, Israel Lobby, militarism, military, philosophy, politics, quotations, religion, slavery, United States, US Founding Fathers

She reminds me a bit of Ron Paul's 2012 campaign.

Labels: militarism, politics, Ron Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, United States, video, War

A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens. They have their Arms always in their hands. Their Rules and their Discipline is severe. They soon become attachd to their officers and disposd to yield implicit Obedience to their Commands. Such a Power should be watchd with a jealous Eye ... Men who have been long subject to military Laws and inured to military Customs and Habits, may lose the Spirit and Feeling of Citizens. And even Citizens, having been used to admire the Heroism which the Commanders of their own Army have displayd, and to look up to them as their Saviors may be prevaild upon to surrender to them those Rights for the protection of which against Invaders they had employd and paid them. We have seen too much of this Disposition among some of our Countrymen.

Source: Samuel Adams, "Founding Father" and American revolutionary, in his letter to James Warren (January 7, 1776) in the Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, Vol. 1, 1743-1777, (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917) pp. 197-198.


Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded ... War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. ... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Source: James Madison, "Father of the US Constitution" and 4th US President, from his pamphlet entitled Political Observations (April 20, 1795) in the Selected Writings of James Madison (Hackett, 2006) p. 236.

See also:  "John Adams on the Military Threat"

Labels: freedom, history, James Madison, militarism, military, quotations, United States, US Founding Fathers, War

One element, however, tends to go flagrantly missing in even the most vivid conspiracy theories about the banking system, let alone in official accounts: that is, the role of war and military power. There's a reason why the wizard has such strange capacity to create money out of nothing. Behind him, there's a man with a gun.

True, in one sense, he's been there from the start. I have already pointed out that modern money is based on government debt, and that governments borrow money in order to finance wars. This is just as true today as it was in the age of King Phillip II. The creation of central banks represented a permanent institutionalization of that marriage between the interests of warriors and financiers that had already begun to emerge in Renaissance Italy, and that eventually became the foundation of financial capitalism.

Source: David Graeber. Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville House Publishing, 2011) p. 364.

Labels: banking, conspiracy, debt, militarism, money, War

John Adams was the second President of the United States but before that he was an attorney and an early supporter of independence for British colonies in America. On March 5, 1770, British troops killed five civilians on King Street in Boston in an incident now commonly known as the Boston Massacre. John Adams acted as defense counsel at the soldiers' civilian trial for murder in November, 1770. Adams succeeded in getting jury acquittals for six of the soldiers and conviction of two soldiers for the lesser-included offense of manslaughter. The two soldiers were sentenced to branding of the thumb in open court.

On the third anniversary of the massacre Adams wrote in his diary:

Judgment of death against those soldiers would have been as foul a stain upon this country as the executions of the quakers or witches anciently. As the evidence was, the verdict of the jury was exactly right. ... This, however, is no reason why the town should not call the action of that night a massacre; nor is it any argument in favor of the Governor or Minister who caused them to be sent here. But it is the strongest of proofs of the danger of standing armies. [emphasis added]

Adams was a supporter of militias composed of civilians called into service as needed, as opposed to standing armies. In the second year of the Revolutionary War he wrote the following in a letter to Brigadier General Samuel H. Parsons, who started his military career in Connecticut's colonial militia:

With regard to encouragements in money and in land for soldiers to enlist during the war, I have ever been in favor of it, as the best economy and the best policy, and I have no doubt that rewards in land will be given, after the war is over. But the majority are not of my mind for promising it now. I am the less anxious about it, for a reason which does not seem to have much weight however with the majority. Although it may cost us more, and we may put now and then a battle to hazard by the method we are in, yet we shall be less in danger of corruption and violence from a standing army, and our militia will acquire courage, experience, discipline, and hardiness in actual service.  [emphasis added]

In Adams' A Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States (1787) he wrote:

Shall we conclude, from these melancholy observations, that human nature is incapable of liberty, that no honest equality can be preserved in society, and that such forcible causes are always at work as must reduce all men to a submission to despotism, monarchy, oligarchy, or aristocracy?

By no means. We have seen one of the first nations in Europe, possessed of ample and fertile territories at home and extensive dominions abroad, of a commerce with the whole world, immense wealth, and the greatest naval power which ever belonged to any nation, which has still preserved the power of the people by the equilibrium we are contending for, by the trial by jury, and by constantly refusing a standing army. [emphasis added]

A footnote to the above-cited passage and of uncertain provenance says: "Would that it had constantly been refused! A standing army is dangerous in any hands! Even if the people had preserved their share in the legislature, a standing army in their pay would be inexpedient and dangerous."

