The chief legacy of 9/11 is as obvious as it is tragic: a state of permanent warfare in the United States, both abroad and in the “homeland” (a term not used in normal discourse before the 9/11 attacks), with millions dead and displaced for no defensible reason.
If you’re 25 years old or younger in America, you’ve never known a time when your country wasn’t at war. “Peace” is no longer seen as desirable, let alone possible. War is seen as America’s natural state; a land of warriors are we, imbued with a “warrior ethos” that applauds kicking other countries when their down and beating the snot out of them just because we can.
Meanwhile, in the “homeland,” surveillance grows ever more intrusive by the day as agents of ICE kick down doors and haul people away to detention centers that are being rapidly expanded. Personal privacy is increasingly a thing of the past as the government wraps itself in a shroud of secrecy that makes oversight and accountability well-nigh impossible.
The global war on terror has become a war of terror. War begets more war, with no end in sight.
Re-reading the Atlantic Monthly 150th anniversary issue from November 2007, I came across this gem of a quote from America’s 9/11 mayor, Rudolph Giuliani:
We’ve got to be patient and committed [in Iraq], but we’ve got to multitask … We’ve got to talk about Iran—Iran is more dangerous than Iraq—and we have got to get the job done in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
That was Giuliani in July of 2007 when he ran as a Republican presidential candidate. In America, that’s how you get treated as a “serious” candidate for the presidency—by urging for war not just with Iraq and Afghanistan but with Pakistan and Iran as well. We can “multitask” our wars! Truly a sign of American greatness.
Well, Giuliani’s dream has come true—we are talking a lot about Iran today.
Back in 2007, Ron Paul had a different take on 9/11 and America’s state of forever war, but he was roundly booed for asking Americans to exercise just a bit of empathy by asking why “they” hate us:
That “crazy” Ron Paul, talking about blowback for America’s wars in the Middle East. He obviously didn’t know about America’s peace-making bombs and freedom-bringing missiles. Didn’t he know as well that “they” hate us for our freedoms?
Wars are protean and dangerous beasts. Even when necessary, which is rare, it is well that we remember the horrifying costs of them.
The Russia-Ukraine War is in its fifth year with no clear end in sight. Suffering on both sides has been extreme. Trump’s war with Iran is in its sixth month with no clear end in sight. Hopes of a quick and low-cost regime-change war, encouraged by Israeli propaganda directed at Trump, have proven illusory. With Trump refusing to admit defeat, further escalation and dramatic economic consequences seem likely.
Certainly, Ukraine could not have sustained its military efforts without massive support from the U.S., NATO, and the EU. From the Russian perspective, they likely see this as a Ukraine/US/NATO/EU effort to weaken Russia. I blame Russia for invading. I blame the USA for exploiting that invasion for its own purposes (the Nordstream pipelines didn’t blow themselves up). I continue to worry that this war could widen leading to the use of nuclear weapons. I favor diplomatic efforts to end the war on terms Ukraine and Russia can accept.
The costs of war (Western Front, 1917)
I lament the costs of war, all the dead and wounded on both sides, and the continued destruction of Ukraine’s environment. I lament the damage war does to liberty, freedom, and truth. War always exacts a toll.
Whether the toll of the war is “worth it” for Ukraine or Russia to pay is not my decision. Only the people of Ukraine and Russia can say. Many have voted with their feet, leaving their respective countries, or the affluent pay bribes to avoid military service. This is hardly surprising. Affluent Americans paid bribes in the U.S. Civil War to avoid military service, or they hired substitutes to serve in their place.
Too often, wars are fought by the poor for the rich. Inequities in demands are obscured when wars are glorified as national wars of liberation.
Though not a pacifist, I’m strongly antiwar and very skeptical of justifications for the same, especially by “our” government. Just think of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and so on. I’m not an isolationist (an impossibility given how the world is interlinked, along with America’s 750-800 foreign military bases). But we’ve got to downsize the empire and make major cuts to Pentagon spending.
