In A Functioning Democracy, What Would War Look Like?

W.J. Astore

In a functioning democracy, which the USA decidedly isn’t, what would be the features of a necessary war, as in a war fought for defensive (and for defensible) reasons and purposes? Here are ten features that occur to me:

  1. A necessary war would readily gain the approval of Congress, and indeed there would be a formal declaration of war issued by Congress.
  2. National mobilization would be required to win as swiftly as possible.
  3. All Americans could clearly state the reasons for the war and the end goals.
  4. Americans would reject, as much as possible, a long and open-ended war, knowing that long wars are the enemy of democracy.
  5. Nearly all sectors of society would share the war’s burdens. (Think here of celebrities like Jimmy Stewart and sports stars like Ted Williams, among so many others, doing their bit for the war effort in World War II.)
  6. Sacrifices would be made on a national scale, including rationing of materials needed for the war effort.
  7. Taxes would go up to pay for the war effort. War bonds might be sold as well. Deficit spending wouldn’t be used to hide the costs of the war.
  8. Civilian leaders would be in control of the war effort. Military leaders who failed to produce results would be reassigned, demoted, or fired.
  9. As much as possible, freedom of the press would be encouraged so that Americans knew the true course and costs of war.
  10. When the war ended, again as quickly as possible, the nation would return to its default state of peace; military establishments bolstered during wartime would be demobilized.

Now let’s consider every U.S. war since World War II. Let’s focus especially on Iraq and Afghanistan. How many of these ten features would apply to these wars?

I’d argue that none of them apply.

That’s how you know these wars are not in the service of democracy, whether at home or overseas. They are also not defensive wars, nor are they defensible in ways that pass rigorous and honest debate among the people. (This is precisely why none of them came with Congressional declarations of war.)

I know my “top ten” list isn’t all-inclusive, but I think it’s a reasonable guide to whether the next war (and I’m sure more are coming) will be necessary and justifiable. It’s a safe bet it won’t be.

Readers, can you think of other ways we can tell whether war is truly justifiable? History teaches us that most wars are unjustifiable, offensive in nature, and therefore crimes against humanity.

In fact, since 1945 it’s often been America’s putative “enemies” who are more likely to be fighting a necessary war — it’s perhaps the chief reason why they so often win.

In sum, war is the enemy of democracy. You wage war long, you wage it wrong, assuming you want to keep a democracy. That so many American “thought-leaders” are still advocating for more war in Afghanistan is a clear sign that our country’s operating system is infected by malware that promotes militarism and war.

James Madison: No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare

66 thoughts on “In A Functioning Democracy, What Would War Look Like?”

  2. Meanwhile, a reminder of the 750 “democratic” military bases we have around the world:
    https://tomdispatch.com/the-all-american-base-world/

    To this I’d add the Navy’s fleet carriers, eleven huge floating bases that carry roughly 5000 sailors and aviators along with plenty of warplanes, missiles, and bombs.

    Yet, despite all these overseas bases and mega-warships, America is always vulnerable!

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  3. Bill, if a real shooting war started these eleven huge floating bases that carry roughly 5000 sailors and aviators along with plenty of warplanes, missiles, and bombs and would be sunk in the first few days. By our enemies hypersonic missiles. The Navy knows that. They are anachronisms of WW2.

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  4. The reasons for declaring war need to be stated. I believe the only reason for war should be an existential threat. This means an enemy that has:
    1. Declared war on us either formally or by intention.
    2. Has the means and the will to inflict wide spread damage on the
    home land.

    The Taliban for example does not fulfill either of these. Al Qaeda fulfills the first but not the second. They did inflict damage on the home land with their 9/11 attacks but not since. They do not have a consistent means to inflict damage on the home land other than the random terrorist attack.

    Economic warfare is not part of the definition as an existential threat. It may be existential for the businesses that are being acted against by unfair trade practices, but not for the country as a whole.

