what does our standing arm

7/28/2019 What Does Our Standing Arm

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S a t u r d a y , J u n e 1 1 , 2 0 1 1

S a t u r d a y , J u n e 1 1 , 2 0 1 1 S a t u r d a y , J u n e 1 1 , 2 0 1 1

S a t u r d a y , J u n e 1 1 , 2 0 1 1

What Does Our Standing Army Stand For?What Does Our Standing Army Stand For?What Does Our Standing Army Stand For?What Does Our Standing Army Stand For?

Come on people, lets use our intelligence, courage, reason and

observational capacities, all those things that we would often

rather not use, and try to answer some simple and obvious

questions. You know cognitive dissonance, right, when the

elements of a story dont comport with other elements of the

same story; like when your son arrives home in 45 minutes from60 miles away and claims to have never gone over 65 miles per

hour; and you really want to believe him.

What about needing to spend 1.2 trillion dollars a year on a

standing army and national security (sic) apparatus (wars extra

obviously a moving army would cost more, you old silly!)?

Armies are for protecting something from an enemy; so

there must be an enemy. That would be, at the moment, Muslimterrorists (with the Ruskies and the Chinese hiding in the

bushes). So, 1.2 trillion dollars US (wars extra) for unmanned

aerial surveillance vehicles (with missiles extra), urban use

weapon systems, guided missile ships, smart shoulder arms,

supersonic stealth aircraft, sub-lethal crowd control technologies

(adaptable as lethal force multipliers), no fly lists,

intelligence/spy agencies, plus a whole bunch more stuff allcontrolled by a professional army/police force and bureaucracies

[1] the worlds most highly trained professional soldiers! This

force of millions of GI soldiers and contractors, indomitable

weapons and surveillance systems are for fighting a few

thousand organized terrorists whose weapons are short range


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shoulder arms, improvised low yield bombs and stealthy

methods. Now just how fast were you going son?

Let us assume for a moment that the people driving this

military/security bus are not completely insane, that there arereal reasons for these expenditures and methods just not the

ones we are being told. Three questions: (1) Who is being

directly benefited by the present design of the security

apparatus? (2) Who is the military/security apparatus protecting?

(3) Who are the present and future targets of military action?

Who is being directly benefited: the most direct economicbenefit goes to the suppliers of military/security needs and

services, consumables and capital equipment (which in the case

of war becomes consumable). Politicians benefit by delivering

economic development based on military supplying industries to

their constituents. The officer/bureaucracy corps benefit more

diffusely by employment, status and power, while the

soldier/worker benefits much of the time by high levels of basic

material and social support, employment and a paternalenvironment I say, much of the time, since the soldiers may

be required to take considerable risk for these benefits.

Who is the military/security apparatus protecting: Major

General Smedley Butler (1881-1940), US Marines, gave his

answer in the 1930s: the economic elite. He claimed that he was

an enforcer for American business. That was, of course, at a

simpler time when there was American business; today the

situation is more complex and the US Military seems to be the

international enforcer for multinational corporations [2]. This is

not to say that the US military/security apparatus will not protect


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the people, but only to the extent useful to and desired by the

economic elite.

We are told that the military/security apparatus is protecting our

way of life, but just whose way of life would that be? Is mypersonal way of life being protected by the actions currently

being taken in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,

Yemen, Pakistan [3]? Perhaps I am being selfish, asking that the

paltry sums of money that I pay in taxes be applied in ways that

protect my way of life; then are these actions protecting the

hundreds of millions of other inhabitants of this nation? To

answer that we would have to imagine what would happen if ourmilitary were to leave those places.

The unrest would continue without our military and security

presence, so that part would not change. People would still be

mistreated and killed until new structures of equilibrium were

formed; but such structures cant begin to be created until

outside influences either leave or become an accepted permanent

part of the place, the latter an unlikely eventuality anywhere inthe Middle East.

So leaving or not would have little effect on the general form of

the immediate situation in those countries since the conflicts are

based mostly in civil strife, much exacerbated by the presence of

an outside force except that adaptation to a new stable

structure could begin. The economic elites supported by our

military, however, would either lose power in the situation or

would have to find new military powers to support them. Oil

and associated companies, construction contractors, military

support contractors, private military and security companies: all


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of these and more could/would experience huge losses if the US

left the middle east militarily and only engaged diplomatically.