Finally, in a letter to Thomas McKean, dated June 21, 1812, Adams said:

The danger of our government is, that the General will be a man of more popularity than the President, and the army possess more power than Congress. The people should be apprised of this, and guard themselves against it. Nothing is more essential than to hold the civil authority decidedly superior to the military power.

Adams' particular fear about the popularity of generals seems not have been realized but unfortunately we have a Congress and Presidency that rarely say no to military funding requests, in peacetime or war. That's true even when it comes to illegal, undeclared wars waged on false pretenses such as the 2003 Iraq War. The civil authority all too often bows to the military.

See also: Quotable: The Military Threat to Liberty

Labels: history, John Adams, militarism, military, United States, US Founding Fathers, War

From Canada's National Post newspaper (click to enlarge):Thanks to Ken Dalton of Veterans For Peace, Chapter 21 for passing this along.

Labels: Empire, militarism, military, United States, War

I just finished reading Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War by Col. Andrew J. Bacevich (US Army, ret.). The 2010 book is Bacevich's contribution to Metropolitan Books' American Empire Project.

The "Washington rules," according to Bacevich, consist of a "credo" and a "trinity" and together they form "the basis for an enduring consensus" that underpins bipartisan American militarism in Washington, DC (15). Bacevich writes: "In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States--and the United States alone--to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world" (12). The "trinity" represents:

an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism. [emphasis in original] (14)

The Pentagon's annual budget: "lubricates American politics, filling campaign coffers and providing a source of largesse--jobs and contracts--for distribution to constituents" (228). The Washington rules, Bacevich argues:

deliver profit, power and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations. (228)

To the monetary and political benefits of adherence to the Washington rules, Bacevich adds the "psychic" appeal:

For many, the payoff includes the added, if largely illusory, attraction of occupying a seat within or near what is imagined to be the very cockpit of contemporary history. Before power corrupts it attracts and then seduces. The claims implicit in the American credo and the opportunities inherent in the sacred trinity combine to make the imperial city on the Potomac one of the most captivating, corrupt, and corrupting places on the face of the earth. (228-9)

There are a lot of good reviews of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War online and so I won't spend any more time on the book except to share two quotes from Senator J. William Fulbright that Bacevich includes. The first is from Fulbright's 1966 book, The Arrogance of Power:

[Power] tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations--to make them richer and happier and wiser, to make them, that is, in its own shining image. ... Once imbued with the idea of mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God's work. The Lord, after all, would surely not choose you as His agent and then deny you the sword with which to work His will. (111)

From the 1966 book also comes this quote:

'Maybe we are not really cut out for the job of spreading the gospel of democracy,' Fulbright suggested. 'Maybe it would profit us to concentrate on our own democracy instead of trying to inflict our own particular version of it' on others. 'If America has a service to perform in the world,' he continued, 'it is in large part the service of her own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries we are not only living off our assets ... we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying freedom to the fullest.' (113)

Labels: Empire, J. William Fulbright, militarism, politics, quotations

My first response this morning to the news of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was disbelief. My next response was to recall part of a story on I heard on NPR yesterday, entitled "Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists." Below is a relevant excerpt:

Given the difficulty of detaining high-value terrorists in the United States, Cuba, Afghanistan, black sites or foreign countries, another possibility exists.

"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."

Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.

Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has been widely described as "aspirational." It may be, however, that delusional is a more apt description in light of Obama's campaign promises and track record as president. Consider the following partial list:

• Candidate Obama pledged to expand the combat forces of the Marines and Army
• Candidate Obama pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan
• President Obama authorized killer drone attacks in Pakistan in his very first week in office
• President Obama has not ended the US occupation of Iraq
• President Obama has not closed the Guantanamo prison
• President Obama has not ended the little discussed but deadly American military intervention in Somalia
• President Obama has been utterly unable to go beyond tepid, hollow rhetoric concerning murderous US-backed Israel
• President Obama has left "all options on the table" when it comes to US arm-twisting vis-a-vis Iran

With Nobel Peace Prize laureates like Obama who needs war mongers?

See also: "Professor Hakimi's Solution to Gitmo"

Labels: Afghanistan, drones, Empire, Iran, Iraq, Israel, militarism, Obama, Somalia, United States, War

My "Green Berets: Who's the Coward?" post of last year has attracted a steady trickle of comments from anonymous militaristic my-government-right-or-wrong types. A macho bent to the comments--from "You could not and will not every [sic] hold these mens jock straps" (true enough, I hope and pray) to "you're unmanly" (flattery will get you nowhere)--brought to mind an Arizona Daily Star article from last February. That article suggested that the ranks of the US military may be disproportionately filled with people whose military service/masculinity is an act to cover or compensate for decidedly un-masculine feelings. A "classic" study cited in the article calls such military service a "flight into hypermasculinity." In this light, I see the remarks of the anonymous commenters as somewhat ironic and their own macho militaristic posing strikes me as a kind of imposture or performance to cover up something else.