    The hierarchy of war is:
    Policy
    Strategy
    Tactics
    Logistics
    Policy is the most important or we get a situation like Afghanistan. There was no policy! There was only strategy, and that was to hunt down and kill the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Policy must be over arching and made by the civilian government. The other three are for the military to figure out.

    Again, it would be well for every American to have served in the military so they can experience how it works and what it should do. A high school course in military history should be required. This means an unbiased look at what wars are about and their consequences.

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    1. Excellent comment Mr. Scott. You nailed it.
      The US has a Constitution and democratic Government in place to follow your recommendations.
      Its not a systemic problem.
      The problem the US has it that the elected Congress representatives do not do their job.
      Congress has failed in war after war to declare war and set over arching policy.

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    2. Agree completely with the need for an existential threat. War for any other reason is murder. Killing people for our “national interest” or “preemptively” is murder.

      I will also point out that the 9/11 hijackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia, which is the financial and philosophical base of Wahhabism. So while the Taliban may have been harboring elements of Al Queda, the perpetrators were Saudi. So considering Saudi Arabia an ally makes absolutely no sense at all.

      In Sun Tzu’s Art of War, he emphasizes the need to know the territory, both the physical territory and your own and your opponent’s mental territory. We went to war without knowing any of those, operating under the delusion that superior technology and firepower were going to win the day, like they did in Vietnam.

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      1. as you say, jpa, these are the same delusions and imperial obsessions for iraq and afghanistan as the US suffered from when they launched their genocidal air strikes, bombs, napalm drops, and other elements of their vaunted war machine against the innocents of japan, korea, vietnam, laos, and cambodia. war is sanctioned murder. taxes are sanctioned theft. many religions are sanctioned brainwashing. television is sanctioned gorgonization of the masses. politics is sanctioned prevarication. am i too harsh and judgemental? w/ certitude! no matter tho’; no one but the powerless is tuning in.

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        1. I’m stunned that the wordsmith in you stopped at such a short list of know suspects of sanctionyzation… brevity perhaps some the best policy when bathing the body with the poisoning influence among too long a presence of such negative vibrations within your electro magnetic superstructure…I believe that the powerless actually are the materialists believing they are having an effect on creation enhancement. Nothing could be further from the truth. They vibrate just a notch above the lifeless spectrum. Unaware and Uninformed about the subtler levels of manifestation where purusha and prakriti hold Court. Just because you adorn and polish a false image of the real doesn’t make it anymore energetic. Existing as an imagined lord is self inflation that won’t soar but fall flat in the halls of the infinite . Maybe the folks that are tuning in are invested and enlightened by truth; which carries a much higher vibration. Today’s potentates are kings and queens for a day; thankfully their painful wounds will be healed and they will become dust under the feet of those they have downtrodden as the wheels of ages gyrates.

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          1. Read something today that heartened me: The cosmos notes and is grateful for all attempts at creativity or achieving equality for all, no matter how small. As everyone and everything is interconnected, I have to believe that assertion is true.

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            1. It’s what keeps the seed alive… it’s not easy to keep wearing away at this dense materialistic reign we find ourselves navigating. But every drop of truth that strikes it will eventually wear down these man made temples of greedy self interest.

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          2. it is arresting and somehow depressing to realize that all of us presently disporting ourselves in every direction across the planet are only here b/c our antecedents, our direct-line progenitors going back for millennia, were more vicious, more savage, more cruelly ambitious, more greedy, more devious in their hunting tactics, more duplicitous among their tribal leaders, and more me-oriented than those w/ whom they were in competition during their own periods of regnancy. when will compassionate intelligence reign? is it naive to be sanguine?

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            1. Hmmmm….could not survival of the fittest apply to those who cooperated most and took the best care of each other, Jeanie? Would it have to necessarily reference the most vicious and conniving?

