Military ‘Intervention’ and US Special Interests: Deceits and Failures
十年树 百年人 (shi nian shu bai nian ren) It takes 10 years to grow a tree and one hundred years to rear a people – chinese proverb
Do you think the Pentagon is a weapon of mass destruction, or a department of national defense. Perhaps a strange question, but one to ponder, for today our sitting politicians, in my opinion, have failed in making decisions in the interest of the American people. The facts regarding the stiching of lies (weapons of mass destruction) by US intelligence and the Bush State Department in the lead up to our current military ‘intervention’ in Iraq should show anyone a dishonesty that has sapped (and is sapping) our financial resources, devasated the infrustructure of a sovereign nation, and killed more then a million, people, American and Iraqi, as reports have it. Also going back to 1990, America’s stated ‘hands off’ policy in the lead up to the Gulf War by Bush senior’s administration, regarding tense border dispute, between Iraq and Kuwait, in retrospect, seems to exhibit duplicity. The face of American foreign policy has prouded itself on its peace keepers, sent often in NATO allied initiatives from the continent of Africa to the Eastern regions of Europe. This face, also is shown as one that mediates when conflicts erupt between neighbors, in the name of saving lives and defending sovereignty, but when mysterious illnesses inflict our war veterans, and the profits made by outsourced services, to huge corperations, rise, during war, we might be able to see that the United States may very well have two faces. Where in lies the word deceit if such a duality exists, and who is doing the deceiving. Upon who does such deceit fall? Such questions may be a good starting point, leading to a vast web of intrigue, beyond the Pentagon and State Department, to one that may extend from the exercised consolidation of huge media interests to our two party system, itself, and those in office. The words monopoly and cartel, are often used in reference to oil and opium producers, as well as pharmaceutical companies here in the US, but could it be that our government, and those that it has as its interested parties, are a cartel, or that they have a monoploy on policy, while media and image making gives a false impression to the world, and a false belief to the citizenry of the US, which is that of a democratic process of government that holds its voting population as its interested party?
I would argue that there may be enough evidence, of a cartel, a chain of special interests and power brokers, financial globalists, who in sum monopolize policy making here in the US, from the uses, and from, what I see as misuse, of our focres of national defense. Highlighting monopoly and special interests, one may see regulation, or the lack of it, as well as the use of it, as mechanisms of those who are in power, who represent favored interests, such as defense contractors, and drug companies. Such a monopoly may even regulate what we, as Americans, read, hear and see, via the media, which I would say, should be the lifeblood a true democracy, but today, in part, in may support agendas of special interests, whether war or reported supportive claims of drugs such as prozac, undermining the free market of ideas and knowledge with special interests and controls.
The media may be seen as a conduit that either prevents truth, or helps to build truth. The media works in respective ways, both in dictatorships, and democracies. If the media fails to inform citizens, and works instead to sustain or hide a reality, then that country’s media is not behaving in democratic ways, and instead panders to industrialists, war profits, and special interests. It becomes a vehicle by which the cartel that monoploizes the powers within our government create myths, sustain status quos, and sends people into war.
One might be able to see the Pentagon as something different from a department of national defense, when we look at the recent use of our military. Is it not a treasonous act to send soldiers into war, after having painstakingly created lies and fabricated evidence, as laying down the foundations for deployment? Is that what we saw in the year 2003? One must ask, if one is to take such a statement as fact, how deep is the deceit and where might it end, and who is paying for that deceit. What might be the driving force of such deceit. Is this, if so, a failure of our current two party monopoly in Washington, and the nation in general. By default, America, I would say, has allowed for power to be monopolized by two parties, and over time, the mechanisms of these two parties have become saturated with special interests, as well as power, but not in actuality representing the people. Of course, this word, special interests, is heard from the news and the media, especially during election time, but the media has long failed, in my opinion, to be a source of information that would keep inflated, the life preservers of the democracy our founding fathers had created, as our politicians, in no uncertain way, play into the hands of special interests. and the media, in many different ways, placate, while pandering to that special interest. This is how the Penagon and the State Department could launch the overt aggression that it did in 2003, and this is how the citizens of the US, in large part, still in shock from the 911, were either indifferent, or supportive, leaving a minority in protest of the invasion. –this blogger
In just hours after the 911 attacks, our sitting Secretary of Defense (reported by CBS ‘Plans For Iraq Attack Began on 9/11), was making initiatives for planning a war on Iraq, though evidence, in the years leading up to the Iraq invasion, was controversial, and what evidence there was, soon became suspect. One must ask, as an American, or a memeber of the world community of nations, what were the reasons for sending the US military into war? The measures of destruction and deaths in Iraq since 2003, the subsequent unleashing of sectarian violence, and the strain, as well as death, inflicted on US combatants, are not being presented in a realistic fashion, in my opinion. These are being hidden, rather than highlighted, by the media, as justification waves banners reading ‘democracy‘. Glossed over, are the realities, with words such as ‘winning the war’, while the words‘ending the war‘ become ‘lose the war’ Such words echo in other ways, and that echo is reflected in the word hegemony, as for decades, national defense has dissovled into gray arenas termed of military ‘interventions‘. Media reportage and articles in the press can be, and are, used in similar ways as in advertising, to get the public to buy something, to induce or reduce emotional responses, guide sentiments, or hide realities.