In any case, I provide forthwith some anecdotal evidence that the special operations forces may have an even higher proportion of closeted transwomen in their ranks than the rest of the military. First up: The obituary of Rebecca Lynn Cross, "A former Special Forces medic and combat veteran, Cross underwent sexual reassignment surgery in Thailand last year." Next is the video clip below about a former US Army Special Forces Colonel who also transitioned to living as a woman. I can't end without saying that the ALCU's exploitation of Diane Schroer's case strikes me as a sort of imposture, too. They are cloaking the struggle for transgender rights in the garb of patriotism and the dishonorable, mythical 'war on terrorism.' It's really kind of disgusting.

Labels: gender, identity, LGBT, militarism, video

In "Robot Wars," Eric Stoner writes:

Predator drones armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles have regularly bombed Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, and their use is skyrocketing. In 2008, 71 Predators flew 138,404 combat hours — a 94 percent increase over the year before, according to a recent presentation by U.S. Air Force Col. Eric Mathewson. And over the last year, drones flown largely by the CIA have launched missile attacks inside Pakistan more than 40 times. Rather than reconsider this deadly policy, President Obama has become an enthusiastic backer. Since his inauguration, he has authorized 11 such attacks that have collectively killed over 145 people, many of them civilians, and sparked large protests within Pakistan.

I would add that Obama--the "peace candidate"--authorized UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) attacks on Pakistan in his very first week in office.

See also: "The Great Robot Race"

Labels: drones, Empire, militarism, Obama, Pakistan, robots, technology, War

"The history of secret geographies shows that when they do come into contact with the legal system, the legal system tends to change in order to accommodate them." Thus writes Trevor Paglen, author of Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (p. 140). One of the legal cases discussed by Paglen is 1953 United States v. Reynolds decision, which cemented the "state secrets privilege" in American law. But the privilege did not protect national security but rather a lie that implicated the US Air Force in the death of Bob Reynolds in a swampy field near Waycross, Georgia. This is just one of the places Paglen ties to "blank spots" in the law or on a map, including Area 51.

Paglen also discusses the blank spots in the federal budget, writing (pp. 183-4):

The Founding Fathers understood the golden rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules." They understood that, in the halls of government as it is in so many other affairs, money is both information and power. As such, [Article I, Section 9, Clause 7] is a rebuke to the old monarchism the Founding Fathers wanted to free themselves from. "The people," argued George Mason, "had a right to know the expenditures of their money." Open books, argued James Madison, imparted both knowledge and responsibility upon a democratic citizenry: "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both," he wrote. "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Yet, as Paglen notes, even the amount, let alone what it pays for, of the "black budget" is secret . Nevertheless Paglen offers an estimate from R. J. Hillhouse of $60 billion--"roughly comparable to what the Chinese military—the second-largest military in the world—spends each year." Two-thirds of that figure goes to even less accountable private contractors (p. 205).

In the book's epilogue (p. 275), Paglen says:

The black world has sculpted the United States in numerous ways. Creating secret geographies has meant erasing parts of the Constitution, creating blank spots in the law, institutionalizing dishonesty in the halls of government, handing sovereign powers--what used to be the unlimited power of monarchs over their subjects and territories--to the executive branch, making the nation's economy dependent upon military spending, and turning our own history into a state secret.

All in all Blank Spots on the Map was a quick and fascinating read. It is highly recommended.

Labels: James Madison, law, militarism, repression, United States, US Founding Fathers

As long as "anti-war" mothers care more about their sons than they care about the daughters, sons, parents, and siblings whom their sons kill or help kill, the killing will continue.

As long as self-described liberals refuse to argue with "our soldiers" when they allow themselves to be the instruments of the deadly policies those same liberals claim to oppose, the killing will continue.

As long as Americans indulge themselves and their children in the beliefs that those people over there in the "horrible underbelly of the world" are different and unlike "us" and that "we" have no part in "all this hatred and all this sort of evil around the world," the killing will continue.

Labels: anti-war movement, Carlos Latuff, militarism, War

Another poster by SF Bay Area graphic artist Doug Minkler. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Labels: Doug Minkler, Empire, militarism, terrorism, War

Wednesday night I watched The Prestige, which got me interested in Nikola Tesla, which got me interested in HAARP--the US military's High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project. An excerpt from a wired.com blog post this month will perhaps suffice to pique your curiosity about HAARP.

In "New Document Reveals Military Mystery's Powers," David Hambling writes:

For years, no military program has sparked more fevered speculation from conspiracy theorists than the mysterious High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. And for years, the Pentagon has been pooh-poohing speculation that the enormous collection of transmitters, radars, and magnetometers in Alaska was some sort of superweapon.