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              1. find such a societal group for me, denise. if such a society ever existed, those who survived w/in it did so thru cooperative cunning, not via balmy good cheer and charity. goering’s remarks, tho’ damnably depressing, were damnably accurate, as were darwin’s insights. goering was a realist.

                i just watched soldier ants from a nearby colony raid, plunder, and kill nearly every ant in the nest under our veranda. it was a hideous formicidae genocide to witness. social groups survive by being more aggressive and esurient than their neighbouring social groups.

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            2. It doesn’t reign during this corrupted age. But it does exist in useful qualities that inhabit your heart. Although they aren’t the dominant force present on the public stage; you know how to be a loving presence in the spaces you inhabit and it is enough that you touch those lives with your tenderness. It is inspirational and it’s effects ripple throughout the realms of this material world and beyond. It seems to me, that there’s a strong spirit that flows from your core; a blend of tenderness and toughness that has made a difference wherever you laid your hand to the task. I believe you would be a good choice to chair the committee on whether a nation should engage in aggression on the global stage. The BS and Warbucks would stop at your lectern; and many a proud general who approached you with a request for papers for war authorizations; well….a tail would be seen between legs as they exited the room empty handed.

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              1. as w/ you, our good utejack. however, you would be a far more noble and effective candidate than i to chair such a committee.

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                2. fo’sho’, utejack. en effet, i have already had the dubious honour of being incarcerated for an extended ‘vacation’ in a loonie-bin upon my return from a 2-yr work/study stint in japan [1962~’64]. manic depression it was diagnosed. i had refused to eat for 3 months and had become a perfervid anti-vietnam war zealot.

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                3. I’m proud of you; you’ve got a feisty presence in the face of injustice that refuses to compromise right action. I’m so happy that your spirit is still intact and as always “tell it like it is!”

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                4. may i reciprocate, utejack, w/ unbridled pride in, respect and erumpent enthusiasm for your own commitment to the rectitude of social justice for the disenfranchised, your anti-war advocacy, and your genuine regard for those dispossessed who are the least able to defend their human rights? you are heroic, as are so many of wja’s activists who read and respond to his insightful blogs. personally, having bairns helped maintain an equiponderence i would not have been able to acquire otherwise; i would likely have spent most of my benighted life behind bars!

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                5. You would have brightened up the dungeon. For sure, but I’m happy you survived that fate. The water needed your presence.
                  Are you familiar with the crusade of Dane Wigington? It is a little know feature of our Military Industrial Complex, that seems to be chewing up an enormous amount of the budget (of course it’s all off the books)! I’m impressed with the amount of senior officers who have decided to lend their help regarding this cause. I read about these things and the Lorax spirit within, weeps for the trees.

                  https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

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                6. well now, utejack, any dungeon inmates would have been in high-dudgeon if they had been compelled to endure my high-jinx, political histrionics, and scratchy voice.

                  tnx for the dane wigington reference, as i was not familiar w/ him [tho’ i should be] until you alerted me to his uber-advocacy polemics. given i’m not a geo-engineer, a mere marine biologist, i forwarded last night your response on wja’s comments section to several of my rugrats, as they are more knowledgeable than i:
                  preston, a PhD in chemical limnology and adjunct professor in environmental engineering at the univs of alberta and calgary [undergrad at univ of toronto] has spent years studying pollution parametres in alberta’s oilsands watersheds; menzies, a geologist by training [queen’s univ and clark univ] whose PhD is in alternative energy resources research and development and is executive director of NWT’s energy, petroleum, mining, and environment ministry; corinne and bryarly whose grad degrees are, respectively, in sustainable forestry and geology [queen’s univ and univ. of vermont] and are the co-founders of EARTH PATH, an outdoor environmental education school w/ programs in québec and ontario; firth whose degrees [from harvard] are in earth & planetary science and astronomy and astrophysics. i did not include maine or kavan b/c their academic degrees are in, respectively, human rights law and computer engineering & cognitive science. [queen’s univ and univ of victoria]. a reply from preston just arrived. here tis:

                  “As the reviewer suggests, it’s bullshit. Contrails pollute the air, but that is nothing new. Jet fuel is like kerosene, a low grade fuel that creates particulates and yes, sulfates, which could be used to reduce solar radiation, but this is not some global conspiracy any more than driving diesel vehicles with similar fuels is. It’s just simple air pollution, not that it is advantageous for the environment, but it isn’t some global scheme to trade one bad for one good. Geoengineering Watch should publish an article on Catholics having a global conspiracy to destroy the planet by promoting ‘no birth control’ policies. however, we are complicit mom given all the children you popped out!”