Of course, many companies could continue to engage

economically, but without the billions being put into thecountries as a result of the military action and without the

protection and persuasive power of the military, economic

opportunity would not be as available or appealing.

To put it as simply as possible: claims of direct benefits of safety

for the American people from these military actions are lies,

damned lies; flagrant, horrific, disgusting, obscene lies. Theseactions steal our present, steal our future, enrage the world

against us with the same kind of bigotry that we are expected to

show towards our enemies. That takes care of that question.

Who are the present and future targets of military action: The

US has a huge military/security apparatus requiring more than a

thousand billion dollars a year to support it. Millions of people

are a part of it. Even if it tried, it couldnt be a benign presencewaiting for the bad behavior of some foreign leader or the

organized rejection of some value that the US thinks vitally

important. It has become its own animal; nominally, as in

General Butlers day, the tool of the economic elite, but only so

long as it is fed and exercised well. It has only one clear and

constant enemy, those who would diminish its size, power and

influence, and that enemy is an educated, politically powerful

electorate supporting the Constitution of the USA and the needs

of the people.

Since the US spends, on its military/security apparatus, as much

as or more than the rest of the 190 or so nations staking out


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territory on this little globe combined, there is at least the

possibility that we could, say, cut that amount in half, using the

money for the direct benefit of the citizens of the country. That

would be 600 billion dollars worth of the peoples labor returnedto their needs rather than collected into great big piles by

defense contractors, friendly dictators, security specialists and

mercenary armies. And remember wars are extra; that would be

another couple of hundred billion plus change if we just stopped

the demonstrably illegal wars we could leave in place legal

occupations and actions at least for a time.

Of course, the military/security apparatus would not take thislying down; they are a standing army! What would you do to

your fellowman for 800 billion dollars and all the power in the

world? Well, so would they! And since the militarys work has

been and is the protection of elite interest, just what do you think

the response would be to serious challenges to those elite

interests; like environmentalists acting against extractive

industries or union organizing. We know the answers. Men and

women devoted to the preservation of natural ecologies are now

called terrorists. Women and men devoted to honesty and

equity in work are called terrorists.

The answer to the question is: should the people demand the

kinds of changes that would allow the vast numbers of the

human species to live with personal dignity, that would allow

the recovery of the earths vast, varied and essential ecologies,then the people would become the expressed enemy of the

military/security apparatus, the apparatus that we have built and

presently pay for with our labor (converted into taxes) and our

blood. There is nothing else on the earth, other than the Great


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Many, of sufficient number and power that would require the

size, power and lethal capacity of that apparatus to control.

Social unrest will be the enemy of the future, the consequence

of the increasing disclosure and affect of both wealth inequityand the processes in place that will result in a new fascist

feudalism. The language is in place: we now fear and fight

terrorists; and all who reject the elite social and economic model

can be, and are more and more often, called terrorists. And the

force structures are increasingly in place: professional armies,

security systems and militarized police forces are devoting

equipment and training to crowd control and the depersonalizingof lethality so that collateral damage can seamlessly become

the real goal.

The fear of a standing army expressed by the framers of the

USAs founding documents was fully warranted; history told of

standing armies always becoming a danger to the people as they

became the tools of a political, religious or economic elite.

First comes understanding, then planning, then opportunity and

then action. It is essential that a critical mass of people come to

this understanding and lose the Santa Claus myth of military

benignancy. Returning the military to a size and power

appropriate to our real security needs and to civilian control,

meaning democratic control by the people, is our greatest

immediate need and most dangerous enterprise.

[1] Police forces are becoming militarized; the military is performing mixed military andpolicing functions in international situations. The distinctions between criminal behavior and

misuses of national and international power are blurring; and therefore so are the distinctions

between the forces intended to meet those threats to social stability. Lost in these changes is thestructure of incentives that have placed and continue placing all of these forces in the common

control of the economic elite.


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[2] There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "fingermen" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war

preparations, and a "Big Boss": Super-Nationalistic Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a

military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years

and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile militaryforce, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-

General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for BigBusiness, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for

capitalism. (Smedley Butler, 1933)

[3] If you believe the propaganda that the Muslim hordes are chomping at the bit to kill

Americans and destroy our way of life, then you have not been paying attention to either the

history or the present situation.

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