But, it turns out, the conspiracy theorists may not have been entirely off-base, after all.

Since its inception, there's been a huge range of opinion on what HAARP actually does: everything from a giant mind control facility to a space nuke countermeasure to a weather controller to an ionosphere-boiling mad science experiment to the mother of all pork projects has been suggested. But now that the program is actually up an[d] running, military managers say the electronics array has much more benign use. "HAARP's main job is to produce radio waves to probe the ionosphere," an Air Force Research Laboratory officer said in October.

Which is true -- up to a point.

A drive by Clifford Stone on the X-Files-esque uber-site Above Top Secret to use the Freedom of Information Act to turn up UFO-related documents has led to the release of a fascinating report, HAARP: Research and Applications.

It's from the Air Force Research Laboratory and Office of Naval Research, and it lays out the uses the military see for HAARP. Turns out the Pentagon wants some military bang for their buck from the program.

I recommend following the link to Above Top Secret, where you can read the HAARP document or a convenient summary provided by "rapturas." Or take a look at the video below which is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) investigative report (in two parts) on HAARP. The segment aired in 1996 on the CBC's now defunct investigative news program, Undercurrents.


The European Parliament took notice of HAARP on January 28, 1999, and included it in the "Resolution on the environment, security and foreign policy" (A4-0005/99; published May 7, 1999; p. C 128/92 of the Official Journal of the European Communities). Here is some of the relevant text:

The European Parliament ... ­ having regard to the hearing on HAARP and Non-lethal Weapons held by its Foreign Affairs Subcommitee on Security and Disarmament in Brussels on 5 February 1998 ... whereas, despite the existing conventions, military research is ongoing on environmental manipulation as a weapon, as demonstrated for example by the Alaska-based HAARP system ...

24. Considers HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body before any further research and testing; regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to send anyone in person to give evidence to the public hearing or any subsequent meeting held by its competent committee into the environmental and public risks connected with the HAARP programme currently being funded in Alaska;

25. Requests the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) Panel to agree to examine the scientific and technical evidence provided in all existing research findings on HAARP to assess the exact nature and degree of risk that HAARP poses both to the local and global environment and to public health generally;

26. Calls on the Commission to examine if there are environmental and public health implications of the HAARP programme for Arctic Europe and to report back to Parliament with its findings;

27. Calls for an international convention introducing a global ban on all developments and deployments of weapons which might enable any form of manipulation of human beings;

Here is relevant text from the "explanatory statement" of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defence Policy:

HAARP - a weapons system which disrupts the climate

On 5 February 1998 Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Disarmament held a hearing the subject of which included HAARP. NATO and the US had been invited to send representatives, but chose not to do so. The Committee regrets the failure of the USA to send a representative to answer questions, or to use the opportunity to comment on the material submitted.(21)

HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project) is run jointly by the US Air Force and Navy, in conjunction with the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Similar experiments are also being conducted in Norway, probably in the Antarctic, as well as in the former Soviet Union.(22) HAARP is a research project using a ground based apparatus, an array of antennae each powered by its own transmitter, to heat up portions of ionosphere with powerful radio beams.(23) The energy generated heats up parts of the ionosphere; this results in holes in the ionosphere and produces artificial 'lenses'.

HAARP can be used for many purposes. Enormous quantities of energy can be controlled by manipulating the electrical characteristics of the atmosphere. If used as a military weapon this can have a devastating impact on an enemy. HAARP can deliver millions of times more energy to a given area than any other conventional transmitter. The energy can also be aimed at a moving target which should constitute a potential anti-missile system.

The project would also allow better communications with submarines and manipulation of global weather patterns, but it is also possible to do the reverse, to disrupt communications. By manipulating the ionosphere one could block global communications while transmitting one's own. Another application is earth-penetrating, tomography, x-raying the earth several kilometres deep, to detect oil and gas fields, or underground military facilities. Over-the-horizon radar is another application, looking round the curvature of the earth for in-coming objects.

From the 1950s the USA conducted explosions of nuclear material in the Van Allen Belts(24) to investigate the effect of the electro-magnetic pulse generated by nuclear weapon explosions at these heights on radio communications and the operation of radar. This created new magnetic radiation belts which covered nearly the whole earth. The electrons travelled along magnetic lines of force and created an artificial Aurora Borealis above the North Pole. These military tests are liable to disrupt the Van Allen belt for a long period. The earth's magnetic field could be disrupted over large areas, which would obstruct radio communications. According to US scientists it could take hundreds of years for the Van Allen belt to return to normal. HAARP could result in changes in weather patterns. It could also influence whole ecosystems, especially in the sensitive Antarctic regions.