                  “On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 6:15 AM Jeanie McEachern wrote:
                  https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/solar-geoengineering-isnt-happening-or-damaging-the-planet-aircraft-contrails-are-formed-by-water-vapor-not-chemicals/

                  given your mum is a climate-change ignis fatuus, please help me understand the ramifications of my nescience. i was alerted to this site by utejack w/ a followup by douglas martin, senior research associate at cornell university, but i have no clue what is false or true. how about you? luvmum.”

                  so, utejack, please allow me to tergiversate [shuffle backwards] here: this entire reply to you is far too personal and bloated w/ fanfaronade, but given i have no other contact coordinates for you, i persevered w/ my ms. motor-mouth proclivities. wja has every right and rationale to proscribe me from his comments section!

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                7. Tell Preston thanks for his expertise. I’ve wondered about what I’ve been looking at cross crossing the skies and have been wondering what I’m looking at. I never saw skies with these patterns around O’hare airport as a youth while I played from dawn until dusk 12 months a year on some field or pond. These skies perplexed me and I’ve always felt flying to be one of the most polluting of behaviors; so maybe I’m just grinding any axe I found on the industry. Even if it’s an imaginary one?

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                9. I’ve been seeing these stories in the Guardian lately about GeoEngineering
                  and it’s gotten me doing searches on the subject. I have friends who sent me the story from GeoEngineering Watch and I’m reading all with an open mind; trying to comprehend all the solutions that are being batted around. After reading several books … The End of Ice, by Jamail and A Farewell To Ice by Wadhams. I’ve been consuming a whole bunch of material on the destruction my generation has payed on the planet. There’s so much out there and I do not have scientists around me to bounce ideas off of; so I mostly read and wonder???? But I’m convinced that my generation owes humanity an apology for our polluting ways; we were despicable. It’s a heavy subject that comes with a cup of melancholy. Sometimes I wonder why the
                  “scientific” wasn’t on my radar as a youth. But it fascinates me now. And I do enjoy reading about folks who are documenting the habitat loss; they are so passionate and none seem to be painting a serene landscape.

                  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/geoengineering-global-warming-ipcc?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

                  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/11/solar-geoengineering-climate-change-new-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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                11. as you say, denise… and utejack too. it is no single generation which is culpable; all have been culpable since our species first picked up a denuded tree branch, started whacking the daylights out of it over some equally culpable yobo’s skull, and then went on to uncover the destructive powers of carbonized energy sources. no generation is exculpable: only the constraints of its environment, particular habitat, resource availability, and technical prowess at a particular time in each generation’s history acted to ameliorate a generation’s deleterious impacts.

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        1. not to wax didactic or protreptic, but we all should recognize that americans’ hubris is such that few feel compelled to learn any other culture’s language, the absence of which precludes communicating w/ and developing an understanding of how tramontanes [foreigners] think, particularly those cultures we subsume, conquer, and occupy. the ‘winning hearts and minds’ trope is naught but a political gambit to defraud the electorate w/ fanciful phrases that delude americans into believing they side w/ the gods floating merrily about in the star-studded firmament.

          i belabour the point raised by others, but… it did not take us long to realize that we could not come close to communicating in a deep or comprehensive way w/ the inuit amongst us during our arctic years w/out learning inuktitut or inuvialuktun. they think so differently about the world around them which is, of course, reflected in their language… such that it is nearly impossible to translate their ideations into english. for example, their word for the ‘tundra in summer’ translates, sort of, into ‘intense light distortion across endless spaces w/ no peripheries or borders’. a ‘lake’ is ‘diamonds sparkling in the sun to lead the way’. dying’ is ‘the beginning of one’s long sleep into the future of eternal darkness’. ‘copulation’ is a ‘one-eyed cock searching inside for a son’. ‘dreams’ are ‘words floating behind one’s eyes’. words themselves are believed to be living objects that one must be vigilant about placing one’s trust in’. ‘wind’ is the whispering of their pantheistic gods to each other… and so one. afghans are no different. the usofdisunitedamerica [usda] failed them miserably and criminally.

