So Brilliant, It's Stupid: How We Wound Up In A Quagmire

Think hard about it: I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villains. I'm down to Castro and Kim II Sung.-Colin Powell
What a world we would live in if we had run out of villains. The statement above was made by Colin Powell while he was chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs. A soldier needs an enemy to do a job, but by time the former Soviet Union fell, the US had run out of enemies. Which would be a good thing, unless you're the Defense department. The permanent national security state needs an enemy to justify bloated budgets so that retiring military officials can be guaranteed a job with defense contractors when they retire. Defense contractors need to make billions so they can buy politicians, Republican and Democratic, who will continue to okay large budget appropriations for the military. Republican and Democrats need large campaign financing so they can continue to keep their lock on the political system. It's a vicious circle, and for years it fed on the fear of the godless communists destroying our way of life. But then, with thanks to the petrodollar, we were able to outspend those dirty commies, because we had the ability to dig ourselves deeper into a hole than the Russians, mainly because by supporting the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, we were able to keep the Russian oil from going to port..
It's right there in the PNAC statement of principles: "Cuts in...defense spending...are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence ". It's clear; the US needed an enemy to increase defense spending, even if had to fabricate one. Then, almost as if on cue, as if planned by the PNAC itself, we had our "New Pearl Harbor", a "blowback" attack by those very same people we had armed and trained to fight the commies In Afghanistan, were now fighting us.
But it didn't stop there. Now fully committed to a war in Afghanistan, just when it looked like the war may end quickly with Army rangers chasing the enemy into Pakistan, the defense secretary decides to pull troops out of the region for use in another war. can't let that one end too quickly, got to keep the people's attention distracted from the $2.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon. Plus, the permanent national security state needed a war, any war.
Or hell, why not two? Dick Cheney knew the war in Iraq would become "bogged down", that's why they didn't go to Baghdad in 1991. Now John McCain says we could stay in Iraq for hundred years, I'll bet that sent the dollars flying into his campaign coffers from defense contractors. It's all about the money folks, not any other reason.
Fighting "Terrorism"-The reason we are told we are in Iraq is because we are fighting the "Islamofascist" (by attacking the only secular state in the region). But our tactics only serve to bring more fighters to their cause. Which of course, means the longer we'll have to stay there, and spend more money. Every bomb dropped, not also equals more money spent, it also means the likelihood that it will draw another recruit to the insurgency we are fighting there. But according to a report recently censored by the Pentagon there were no links between Saddam, al Qaeda, or 9/11.
Oil-Sorry, while controlling the oil is an attractive aspect of the war in Iraq, if it were really about providing oil for fuel starved Americans, we wouldn't have pledged to maintain OPEC production levels. And while it's true that we did go in there to stop Saddam from switching from the petrodollar to the euro, this was done more to to protect the investments of the MIC than it was to help the average American.We'd be pumping it out of the ground and shipping it here. The only thing this has to do with oil is allowing oil companies to sell $75 a barrel oil at $106 a barrel prices, netting them a tidy profit for doing absolutely nothing, the American Dream!

And who pays for this? We all do. We pay for it with our crumbling infrastructure. Our loved ones who come back, or those who don't. We pay for it with higher fuel prices, which drives up the price of everything. We pay for it with an increased national debt, and rising inflation.
The only people who don't pay for this are the ones who are making a bundle, the defense contractors. They are the recipients of a tax cut.


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