Another damaging consequence of HAARP is the occurrence of holes in the ionosphere caused by the powerful radio beams. The ionosphere protects us from incoming cosmic radiation. The hope is that the holes will fill again, but our experience of change in the ozone layer points in the other direction. This means substantial holes in the ionosphere that protects us.

With its far-reaching impact on the environment HAARP is a matter of global concern and we have to ask whether its advantages really outweigh the risks. The environmental impact and the ethical aspect must be closely examined before any further research and testing takes place. HAARP is a project of which the public is almost completely unaware, and this needs to be remedied.

HAARP has links with 50 years of intensive space research for military purposes, including the Star Wars project, to control the upper atmosphere and communications. This kind of research has to be regarded as a serious threat to the environment, with an incalculable impact on human life. Even now nobody knows what impact HAARP may have. We have to beat down the wall of secrecy around military research, and set up the right to openness and democratic scrutiny of military research projects, and parliamentary control.

A series of international treaties and conventions (the Convention on the prohibition of military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques, the Antarctic Treaty, the Treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) casts considerable doubt on HAARP on legal as well as humanitarian and political grounds. The Antarctic Treaty lays down that the Antarctic may be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.(25) This would mean that HAARP is a breach of international law. All the implications of the new weapons systems should be examined by independent international bodies. Further international agreements should be sought to protect the environment from unnecessary destruction in war.

Apparently, there was never any follow-through on the resolution's calls for study and action (see here and here). Funny how that works.

See also: Tesla - Master of Lightning: "The Missing Papers" (PBS)

Labels: HAARP, militarism, science, technology, United States, video

Image at right: Lao Tzu

I heard US 'Defense' Secretary Gates on National Public Radio today pitching for more money from Congress.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says he wants $700 billion to fund the Pentagon and the war in Iraq. If he gets it, he will preside over the equivalent of what would be the tenth-largest economy in the world. ...

When considering all the wars America has fought since the Revolution, adjusting dollar amounts to 2007 figures, the Iraq/Afghanistan war comes out as the second-most-expensive in U.S. history, second only to World War II.

The report goes on:

... Pentagon officials are understandably anxious about what to do if they don't get the supplemental cash soon.

"If we pulled out all the stops, made use of everything possible available to us, we could probably fund the war into July," Gates said, "but I would tell you the impact on the Department of Defense would be huge if we had to do that."

To underline his point, the secretary offered a little Chinese philosophy.

"As Sun-Tzu said more than 2,500 years ago," Gates said, "the art of war teaches to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him."

It's too bad that Gates and other American rulers aren't less enamored with Sun Tzu and instead more inclined toward Lao Tzu. Here are a few passages from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu:

Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men
doesn't try to force issues
or defeat enemies by force of arms.
For every force there is a counterforce.
Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

--chapter 30, stanza 1

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn't wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

--chapter 31, stanzas 1 & 2

When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.

There is no greater illusion than fear,
no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,
no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.

--chapter 46

When rich speculators prosper
while farmers lose their land;
when government officials spend money
on weapons instead of cures;
when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible
while the poor have nowhere to turn--
all this is robbery and chaos.
It is not in keeping with the Tao.

--chapter 53, stanza 2

Center your country in the Tao
and evil will have no power.
Not that it isn't there,
but you'll be able to step out of its way.

Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself.

--chapter 60, stanzas 2 & 3

All passages are from the Tao Te Ching as translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).

Labels: Iraq, militarism, military, Taoism, United States, violence, War

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger commenting to Israeli Defense Minister General Moshe Dayan on Israel's proposed disengagement plan with Syria: It is like Admiral Moorer presenting a SALT [Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty] plan. It is probably exactly what you have got there now. Our military have discovered that arms control is a way to expand armaments; you build up to a compulsory ceiling.

Dayan: At least I am in good company.

Kissinger: Do you have that much there [in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights] now?

Dayan: We don't have that much there now. [Laughter] That is why we want more tanks.

Later in the memo (pp. 16-17) the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, and other jokingly remark on his ability to manipulate the American media.

Source: Declassified secret White House "Memorandum of Conversation." The memo documents a high-level discussion which took place on March 29, 1974. p. 4.

Labels: Israel, militarism, quotations, War, Zionism

LTC Ralph Peters (US Army, ret.) has an article, "Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look" in the June 2006 issue of the Armed Forces Journal that's making the rounds on e-mail and in the blogosphere. Peters argues for, among other things, dividing Iraq into three separate countries.