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  5. In a world of functioning democracies (or, at worst, parliamentary monarchies, such as the U.K.), would there even be war? I’m extrapolating your premise out to a extreme extent here, of course.

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    1. Denise: We can go back to 1914. Germany under the Kaiser had a parliament; Great Britain had its king and parliament. France was in its Third Republic phase. They all went to war, disastrously so.

      But we learned from that disaster, right?

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      1. Presumably, to wage ‘democratic ‘ wars, we would need to reinstall democratic governments, both in the US, UK and other countries. A starting point could be the massive equalisation of incomes, to wipe out the memory of the bought-and-paid-for governments we now live under.

        Who will break the news to the arms corporations that the fat years are now over?

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      2. Well, but Serbia wasn’t a well-functioning democracy, and as emperor, the Kaiser made foreign-policy decisions, according to my reading. And of course, Russia was ruled by a czar through most of the war, so many of the players didn’t fit the democracy bill.

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      3. Right, Denise. But consider the U.S. Civil War. It was the USA versus the CSA (Confederate States of America). Both had presidents and parliaments of a sort. And the war lasted four years and killed over 600K Americans.

        Having a functioning democracy should reduce war; sadly, I don’t think it will eliminate it. And more wars may be coming due to climate change and resource shortages. I hope not, but the possibility is there.

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        1. I agree completely with your last paragraph. I think the crux of the question is the meaning of, “functioning democracy.” As you pointed out in your initial premise, the presence of a supposedly representative government does not guarantee that the nation is a functioning democracy.

          In the case of the Civil War, did the CSA have a functioning democracy when such a large part of the population was enslaved? I’d submit that the CSA was no more a functioning democracy than the U.S. itself currently is.

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          1. How true. The slaves had no say. Indeed, that’s why the CSA fought the war — to ensure they’d continue to have no say as slaves.

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          2. the good ol’ usa has never been a ‘functioning democracy’; the entire befouled system of govt, the putative ‘bill of rights’, and the ‘sacrosanct constitution’ were designed and instaurated by slave-holders who didn’t give a toad’s tittities [they don’t have any] about anyone other than themselves. they cared about sustaining their privileged lifestyles and maintaining seigneury over america’s resources and their ‘lessors’, both of which those 16th-century ‘leaders’ [yes, that seedy lot of curmudgeons and slubberdegullions] exploited way beyond what we define today as blatantly criminal.

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  7. NO WAR. period. end stop. only in defence, as w/ individuals if one is attacked by another. offensive, opportunistic wars are less likely to occur if all nations treated each other equitably, honourably, and w/ everyone’s best interests in mind from the outset. however, that would require fair trade negotiations, sustainable minimum wages for all workers, aid for those unable to work, no theft or exploitation of others’ resources, and the commitment to a cultural and economic ambit in which those who labour on our behalf in jobs w/out social or economic esteem are instead held in the highest regard and paid accordingly. i cannot pass a sweating garbage collector or road worker in this, the sweltering heat of the philippines, w/out saying hello, thanking him/her for doing a job i would be incapable of doing, offering him/her snacks and water i carry w/ me, and ‘dashing’ each a few pesos for their next meal. the quintessential dilemma we face is that even those w/ noble intentions can be transmogrified by greed… wanting more than they already have or need. esurience and power over others seem to be endemic diseases from which our flawed species suffers and by which we can be seduced given catalyzing circumstances. i wish i had non-polyanna suggestions to add to your 10-point inventory, wja, but i admit defeasance here. agonistic anomie prevails.