A major problem with war is that it fosters authoritarianism and abridgments of liberty. Even wars allegedly for liberation can be contrary to liberty. War also fosters the most Orwellian language. I’ve run across “justifiable repression” to explain away the authoritarianism of the Zelensky government in Ukraine. Forced conscription in Ukraine is explained away as “a regrettable but justifiable limitation of personal freedom.”
War is intoxicating and a powerful disturber of clear thinking. It corrodes intellectual honesty — while killing lots of people and destroying the earth.
As a retired military officer, I come back to Ike and his charge that we must be alert and knowledgeable citizens committed to democracy and individual liberties. Yet we seem immersed in a system designed to keep us somnolent and ignorant, or, put more plainly, lazy and dumb.
Ike said he hated war as only a soldier could hate it with all its waste and brutality. We would all do well to hate war and find ways to settle differences through diplomacy. The problem is that too many powerful entities actually love war because it makes them money and because it supports authoritarian agendas and because there are always megalomaniacs willing to sacrifice others for power.
A Seven-Point Plan to Reduce the Risk of Nuclear War
AUG 25, 2026
If Stephen Covey can make millions off the “7 habits of highly effective people,” surely I can make millions off a seven-point plan to reduce the risk of nuclear Armageddon.
Seriously, I recently came up with seven ideas to reduce the risk of nuclear war, and then I used the amazing power of ChatGPT to turn those seven ideas into a policy platform statement (see below). It did a fair job of it, though the prose is a bit boring.
I believe my seven-point plan would make the world a safer place. It would save America trillions of dollars through the cancellation of the Sentinel ICBM, the B-21 bomber, and the Golden Dome missile shield.
Here’s my simple seven-point plan of highly effective Americans:
1. A U.S. policy of no first use of nuclear weapons.
2. A commitment to global START talks to make major reductions to nuclear weapons arsenals, with the eventual goal (if possible) of total nuclear disarmament.
3. The end of Golden Dome and a revival of the ABM treaty.
4. Reconfiguration of the U.S. nuclear triad. Cancellation of the Sentinel ICBM and the B-21 Raider. Gradual retirement of Minuteman III ICBMs. U.S. nuclear deterrence to be centered on the most survivable leg of the triad: the Navy’s Ohio– and Columbia-class submarines.
5. Job loss associated with the cancellation of major nuclear weapons systems to be alleviated through investment in civilian infrastructure (roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and the like).
6. Major educational efforts to alert the world to the dangers of nuclear winter, weapons, and war.
7. An end to the Russia-Ukraine War and the alleviation of tensions between the U.S./NATO and Russia. Similarly, a reduction in tensions around similar potential nuclear flashpoints (e.g. the U.S./Taiwan versus China).
This devastating scene from “Terminator 2” must always remain science fiction.
*****
And here’s the policy statement generated using ChatGPT to flesh out that plan.
The continued existence of nuclear weapons remains the gravest threat to the survival of modern civilization. Although the Cold War ended more than thirty years ago, approximately 12,000 nuclear warheads remain in the arsenals of the world’s nuclear powers, with the overwhelming majority held by the United States and Russia (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI], 2025). At the same time, deteriorating arms control agreements, renewed great-power competition, and regional conflicts have increased the risk that nuclear weapons could again become instruments of war. The objective of U.S. nuclear policy should therefore be clear: maintain strategic stability while steadily reducing the probability that nuclear weapons are ever used. This platform advances seven mutually reinforcing initiatives designed to move the United States and the international community toward a safer and more secure world.
The first pillar of this platform is the adoption of a No First Use policy. The United States should formally declare that it will never initiate the use of nuclear weapons and will employ them only in retaliation against a nuclear attack. Such a declaration would reduce the danger of miscalculation during international crises and lessen the incentives for adversaries to launch their own weapons out of fear of a preemptive American strike. A No First Use doctrine would also strengthen the long-standing principle that nuclear weapons exist solely to deter nuclear aggression rather than to serve as instruments of battlefield warfare or coercive diplomacy. By embracing this doctrine, the United States would signal that nuclear weapons are political weapons of last resort, not usable military tools. Such leadership could encourage reciprocal restraint by other nuclear powers and reinforce global norms against nuclear use.