Back in 2003, I heard NPR's Neal Conan yucking it up with Peters and wrote the unpublished "Open Letter to National Public Radio's Ombudsman" that appears below:

March 29, 2003

Dear Mr. Dvorkin:

Last Thursday, I heard the host of National Public Radio's (NPR) Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan, joking with retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Ralph Peters as they began a discussion of the US invasion of Iraq. This isn't the first time I've heard Peters on NPR but hearing him again got me wondering how many NPR listeners and staff members are familiar with his work--I doubt very many

So, as a courtesy, I thought I would provide some representative selections from LTC Peters' 1999 book for you to share with NPR listeners:

There are two obstacles to a genuine Pax Americana in the coming century. The first is a series of technological barriers. We shall overcome these. The second--and far more challenging--is moral relativism. We must leave behind this era of self-debasement. American civilization is the most humane, hopeful, decent, magnetic, and generous of opportunity in history. It marks a break with all that has come before, leaving behind even northwestern Europe, with its drab cubicles of the spirit and pared-down lives.

With America, the twenty-first century might see the triumph of good. But we must accept the responsibilities of our power and our civilizing mission. We will be in a position to bring the world lasting peace. But to do so, we must say good-bye to the crippling notions that all cultures, no matter how odious, enjoy equivalent validity, and that even the most wicked foreign leader is inviolable in his person. The American peace will have to be on American terms, and those terms cannot be negotiable.

The goal, initially, is not to interfere in the affairs of foreign states, as long as they behave humanely toward their populations. The first--realizable--step is to force an end to interstate warfare. We alone will have the wealth and power to do it--plus, we could collect defense taxes from states that benefit from our actions. As the world's only extant empire of law and justice, we also have the right and responsibility to do it. We need have no moral reservations about outlawing aggression and then enforcing that prohibition.

Should we have the moral authenticity to grasp this opportunity, we may at last see the withering away of military establishments, since they will prove unusable. Only constabularies and police forces need remain, except for our own forces and those of a few morally coincident allies, such as the other English-speaking, law-cherishing states.

There is no real legal or moral requirement to grant foreigners the same rights and protections as we do our own citizens. To do so is pompous stupidity that endangers our own citizens while preventing us from helping the foreign victims of dictators, criminals, and terrorists.

We must regain a sense of who we are and pride in what we are about. We do have a right to act abroad, whether in cyberspace or on foreign soil, if it benefits our citizens and the global rule of law.

The greatest opportunity for us, and the greatest danger to us, will come with the development of behavior-control weapons by the middle decades of the next century, if not sooner. On the one hand, these will be the weapons most horrible to our civilization, but we will be unable to prevent their development. In their perfected form, they will permanently alter the perceptions and beliefs of men and women.

Attacking the human body has been a sloppy and inefficient means of making war. Attacking the mind may prove the culmination of military history.

This is our choice: Shall we dominate the earth for the good of humankind? . . . Or will we continue to insist that diplomatic niceties and the social prejudices of global elites demand that we wait, decade after decade, for evil men to act first?

The passages that appear above are from the title essay of a collection entitled Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? published by Stackpole Books. The essays first appeared in Parameters, a journal of the US Army War College and Strategic Review, a journal of the Strategic Studies Institute. The book was favorably reviewed by US Navy Captain Jan Van Tol, in the spring 2001 edition of the Naval War College Review.

According to the biography on the book jacket, Peters is "a best-selling and critically acclaimed novelist" whose "profoundly influential" analysis is the "result of firsthand experience in more than forty countries . . . and in assignments that took him from an infantry battalion to the Executive Office of the President. He campaigns for military and policy reform in a wide range of media outlets and lectures internationally on cultures in conflict and the future of war." Peters was interviewed for the PBS Frontline documentary "The Future of War."

I confess, Mr. Dvorkin, that I find LTC Peters' analysis and vision of the future disturbing, as many other NPR listeners might. What is more disturbing, though, is that views such as those expressed above have achieved considerable acceptance among the ruling elite of this country. See, for example, last year's US National Security Strategy which I mentioned in a letter to the United Nations' Security Council last year.

Nevertheless, despite my misgivings I am not, by any means, asking to have Peters banned from NPR. On the contrary, I hope NPR will do several in-depth segments on this "new thinking" in US foreign policy and military doctrine and the chilling technologies Peters envisions. More importantly, though, I hope you will endeavor to bring more enlightened commentators on NPR to critique or offer alternatives to the Bush Administration's and LTC Peters' dark visions of a global "Pax Americana" imposed and maintained by force and "behavior-control weapons." Perhaps, the readers of this letter can provide you with some suggestions.

Author's note: You can e-mail the NPR's Ombudsman at ombudsman@npr.org. Talk of the Nation can be contacted at totn@npr.org.

In some ways, the imperial candor of guys like Peters is refreshing. I'll share a few more 'gems' from Peters' writings. He published "Constant Conflict" in Parameters in Summer 1997 while he was still on active duty. Here are a few excerpts (emphasis in bold added):

We have entered an age of constant conflict. Information is at once our core commodity and the most destabilizing factor of our time. Until now, history has been a quest to acquire information; today, the challenge lies in managing information. Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar--professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.