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  8. Denise’s comment about democracies and war reminded me of a perceptive and rather infamous statement by Hermann Goering soon after World War II. He was being interviewed in prison. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

    We got around to the subject of war again and I [Gustave Gilbert] said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

    “Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

    “There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

    “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

    http://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html

    There is too much truth in Goering’s statement here.

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    1. no countries, no wars; it’s simple. tribalism is less expensive and less ubiquitously destructive to the environment. global governance is a chimera.

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    2. And minds like Goering’s are the reason that Nazi Germany came so close to winning it all. The truth of his rationale has been proven time and again for thousands of years.

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  9. Caitlin Johnstone nails it here. Remember that America is capitalist first; the business of America is (war) business.

    “Nobody gets “credit” for ending the Afghanistan occupation. Everyone involved in keeping it going for twenty years gets blame. That’s it. You don’t get a trophy for not murdering more people.

    But it’s not surprising that the Afghanistan war took twenty years to end. If anything, the way the deck is stacked in favor of perpetual war, it’s surprising it happened that fast.

    Military members who support imperialism get promoted. Those who get to the top go on to work for war profiteers. The war profiteers fund think tanks which promote more wars. The mass media report “news” stories citing those think tanks. These stories manufacture consent for more wars.

    The war industry reinforces itself. Those who get to the top of the war machine move on to the private sector and spend their time lobbying for more wars which create more eventual Pentagon officials who go on to lobby for more wars. Peace should be easy. This is why it’s not.

    It’s horrifying when you realize how much of the behavior of the most powerful military in history is driven by the simple fact that weapons manufacturers don’t make money if those weapons aren’t being used. The most powerful government on earth is stuck in a self-exacerbating feedback loop where the behaviors of the war machine are dictated by the war industry, and people wonder why it’s so hard to end wars. With a cycle this vicious, you can only end the wars by ending the empire.

    This is what you get when mass-scale human behavior is driven by profit. As long as war is profitable, you guarantee that more wars will happen. As long as ecocide is profitable, more ecocide will happen. As long as corruption is profitable, more corruption will happen. Meanwhile, peace is not profitable. Demilitarization is not profitable. Nuclear disarmament is not profitable. Getting plastic out of the oceans is not profitable. Leaving trees standing is not profitable. Leaving oil in the ground is not profitable. Freedom is not profitable.

    The religion of profit drives all human behavior. And it’s a death cult that will end us all if we don’t end it first.”
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/08/20/the-system-is-rigged-for-endless-war-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

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    1. Regarding Ms. Johnstone’s next-to-last paragraph in the quoted section, I’d add a repeated caveat: “Peace is not profitable FOR SOME INDUSTRIES. ” “Demilitarization is not profitable FOR SOME INDUSTRIES.” Naturally, Raytheon, Lockheed, et. al. would not be happy if peace broke out. But if the money and technology currently being devoted to military dominance could be turned to solving Earth’s problems, the result would be immensely profitable. AND, longer lived, because endless war will hasten planetary collapse. Breaking the feedback loop Ms. Johnstone documents would be a matter of shifting business priorities. A Herculean task, certainly, but it’s an answer.

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            1. Thanks for that link, Dennis. A pretty comprehensive report, and quite interesting. I hope the more progressive elements in government start pushing for rail as a pollution reducer. Certainly, it’s less polluting to ship goods by rail than via truck. At this time, however, the cost for people to travel by Amtrak is almost as high as to fly, so there’s no real incentive to take a train from, say, Chicago to Seattle. I’ve had reason to go from Cleveland to Chicago or Detroit for work, and I would have loved to have taken the train, but the time and money factors prohibited it.

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              1. Denise, sadly AMTRAK is a railroad only a third World country would be proud of.
                And of course you know the real reason the US has no high-speed rail.
                The US would rather spend its money on 2,630 F35 jet fighters, 11- nuclear aircraft carriers, and 14- ballistic missile nuclear submarines. And unprovoked wars against countries that never attacked the US.