Second, the United States should recommit itself to comprehensive strategic arms control negotiations. Building upon the achievements of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) process and the New START Treaty, Washington should seek substantial bilateral reductions with Russia while laying the groundwork for future multilateral negotiations involving China, France, the United Kingdom, and other nuclear-armed states. The long-term objective should remain the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons if rigorous verification mechanisms and international security conditions make that goal achievable. Although complete nuclear disarmament cannot occur overnight, history demonstrates that negotiated reductions are possible. Since the late 1980s, U.S. and Russian arsenals have declined dramatically through verified agreements without undermining either nation’s security (U.S. Department of State, 2024). Renewed arms control would reduce costs, increase transparency, and decrease the likelihood of nuclear confrontation.
Third, the United States should discontinue pursuit of the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system and instead seek negotiations leading to renewed limitations on nationwide strategic missile defenses comparable to those established under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Strategic stability has historically depended upon the recognition that neither side can realistically expect to escape devastating retaliation following a nuclear attack. Large-scale missile defense systems risk undermining this stability by encouraging competitors to expand or modernize their offensive arsenals to overcome perceived defensive advantages. The result is an action-reaction cycle that fuels expensive arms races without improving long-term security. Reviving mutual constraints on strategic missile defenses would restore an important principle of Cold War arms control: that deterrence is strengthened when neither nation believes it can successfully fight and win a nuclear war.
Fourth, the United States should restructure its nuclear forces to emphasize the most survivable component of its deterrent. This platform therefore supports cancellation of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program and the B-21 Raider nuclear bomber while gradually retiring the aging Minuteman III ICBM force. America’s nuclear deterrent should instead rest primarily upon the Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines and their Columbia-class successors. Because ballistic missile submarines are exceptionally difficult to detect and destroy, they provide a secure second-strike capability that guarantees retaliation against any nuclear aggressor. Maintaining a credible submarine-based deterrent would preserve strategic stability while eliminating the unique dangers posed by land-based missiles, which must remain on constant alert and may create pressure for rapid launch decisions during crises. A submarine-centered deterrent would continue to protect the United States while reducing the risks associated with hair-trigger nuclear postures.
Fifth, reductions in nuclear weapons programs should be accompanied by a robust economic transition strategy for affected workers and communities. Defense conversion should not leave engineers, skilled tradespeople, or manufacturing workers unemployed. Instead, federal investment should redirect this highly skilled workforce toward rebuilding America’s civilian infrastructure. Roads, bridges, water systems, electrical grids, schools, hospitals, public transportation, and renewable energy facilities all require substantial modernization. Redirecting resources from unnecessary nuclear modernization programs toward infrastructure would strengthen both national prosperity and national resilience while ensuring that communities dependent upon defense spending continue to enjoy stable employment opportunities. National security should be understood not only in military terms but also in terms of economic strength and public well-being.
Sixth, the United States should undertake a major educational initiative concerning the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. During the Cold War, public awareness of nuclear dangers contributed significantly to support for arms control agreements. Today, however, much of that awareness has faded. Educational programs in schools, universities, museums, and public media should explain the immediate effects of nuclear explosions as well as the broader environmental consequences identified by contemporary scientific research. Studies indicate that even a limited regional nuclear conflict could inject sufficient soot into the upper atmosphere to reduce global temperatures, disrupt agriculture, and threaten food supplies for billions of people (Robock et al., 2007; Xia et al., 2022). Greater public understanding of these consequences would encourage informed democratic debate and reinforce international efforts to prevent nuclear war.
Finally, this platform recognizes that arms control cannot succeed without diplomacy. The United States should actively pursue negotiated settlements that reduce tensions among the world’s major nuclear powers. Ending the Russia-Ukraine War through diplomacy consistent with international law and the sovereignty of states would substantially reduce the risk of direct confrontation between NATO and Russia. Likewise, sustained dialogue with China should seek to reduce military tensions surrounding Taiwan and establish reliable crisis communication mechanisms that lessen the danger of accidental escalation. Military deterrence remains necessary, but deterrence alone cannot provide lasting peace. Stable diplomatic relationships, confidence-building measures, and regular communication among adversaries are indispensable components of nuclear risk reduction.