For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

We live in an age of multiple truths. He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right; simultaneously, we shall see higher levels of constructive trafficking between civilizations than ever before. The future is bright--and it is also very dark. More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics. There will be more democracy--that deft liberal form of imperialism--and greater popular refusal of democracy.

Commentary: The phrase "clash of civilizations" comes from Samuel P. Huntington who, in the same book, also wrote:

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) pg. 51.

... (of note, the internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community). ...

Commentary: On the UN and diplomacy, a couple of quotes come to mind:

"It is part of the wisdom, I think, of the religious tradition always to be skeptical of what governments are doing. If their acts are done in secrecy, all one can do is to draw into that darkness the light of one's own nonviolence, plus the lessons of their past conduct. ... One has to keep reminding oneself and other people that an exalted contempt for human life lies at the basis of diplomacy; and that one had better think of the unprotected and innocent, and be prepared for the bad news when the leaders meet."

Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh. The Raft is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist/Christian Awareness. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) p. 69.

"It would be some time before I realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. This is why the weak are so deeply concerned with the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, as a means of providing some small measure of equality for that which is not equal in fact. Coming from a developing country, I was trained extensively in international law and diplomacy and mistakenly assumed that the great powers, especially the United States, also trained their representatives in diplomacy and accepted the value of it. But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness."

Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his book, Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga (New York: Random House, 1999) p. 198.

These noncompetitive cultures, such as that of Arabo-Persian Islam or the rejectionist segment of our own population, are enraged. Their cultures are under assault; their cherished values have proven dysfunctional, and the successful move on without them. The laid-off blue-collar worker in America and the Taliban militiaman in Afghanistan are brothers in suffering. ...

It is fashionable among world intellectual elites to decry "American culture," with our domestic critics among the loudest in complaint. But traditional intellectual elites are of shrinking relevance, replaced by cognitive-practical elites--figures such as Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, or our most successful politicians--human beings who can recognize or create popular appetites, recreating themselves as necessary. Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures. While some other cultures, such as those of East Asia, appear strong enough to survive the onslaught by adaptive behaviors, most are not. The genius, the secret weapon, of American culture is the essence that the elites despise: ours is the first genuine people's culture. It stresses comfort and convenience--ease--and it generates pleasure for the masses. We are Karl Marx's dream, and his nightmare.

Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made the identical mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can't wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather "Baywatch." America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine. There is no "peer competitor" in the cultural (or military) department. Our cultural empire has the addicted--men and women everywhere--clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment.

American culture is criticized for its impermanence, its "disposable" products. But therein lies its strength. All previous cultures sought ideal achievement which, once reached, might endure in static perfection. American culture is not about the end, but the means, the dynamic process that creates, destroys, and creates anew. If our works are transient, then so are life's greatest gifts--passion, beauty, the quality of light on a winter afternoon, even life itself. American culture is alive. ...

Ours is also the first culture that aims to include rather than exclude. The films most despised by the intellectual elite--those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex--are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere. American action films, often in dreadful copies, are available from the Upper Amazon to Mandalay. They are even more popular than our music, because they are easier to understand. The action films of a Stallone or Schwarzenegger or Chuck Norris rely on visual narratives that do not require dialog for a basic understanding. They deal at the level of universal myth, of pre-text, celebrating the most fundamental impulses (although we have yet to produce a film as violent and cruel as the Iliad). They feature a hero, a villain, a woman to be defended or won--and violence and sex. Complain until doomsday; it sells. The enduring popularity abroad of the shopworn Rambo series tells us far more about humanity than does a library full of scholarly analysis.

When we speak of a global information revolution, the effect of video images is more immediate and intense than that of computers. Image trumps text in the mass psyche, and computers remain a textual outgrowth, demanding high-order skills: computers demarcate the domain of the privileged. We use technology to expand our wealth, power, and opportunities. The rest get high on pop culture. If religion is the opium of the people, video is their crack cocaine. When we and they collide, they shock us with violence, but, statistically, we win.

As more and more human beings are overwhelmed by information, or dispossessed by the effects of information-based technologies, there will be more violence. Information victims will often see no other resort. As work becomes more cerebral, those who fail to find a place will respond by rejecting reason. We will see countries and continents divide between rich and poor in a reversal of 20th-century economic trends. Developing countries will not be able to depend on physical production industries, because there will always be another country willing to work cheaper. The have-nots will hate and strive to attack the haves. And we in the United States will continue to be perceived as the ultimate haves. States will struggle for advantage or revenge as their societies boil. Beyond traditional crime, terrorism will be the most common form of violence, but transnational criminality, civil strife, secessions, border conflicts, and conventional wars will continue to plague the world, albeit with the "lesser" conflicts statistically dominant. In defense of its interests, its citizens, its allies, or its clients, the United States will be required to intervene in some of these contests. We will win militarily whenever we have the guts for it.