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    2. It’s all so depressing on so many levels of our society . If reasons why had hands, it may be hard to count the amount of fingers pointed toward the 20 years of planned war obsolescence; when asking why there has been so little progress in our social commons. My biggest fear? What’s next on the minds of these war profiteers.

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  10. Your points 1-10 are a great guidepost for the present and the future. Congress gave up responsibility a long time ago, when Corporate America used the US Marines as their personal Mafia to enforce American Imperialism onto other other countries – Think of the Smedley Butler era. As Butler famously wrote:

    “The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.”

    There was a typical Neo-Con response from General McMaster on PBS. “We’re already seeing the horrible humanitarian consequences, but there will be severe political consequences, in connection with our credibility with our allies and partners and other countries who will wonder how reliable we are.”

    The interviewer Judy Woodruff never asked the question of why McMaster and the US Military’s High Command failed so badly in training, and instilling an esprit de corps in the Afghan Armed Forces. The Afghan Armed Forces were lavished with equipment. Questions like this are never asked of our Warrior Cult High Command.

    It makes me sick to think how easy these Generals weighted down with ribbons get off.

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      1. monotonous languor, thank you for guiding us to this interview [i.e. mythologizing prevarications] w/ the troglodyte mcmaster. it triggered such a gag-reflex that i had to hang my head over the nearest toilet. who let this horror out of his cell-block? he’s likely so be-ribboned w/ medals he can barely stand upright… and ‘upright’ he is not.

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  11. Look at WA state. Where I lived and worked for 47-years. With it’s Bremerton Naval Shipyards; it’s Everett Navy Homeport; it’s Bangor Nuclear Submarine Base; it’s Whidbey Island Naval Air Station; it’s Indian Island Ammunition Depot; its Joint Fort Lewis/McChord Army/Air Force Base; the Hanford Nuclear Site, and of course Boeing – the military contractor. WA’s economy has become dependent on the military. As warned against by Seymour Melman in his famous 1985 book” The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline”.
    What chance does an anti-war Senator or Representative have of being elected in WA? Zero!
    What WA Senator or Representative would dare vote for a decrease in military spending? Not one!
    And of course if a nuclear war started the wonderful scenic Puget Sound would be one of the first places to be turned to radioactive ash.

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    1. holishitola, dennis! i had no clue. neither, i suspect, do most USA-ers. i wonder how many other states are thus maculated w/ such a panoply of military malignancies….

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        1. good goofus! the USA deserves to go as bankrupt as its moral compass…a compass that has been dysfunctional for 4 centuries, straight back to its inglorious slave-holding history and its genocidal slaughters of our indigenous people.

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      2. I suspect most are, because the war profiteers like to scatter their sources throughout the nation as a way to bribe the most representatives. Ohio, for instance, has Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and NASA Glenn Research Center, along with a number of the still-producing domestic steel mills. All of Timken Steel / Roller Bearings / Research used to be headquartered in my hometown, an hour south of Cleveland. And there’s also Goodyear, of course. My alma mater, the University of Akron, has one of the world’s foremost polymer chemistry departments, as well.

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  12. In a functioning democracy, War should never be given the floor to raise it’s voice. It never has provided a positive solution, therefore it’s only benefit in policy discussions should be it’s ability to stand front and center as the perfect prop for representing a failed path forward.

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    2. we repine that such a prospect, of their standing forward as a “perfect prop for representing a failed path forward”, will ever find its way to a public podium, utejack. we can only dream of such a mis-en-scène.

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  13. “Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.”

    WJA, am repetending my wee comment to utejack, due to some costive glitch at either your terminal or mine:

    “will do, utejack, and tnx for your oppugnings, comments, observations, and ever-curious brain.”

    by the way, wja, we need to expand the diversity and selcouth singularities of your commentors, which is why i copy and paste your blogs/comments to my consociate crwth.

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