Taken together, these proposals offer a coherent strategy for reducing the likelihood of nuclear catastrophe while maintaining a credible national defense. They reject the assumption that greater security necessarily requires ever-expanding nuclear arsenals and instead affirm that diplomacy, strategic restraint, and international cooperation provide more durable foundations for peace. The nuclear age has demonstrated that humanity possesses the capacity to destroy itself. The challenge of the twenty-first century is to demonstrate that it also possesses the wisdom to prevent that outcome. This platform seeks to move the United States toward that safer future.
References
Robock, A., Oman, L., & Stenchikov, G. L. (2007). Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals. Journal of Geophysical Research, 112(D13).
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (2025). SIPRI Yearbook 2025: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security.
U.S. Department of State. (2024). New START Treaty.
Xia, L., Robock, A., Scherrer, K., et al. (2022). Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection. Nature Food, 3, 586–596.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! Let’s help rid the world of nuclear weapons, or at least greatly reduce global nuclear arsenals.
Today I ran across this brief description of a new movie, “Mutiny,” that will sound very familiar:
“Mutiny” stars Jason Statham as yet another rogue hero out to right wrongs in the most violent ways possible. It’s set mostly on a ship being used for human trafficking. Other plot shenanigans, conspiracy theories, and the like abound … But you’re here for the carnage. On that score, ‘Mutiny’ delivers.
How inspiring! Another rogue hero out to set the world right while amassing a very high body count in gruesome ways. I’ve been watching movies like this since “Dirty Harry” with Clint Eastwood in 1971. (Loved that movie, by the way, despite Pauline Kael’s warning about its fascist leanings.)
One thing you can say about American culture: it loves righteous violence.
As the U.S. government enables genocide in Gaza, as it sends and sells deadly weaponry around the globe, as it brags about having the world’s most lethal military, as its commander-in-chief promises to exterminate ancient civilizations as with Iran, Americans should recognize we are immersed in an ultra-violent culture, one that advocates exterminatory violence, even seeing it as righteous and God-sanctioned.
For decades now, we’ve looked the other way as the U.S. military has transitioned to a professional caste of “warriors” and “warfighters” rather than a citizen military drawn equally from the people and dedicated to lawful defensive action only.
It’s not that the U.S. military was ever “woke”: it’s that the U.S. military has never stopped waging wars and killing people, whether in the name of spreading freedom or in service to Zionist Israel.
We as Americans are meant to revel in our ability to dominate. Collectively, we see ourselves as the “rogue hero” of so many action films, killing evildoers in all sorts of creatively violent ways. We’re high on our own supply of warrior-violence.
It reminds me of this article I originally wrote back in 2013. Like the Roman Empire, we have no use for compassion. “Strength and (militarized) honor” is the cry. No mercy to America’s enemies. Evildoers must be eradicated.
Anyhow, here’s that article I wrote 13 years ago, before anyone could imagine men like Trump and Hegseth in charge of America’s vast military machine.
Bread and Circuses in Rome and America (originally posted in 2013)
The expression “bread and circuses“ captures a certain cynical political view that the masses can be kept happy with fast food (think Cartman’s “Cheesy Poofs” on South Park) and faster entertainment (NASCAR races, NFL games, and the like). In the Roman Empire, it was bread and chariot races and gladiatorial games that filled the belly and distracted the mind, allowing emperors to rule as they saw fit.
There’s truth to the view that people can be kept tractable as long as you fill their bellies and give them violent spectacles to fill their free time. Heck, Americans are meekly compliant even when their government invades their privacy and spies upon them. But there’s a deeper, more ominous, sense to bread and circuses that is rarely mentioned in American discourse. It was pointed out to me by Amy Scanlon.
In her words:
Basically ancient Rome was a society that completely revolved around war, and where compassion was considered a vice rather than a virtue… [The] Romans saw gladiatorial contests not as a form of decadence but as a cure for decadence. And decadence to the Romans had little to do with sexual behavior or lack of a decent work ethic, but a lack of military-style honor and soldierly virtues. To a Roman compassion was a detestable vice, which was considered both decadent and feminine. Watching people and animals slaughtered brutally [in the arena] was seen as a way to keep the civilian population from this ‘weakness’ because they didn’t see combat…
Scanlon then provocatively asks, “Could our society be sliding towards those Roman attitudes in a bizarre sort of way?”
