Fighting the Last War -- Again!
FOCUS | Pentagon Lays Out 'Long War' Strategy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406Z.shtml
The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions US troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
................................
Strictly one should point out that the Pentagon seems to be preparing for some 19th century war involving colonial domination of the world -- the U.S. as the new British Empire? I hate to point this out, but that effort ended in failure -- the Brits bankrupted themselves out of funds for maintaining the troops to keep it up. I well recall the food rationing still going on in Britain when I was a teen student there in the 1950s.
What our Pentagon planners are setting out to do is:
1) cripple our nation by dumping monies into military hardware (the "military industrial" complex against which Eisenhower inveighed during his last weeks as president. I also recall a summer job with a major scrap mental company while I was in college at which one of my jobs for several weeks was destroying expensive bomb fuses ($100.00 each even in those days) at the rate of about 6 per minute with the whack of a mallet -- two of us at work destroying many thousands of leftovers. Check out the increasing numbers of military transports (still functional) being warehoused in deserts while new are constructed and the incredible prices of some of the newest equipment. Even supplying the rest of the world with military stuff won't allow us to break even -- and we do more than half of that, too!
2) make us hated throughout the globe. We have blown Latin America and are ending any supports for us in the Middle East among the secular Muslims by undermining their authority with a combination of killing them and preaching free enterprise democracy which looks to be bringing in the Islamists.
My military training taught us that idiot generals tend to fight the last war, thus, losing the present one. The Maginot Line was the archetypal example. The French thought it would deter any attacks from the East -- HA!
And so it goes with Rumsfeld and Co. -- about 125,000 Iraqis now dead; 2,500 American troops ditto and thousands more with major disabilities, both physical and mental. To cite Cindy Sheehan: "How many more must die?"
P.S. The trick now is making and keeping the peace!!!!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406Z.shtml
The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions US troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.
................................
Strictly one should point out that the Pentagon seems to be preparing for some 19th century war involving colonial domination of the world -- the U.S. as the new British Empire? I hate to point this out, but that effort ended in failure -- the Brits bankrupted themselves out of funds for maintaining the troops to keep it up. I well recall the food rationing still going on in Britain when I was a teen student there in the 1950s.
What our Pentagon planners are setting out to do is:
1) cripple our nation by dumping monies into military hardware (the "military industrial" complex against which Eisenhower inveighed during his last weeks as president. I also recall a summer job with a major scrap mental company while I was in college at which one of my jobs for several weeks was destroying expensive bomb fuses ($100.00 each even in those days) at the rate of about 6 per minute with the whack of a mallet -- two of us at work destroying many thousands of leftovers. Check out the increasing numbers of military transports (still functional) being warehoused in deserts while new are constructed and the incredible prices of some of the newest equipment. Even supplying the rest of the world with military stuff won't allow us to break even -- and we do more than half of that, too!
2) make us hated throughout the globe. We have blown Latin America and are ending any supports for us in the Middle East among the secular Muslims by undermining their authority with a combination of killing them and preaching free enterprise democracy which looks to be bringing in the Islamists.
My military training taught us that idiot generals tend to fight the last war, thus, losing the present one. The Maginot Line was the archetypal example. The French thought it would deter any attacks from the East -- HA!
And so it goes with Rumsfeld and Co. -- about 125,000 Iraqis now dead; 2,500 American troops ditto and thousands more with major disabilities, both physical and mental. To cite Cindy Sheehan: "How many more must die?"
P.S. The trick now is making and keeping the peace!!!!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 12:34 PM
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