General Casey Wants To Give Afghanistan What We Don't Have In America, And He Wants Us To Waste Another Decade Giving It To Them

Speaking at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival Friday, Army Chief Of Staff Gen. George Casey says we may be fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq another ten years. Whose idea is that? Certainly not mine, but I'm not invested in the military-industrial complex, so I won't be making a dime by bleeding the country dry.
But what's more upsetting are the objectives of the military in the region.
1.)You are only going to succeed when the people perceive there is a government represented by their interests-So why should the people of Afghanistan have what we don't? My interests don't include making the rich people richer, mine include something like providing decent health care for every American,or that those struggling through tough economic times not of their creation can keep their homes and feed their families. These were both wars of choice, only I didn't choose them.
2.)when there is an economy that can give them a job to support their families-Wait a minute-we had that here! I remember it well. Then our corporate idiocracy said, you know what, if we outsource your jobs to another country that doesn't have organized labor, we'll make out-we mean, you'll be able to buy more consumer goods because they won't cost as much. And the television watchers all said "Yup, yup, yup, more stuff for me! I like the sound of that~!"
3.)when there are educational systems that can educate their family-Do you mean like we used to have? Nowadays, many right wing candidates are calling for the abolition of the department of education. Why? Because the Official Party of 'NO!' said that education is bad because they won't let your myths be taught to other people's children, science is bad because it disproves their faith, and the only thing children should be reading is our big book of approved fables.
4.)States, non-states and individual actors who are increasingly willing to use violence-You mean, like flying unmanned drones into civilian areas, casually referring to civilian deaths as collateral damage, and bombing areas where we think there may be people we want to kill? Doesn't anybody in charge have at least one iota of common sense to realize that maybe the reason that they are shooting at us is because we started shooting at them first?
Of course, the general, who is set to retire in nine months , was followed by a Pentagon spin doctor, who stated:"General Casey was speaking of the types of conflict we will be fighting for a decade or so. He did not, nor did he intend to, imply that we would be fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan for 10 more years."
What he really meant to say was "We'll be fighting in Iran as well. That could take some time."

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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You Have Been Played

The US is concerned because China has increased it's defense budget by 17 percent because it's unclear as to what China's intentions are. Even with the Chinese increase, it is still but a fraction of what we spend on our defense budget ourselves. We spend nearly as much as the rest of the world combined does on our military, and yet, we are still worried about national security in this election.
The economy is slipping into a recession, the dollar is falling as the price of oil rises, and all any of our presidential candidates can use to mobilize voters is fear. Not fear that the economy is in rubble, but fear of attacks from people with no standing armies on the other side of the world. People, you have been played.
Since we are outspending the rest of the world on security, we should be fairly secure, whether it's a high noon or three o'clock in the morning. If we are not, than we are spending way too much money on a system with no guarantees. The US is involved in two wars, fighting the alleged enemy, which has not made of safer than we were before the wars, and has, in fact attracted more people to the cause of the "Islamofascist". These wars, which were supposed to be relatively cheap(around $60 billion, according to administration officials) has actually cost us trillions of dollars. They are a drain on our economy and yet not one single presidential front runner has suggested we end these boondoggled quagmires.
There is one candidate who thinks we should cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget, or that we should reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the nation of television-watchers, with their minds turned to mush from being fed a diet of constant fear are being herded like lambs to slaughter by the corpocracy's lesser of two evil strategies that will have people actually not voting for a decent candidate with good ideas, but against a candidate with whom they do not like.
Suckers.

Elections For Sale

Diversification is the key of any large multi-national corporation. general Electric, which makes home appliances also is a major defense contractor. It also owns NBC The same can be said for Westinghouse, which owns CBS. Gotta put those war bucks somewhere, right? Why not control the information that most Americans receive nightly?
Not to be outdone United Technologies initiated a hostile takeover of Diebold makers of voting machines, which have been found to be easily rigged to throw elections. (Anyone remember 2004, when the then CEO and Bush supporter promised to "deliver Ohio to Bush?) Why waste time feeding propaganda to the masses when you can just rig an election to the guy who promises to throw you the most bones?