I often think that America suffers from an empathy gap. We are simply not encouraged to put ourselves in the place of others. For example, how many Americans fancy the idea of a foreign power operating drones in our sovereign skies, launching missiles at gun-toting Americans suspected by this foreign power of being “militants“? Yet we operate drones in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, killing suspected militants with total impunity. Even when innocent women and children are killed, our emperors and our media don’t encourage us to have compassion for them. We are basically told to think of them as collateral damage, regrettable, perhaps, but otherwise inconsequential.
Certainly, our military in the last two decades has put new stress on American troops as “warriors” and “warfighters,” a view more consistent with the hardened professionals of the Roman Empire than with the citizen-soldiers of the Roman Republic. Without thinking too much about it, we’ve come to see our troops as an imperial guard, ever active on the ramparts of our empire. War, meanwhile, is seen not as a last course of defense but as a first course to preempt the evil designs of the many hidden enemies of America. Our troops, therefore, are our protectors, our heroes, the defenders of America, even though that “defense” treats the entire globe as a potential killing field.
Scanlon’s view of the Roman use of bread and circuses — as a way to kill compassion to ensure the brutalization of Roman civilians and thus their compliance (or at least their complacency) vis-à-vis Imperial expansion and domestic policing — is powerful and sobering.
At the same time, the Obama administration is increasingly couching violent military intervention in humanitarian terms. Deploying troops and tipping wars in our favor is done in the name of defeating petty tyrants (e.g. Khadafy in Libya; Is Assad of Syrianext?). Think of it as our latest expression of “compassion.”
All things considered, perhaps our new national motto should be: When in America, do as the Roman Empire would do. Eat to your fill of food and violence, cheer on the warfighters, and dismiss expressions of doubt or dismay about military interventions and drone killings as “feminine” and “weak.”
At least we can applaud ourselves that we no longer torture and kill animals in the arena like the Romans did. See how civilized we’ve become?
*****
A propensity or even a preference for violence remains a major problem in our society. It’s a rejection of humane values, a redefinition of what it means to be human. Brutalization—a retreat into barbarism—is seen as not only necessary but admirable. Scary stuff.
Give me some “rogue heroes” who solve problems without killing everyone around them—that are brave in resisting the siren call of violence and yet more violence.
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, often described as a prose-poem for its surprising brevity and deep meaning, is the most moving work of political discourse I’ve ever read. In that short speech, Lincoln captured the horrific nature of war and the terrible burdens of an American history built literally on the backs of slaves. In describing that great civil war, he did not mince words about its “mighty scourge,” nor on its connection to that so-called peculiar institution of slavery:
Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’
My dad’s old silver certificate featuring Abraham Lincoln
After that terrifyingly honest sentence, Lincoln then extended an olive branch to the defeated South and indeed to the entire nation:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
We should think of war as a scourge—the most sweeping and biting of whips, capable of inflicting the most horrendous of tortures to human flesh.
Lincoln’s speech is dated March 4, 1865. More than a century later, another politician of integrity would refer to the awful scourge of war: Tony Benn, a member of the British Parliament, here in 1998:
The words of Lincoln and Benn resonate with hard-won truths. How awful it is today that war is sold to us as noble and honorable and just, the province of warriors and warrior-states, as if that is something admirable.
U.S. leaders’ pride in military lethality and global prowess are sure signs of the death of reason and democracy in America.
Poor Donald Trump! He “wants to move on” from his violent illicit affair with Iran and the Middle East, but his mistress won’t let him. He just has to keep pummeling Iran until she sees sense and lets him go.
The mainstream media always presents war as something inflicted on U.S. presidents, a weighty burden over which they have no control, their iron cross to bear. It’s ludicrous and loathsome.
Mary McCarthy
It reminded me of what Mary McCarthy said about the American press during the Vietnam War—the way that war was framed as a burden LBJ had to carry and for which he should earn our sympathy. Disgusting, right?