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. ...

Commentary: Several quotes on the military and the US economy come to mind here:

"In spite of the enthusiasm Americans affect for general freedom of commerce when such liberty is favorable to them, they will be equally warm for an exclusive system when they can apply it advantageously to their commerce. They share this way of thinking with all merchants, alternately zealous for a monoploy and for free trade according to the interest of the moment."

French Minister Louis Guillaume Otto in 1785. Quoted in David P. Szatmary, Shay's Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection. (Amherst, MA: Univ. of Mass. Pr., 1980) p. 20.

". . . I am decidedly of [the] opinion we should take no part in European quarrels, but cultivate peace and commerce with all, yet who can avoid seeing the source of war in the tyranny of those nations who deprive of us our natural right of trading with our neighbors? The produce of the U.S. will soon exceed the European demand. What is to be done with the surplus, when there is one? It will be employed, without question, to open by force a market for itself . . . "

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, dated Dec. 4, 1788.

" . . . globalization requires a stable power structure, and no country is more essential for this than the United States. . . . The fact that no two countries have gone to war since they both got McDonald's is partly due to economic integration, but it is also due to the presence of American power and America's willingness to use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization--from Iraq to North Korea. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designers of the US Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. And these fighting forces and institutions are paid for by American taxpayer dollars.

"With all due respect to Silicon Valley, ideas and technologies don't just win and spread on their own. 'Good ideas and technologies also need strong power that promotes those ideas by example and protects those ideas by winning on the battlefield,' says foreign-policy historian Robert Kagan."

Thomas L. Friedman. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). p. 373. Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times foreign affairs columnist, is a staunch proponent of corporate globalization.

For a generation, and probably much longer, we will face no military peer competitor. Our enemies will challenge us by other means. The violent actors we encounter often will be small, hostile parties possessed of unexpected, incisive capabilities or simply of a stunning will to violence (or both). Renegade elites, not foreign fleets, should worry us. The urbanization of the global landscape is a greater threat to our operations than any extant or foreseeable military system. We will not deal with wars of Realpolitik, but with conflicts spawned of collective emotions, sub-state interests, and systemic collapse. Hatred, jealousy, and greed--emotions rather than strategy--will set the terms of the struggles.

We will survive and win any conflict short of a cataclysmic use of weapons of mass destruction. But the constant conflicts in which we selectively intervene will be as miserable as any other form of warfare for the soldiers and Marines engaged. The bayonet will still be relevant; however, informational superiority incisively employed should both sharpen that bayonet and permit us to defeat some--but never all--of our enemies outside of bayonet range. Our informational advantage over every other country and culture will be so enormous that our greatest battlefield challenge will be harnessing its power. Our potential national weakness will be the failure to maintain the moral and raw physical strength to thrust that bayonet into an enemy's heart.

Pilots and skippers, as well as defense executives, demand threat models that portray country X or Y as overtaking the military capability of the United States in 10 to 20 years. Forget it. Our military power is culturally based. They cannot rival us without becoming us. Wise competitors will not even attempt to defeat us on our terms; rather, they will seek to shift the playing field away from military confrontations or turn to terrorism and nontraditional forms of assault on our national integrity. Only the foolish will fight fair.

... Beyond the Beltway, the United States is wide awake and leading a second "industrial" revolution that will make the original industrial revolution that climaxed the great age of imperialism look like a rehearsal by amateurs. Only the United States has the synthetic ability, the supportive laws, and the cultural agility to remain at the cutting edge of wealth creation. ...

Yes, foreign cultures are reasserting their threatened identities--usually with marginal, if any, success--and yes, they are attempting to escape our influence. But American culture is infectious, a plague of pleasure, and you don't have to die of it to be hindered or crippled in your integrity or competitiveness. The very struggle of other cultures to resist American cultural intrusion fatefully diverts their energies from the pursuit of the future. We should not fear the advent of fundamentalist or rejectionist regimes. They are simply guaranteeing their peoples' failure, while further increasing our relative strength.

It remains difficult, of course, for military leaders to conceive of warfare, informational or otherwise, in such broad terms. But Hollywood is "preparing the battlefield," and burgers precede bullets. The flag follows trade. ... Our unconscious alliance of culture with killing power is a combat multiplier no government, including our own, could design or afford. We are magic. And we're going to keep it that way. ...

Labels: capitalism, critical thinking, Empire, Hollywood, militarism, military, National Public Radio, quotations, Thomas Jefferson, United States, US Founding Fathers