Back in 2009, I wrote about that for TomDispatch; here’s an excerpt.
Even now, we speak too often of “Bush’s war” or, more recently, “Obama’s war.” Before we start chattering mindlessly about Iraq and Afghanistan as American tragedies, we would do well to recall what McCarthy had to say about the war in Vietnam: “There is something distasteful,” she wrote, “in the very notion of approaching [Vietnam] as an American tragedy, whose protagonist is a great suffering Texan [President Lyndon Baines Johnson].”
Yes, there is something distasteful about a media that blithely refers to Bush’s or Obama’s war as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans suffer. For American troops, after all, are not the only ones paying the ultimate price when the U.S. fights foreign wars for ill-considered reasons and misguided goals.
If only U.S. presidents like LBJ and Trump could do something to stop these terrible wars! They want to move on, they want peace, but Southeast Asia or the Middle East or some other foreign region just won’t let them.
Right … What U.S. presidents really learn is that it’s far far easier to start wars than to end them, that other peoples have a say as well, and that imposing one’s will (nice euphemism for bombing Iran and facilitating genocide in Gaza) is difficult because other countries and peoples do object to being bombed and murdered.
P.S. Note how Gaza is framed as a “conflict.” Note the conceit that Trump is actually trying to impose his will there to end the “conflict,” even as Zionist Israel pursues a genocide and land grab there with total support from Trump.
U.S. presidents since Lyndon B. Johnson, if not before then (think here of Woodrow Wilson’s false promises in 1916 to keep America out of the Great War, known now as World War I), always promise peace, especially while running for office. Trump is the most recent example here. Yet whether Democrat or Republican, as soon as they become president, it’s war and more war. LBJ led America into the disastrous Vietnam War; Trump led America into the ongoing disaster of the Iran War; and the overseas wars just never seem to end, whether George W. Bush is issuing the orders or Barack Obama.
LBJ lacked the courage to resist the siren call of war
I had this thought as I re-read a comment from Mike Murry, a frequent Bracing Views contributor and an astute student of U.S. political and cultural history. Murry, a Vietnam War veteran, had this to say back in 2018:
Then, in the first semester of my senior hear in 1964, JFK’s successor as President: Lyndon Johnson, started his campaign for re-election, promising not to send us American boys to fight a war in Asia that Asian boys could fight themselves. He sounded just like Donald Trump did last year [January 2017], before assuming office. Johnson beat Goldwater in a landslide. The American people did not want another Korean War and made that overwhelmingly clear. But President Johnson betrayed us all, the way all U.S. Presidents now regularly do. Every one of them without exception preaches peace to win election. Then they invariably give their generals the wars that they demand. It happens every time. The stunning cynicism of that betrayal by President Johnson, I think, severed once and for all time any sense of “patriotism” that I might once have felt for the “America” of my youth. From that point on, I became an alien in my own land. My government would later send me abroad for the worst possible reasons, to do the most unnecessary and shameful of things. That same me never came home again. Someone else did. A damaged, but better man, I think. But much less an “American” one.
Today, the most important act to restore America is to end these needless and disastrous wars overseas. And not just overseas but here at home, as Trump promotes the malicious and mendacious notion of an enemy within, often labeled as the “radical left” with “terroristic” tendencies.
Nothing, I think, is more important to America’s health now and in the future than ending wars that waste so much, that kill and destroy so many, and that estrange our own citizen-soldiers from their country.
On a very warm and humid Sunday morning, here are a few random thoughts for today:
1. It’s rather amazing that the U.S./Israel War against Iran has entered its six month with no end in sight. Remember when the Trump administration suggested it would last no longer than eight weeks? The war is holding the world economy hostage, apparently for “greater Israel” and continued U.S. dominance of trade in fossil fuels. I say “apparently” because the war doesn’t make much sense to most Americans, who are in the main against it. The only selling point Trump keeps repeating is that Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, even as Israel is allowed to have up to 300 of them. His own intelligence chief told Trump that Iran was not working to field a nuclear weapon, but the Israelis told him otherwise, and we know who Trump is most obeisant toward.
2. Patrick Lawrence has a great piece on the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, and how they want to abolish ICE and possibly the presidency itself while defunding the police, the Pentagon, and other instruments of authority and coercion. One sympathizes, but it’s neither a practical nor a winning political message. So I wrote this comment at his site:
Echoing George McGovern, “Come home, America.” You can’t abolish or dismantle everything. But we can downsize the imperium and reinvest in America rather than “investing” in more wars and Zionist Israel.
If the DSA wants to make a contribution, it should focus on that — downsizing the empire, putting the American people first, rather than dreaming of abolishing everything. For what will replace it?
Make the lives of average Americans better, more affordable, more livable. Clean up our environment. And forget the magical thinking and empty posturing.
Come home, America. Come home from wanton, wasteful, and immoral wars.
3. I was breezing through “The Devil’s Dictionary” by Ambrose Bierce and stumbled on his acerbic definition of “Aborigines”:
1. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
2. Considerate persons who will not trouble the lexicographer of the future to describe them.
Bierce, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War, didn’t mince words here. There are always “persons of little worth” to oppressors who’d prefer that they leave or die. What was true of aboriginal peoples of the 19th and early 20th centuries is true of the Palestinians today: they are seen as obstacles to be overcome, even as terrorists to be exterminated.
4. Antiwar forces in America remain fragmented, and that’s partly by design. To oversimplify, you have the so-called radical left, which is antiwar, sometimes anti-military, often as critical of America as it is of empire, versus the “unpatriotic” (to Trump) right, which is anti-dumb wars, generally pro-military, and animated by putting “America first.” Left and right have much in common: they want less war, less militarism, and more investment and support for Main Street USA. If they could combine, they would make a formidable force against the MICC and incessant warfare. Which is why each side is encouraged to distrust and even hate the other, i.e. the “radical left” is told the right is racist and reactionary and the “unpatriotic right” is told the left is woke, arrogant, and un-American.
The MICC and “Deep State” know that these two groups must be kept divided. They must never be allowed to cooperate in meaningful ways.
5. Ike said only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry could tame and reduce the anti-democratic forces unleashed by the MICC. Note how Ike said nothing about the left or right. Being for democracy, freedom, and liberty isn’t a right or left issue. The same applies to being against war and killing and massively wasteful military budgets. These are human issues that should unite everyone irrespective of political allegiances.
Caveat: Any foolishness written above is on account of the heat, but fortunately I’ve been told global warming is a Chinese hoax. Stay cool, everyone.
There’s so much militarized crazy in America today that it’s entirely overwhelming. Here’s a “top ten” list:
1. The illegal and unconstitutional war against Iran.
Remember when Trump told us he wouldn’t start wars? Remember when attacks on Iran began, the Trump administration told us they’d be over in a matter of days, perhaps a few weeks, ending in Iran’s total defeat? Instead, the U.S. government and military is engaged in yet another disastrous losing undeclared war that is unsupported by most Americans. As if our opinions matter!
2. The continued blanket support of Israel’s genocide against Gaza, pogroms in the West Bank, and demolition/seizure of land in Lebanon.
The Trump administration remains 100% committed to the project of a “Greater Israel,” no matter how many Palestinians suffer and die in the process.
3. The obscene $500 billion increase in military spending in FY2027.
The U.S. military hasn’t won a major war since 1945. It’s failed eight audits in a row. The “punishment” is a vast increase in military spending in the next fiscal year.
4. The escalatory and nearly impossible Golden Dome proposal.
The golden dome missile defense system is a golden boondoggle for weapons makers. It’s unlikely to work, and if it does, if only partially, it may make nuclear war more likely.
5. The unnecessary “modernization” of the nuclear triad at a projected cost of $2 trillion.
U.S. militarists still believe the nuclear triad is the Holy Trinity. It isn’t. Land-based ICBMs and nuclear bombers should be scrapped as obsolete. The Navy’s Trident-missile-firing submarines are all the U.S. needs for nuclear deterrence.
6. The continued headlong pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ongoing empowerment and enlargement of the surveillance state.
AI combined with ever-more intrusive cameras and digital monitoring is creating a dystopic “Big Brother” state. Imagine sweeping AI with a steroidal Homeland Security; now imagine the total disappearance of privacy.
7. The war against the ICC and UN and indeed any legal check on U.S./Israeli aggression.
As the U.S. and Israel engage in global aggression, they attack institutions such as the International Criminal Court and the United Nations that attempt to limit and stop that aggression.
8. Related to (7), the proposal to merge the U.S. military with Israel’s for research and development, intelligence sharing, and the like.
Incredibly, the Trump administration is proposing a merger between the U.S. and Israeli militaries that would compromise U.S. national security at the highest levels of classification. Obedient to Aipac and Israeli imperatives, Congress seems prepared ultimately to support it.
9. Continued environmental damage due to war and military operations and the complete disregard of climate change.
Rarely in the U.S. do you hear any talk of how war and global military actions accelerate global warming and aggravate environmental damage. Check out the documentary by Abby Martin, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” and her interview with Chris Hedges.
10. The abandonment of the citizen-soldier tradition in the U.S., the embrace of a warrior ethos, and the increasing contempt for diversity within the military.
The last war America won (with serious help from allies like the Soviet Union) was World War II, also the last time America had a true citizen-soldier military. Since then, America has increasingly embraced a warrior ethos. And while diversity used to be a hallmark of the U.S. military, it is now under attack as “woke” by Pete Hegseth.
There you have it: ten signs of America’s increasingly militarized madness. Greater sanity would involve the reversal of all of these.
If you’ve been in or near the military, you’ve heard quips about military intelligence being the ultimate oxymoron or that it’s akin to military music, i.e. not very musical, unless you love pompous marches. But increasingly military intelligence isn’t even human anymore (some troops might argue it never was) as officers in particular look to AI programs like ChatGPT and Claude to do their “thinking” for them.
Reports indicate the Pentagon used Anthropic’s Claude AI to script the order for the attack on Venezuela, and apparently Claude was used again to plot attacks on Iran that led to the destruction of a girls school at Minab. (It’s unclear whether AI contributed to that disaster, though I’m guessing AI provides an illusion of certainty that could exacerbate targeting errors.) Americans in general place too much faith in technology, but AI modules aren’t immune from GIGO, or garbage in, garbage out. Or perhaps GIDO: garbage in, death out.
A colleague reports that military officers now routinely use AI to write orders and evaluations, with self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth pushing the wonders of AI. The military’s increasing use of AI, my colleague notes, “completely circumvents the use of human intelligence, emotion, and critical thought,” concluding that “When they’re in the trenches – they [officers] won’t have time to check Chat GPT when giving orders in this next war.”
AI, in short, is becoming a force unto itself in military circles, so much so that General ChatGPT and Admiral Claude may soon be the most influential “officers” within the flag ranks.
Flush with cash, the Pentagon also sees AI as an easy way to spend money while calling it an “investment,” as William Hartung notes here:
The task of getting Pentagon money has become less daunting as the department focuses on missions impossible like a leak proof missile defense system (Golden Dome), plus all manner of (potentially) AI-driven systems — from drones, to driverless military vehicles to uncrewed ships to targeting systems that facilitate dropping more bombs per minute (which is how Palantir’s systems were used to enable and accelerate Israel’s genocide in Gaza.)
They’re creating an AI “killer drone” system that makes one wonder how long it’ll be before Skynet takes over and starts killing all humans everywhere. Admittedly, that might be a “Terminator” fantasy, the real problem being mass surveillance and selective targeting by our human “leaders” directed against anyone with the temerity to resist them.
The AI industry, notes Caitlin Johnstone, “is a mix of military technology, mass surveillance technology, and people trying to become billionaires by turning human laziness and narcissism into a chatbot product.”
So much for an AI-driven utopia. They’re even destroying books now and feeding their contents to AI modules. Book shredding has replaced book burning with the goal of creating “smarter” AI modules.
Save your books, everyone, before they’re fed into the maw of Claude and similar AI behemoths.
I remember from “Lost in Space” there was an android that intoned “crush, kill, destroy.” I guess it’s now “slice, scan, shred.” It doesn’t bode well.
Note: No AI programs were consulted in the construction of this rant.
Bracing Views 