On Media and Public Opinion: Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky: Manufaturing Consent from Third World Traveler
Noam Chomsky, The Futrure of Iraq and Us Occupation http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20050126.htm
Interview, and Review of James Bamford’s Pretext for War: Inventing A Pretext For War
Gulf War Syndrome
A larger syndrome of policies founded on special interests, rather then democratic values, policies that have proven successful for some, those seeking profits, but unsuccessful to values adhered to when considering sovereignty, and value for human life.
gulf war syndrome: http://www.immed.org/illness/gulfwar_illness_research.html
Reported, Gulf War Vets passing on illness to offspring: http://operationpurpleheart.blogspot.com/
http://www.gulfwarvets.com/part-1.htm
Regarding this, information is plentiful, though composit is inconclusive. Have our politicians failed in addressing certain issues that inflict pain on war veterans, and a military that has its secrets? Secret Military Experiments on Americans……http://www.all-natural.com/bio-chem.html
I have not researched this beyond what I have read and heard in the news in years past, but find that it needs to be looked at. As the Gulf War Sydrome may be just one manifestation in a larger syndrome, and that may be how our military has been used, in an undemocratic fashion, and for greed and power. It is always easy to find pretextes for actions, such as spreading democracy to regions of the world, or protecting ‘American interests’, but one must ask firstly, what are the interests of extending our military in ways that we have seen in the last decade, while condemning other nations for ‘meddling’ in regions that have hold interests for them. As America’s military is spread in combat, from the Persian Gulf to the terrains of Central Asia, and as a nation we still have not come to terms with the preplexing posture of our government had in the lead up to Saddam Hussain’s invasion of Kuwait. Furthermore, the current syndrome effecting military soldiers returning home with unpresidented reports of PTSD and other psychological illnesses, as suicides of veterans inflict families accross the expanse of what has we call America, rises. The government and our elected officials, are their actions showing concerns for what they have been elected into office for? The issues impinges on just more then the eroding heath of veterans, who return home from the strain of ill planning by the defense department, and the effects inflicted on families, as one may make the claim that our military has extended itself beyond the frontiers of national defense, to defending and preserving the interests of corperations, from oil to fruit growers, in recent decades. From our involvement in Central and South America, with covert operations, highlighted by the climatic Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra scandal, to the initiative of George Herbert Walker Bush in his effort to extract Saddam Hussain’s military from Kuwait. If we follow a logic, that of establishing false pretextes for sending our military into war, there is a common thread woven between Bush Senior and that of his son, who is now the sitting president of the United States, and in command of our military. If we read what this logic says, we may make some conclusions concerning the profit driven defense industry, the financial interests of the Bush family, those who surround the current president, and how our democracy may be functioning as an empire as opposed to a democracy, an empire with a cartel mantality, and a monopoly on on the minds of Americans.
- Renegade Men and the US Government, false pretenses for sending our troops abraod.
Stated as fact, and reality, that western countries, including the US, had industrialists invest and supply Iraq’ s chemical and biological arsenal. According to Elson E. Boles, as well as others (John King: Arming Iraq, The History of US Involvement), the US, along with a few other NATO countries, as well as Russia, supplied Iraq’s military with weapons, while the US aided in planned implementation of chemcial weapons systems, during the years Iraq was engaged in its war with Iran: http://www.counterpunch.org/boles1010.html
Needless to say perhaps, is the fact that Iraq was armed and supported politically by the United States during its 8 year war with Iran, and this war led to massive bloodshed on both sides, while straining both economically. One could say that this economic strain on Iraq led to the President’s a proposed rising the price of world oil to OPEC. The proposal was refused. Seeking to remedy economic woes, incurred, in part, or primarily from the 8 year war, Saddam Hussein sought a provacative posture towards Kuwait in disputes over a border region, which included allegations by Iraq’s President that Kuwait was in violation of national boundaries by syphoning oil from oil field within, but on the edge of Iraq’s borders with Kuwait.
April Glaspie, U.S. ambassador to Iraq relayed a message to Iraq’s president that the US would take no position on the disputed boarder contecting Iraq and Kuwait. Was this a green light for Saddam Hussain to invade Iraq. Many at the time critical of this war thought so.
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php
With our military extended in such strained condition, as soldiers return with record high rates of PTSD, and resulting suicide, it is needed that every American reevaluate our State Department’s use of US military in decades past. Bill Clinton was hand tied with the military due to the disasterous and embarassing results of Senior Bush’s actions in Somalia, and many see the 911 attacks as being in part the result of Clinton’s missle attack, after the Kenyian and Tanzanian emabssy bombings, on a supposed Sudanese chemical facility identified by intellignece as producing chemcials, for it ignited hatred within the arab population, and feeding the fires of the militant sector of pan-arabism, namely terrorists groups. Many state that Clinton’s failure to implement an all out ‘offense’, in a ‘pre-emptive’ strike, led to his mainly ‘for show’ strike on the Sudanese chemical facility. One may say, that any military strike in the regions from north africa to Persia, and places in between, by the US, or NATO, is throwing gasoline onto fire. US involvement does fit into the matrix of underlying forces that facilitated the Iran and Iraq war, as well as the opened the hidden doorways to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and the subsequent Gulf War, which saw deployment of American troops to a region and terrain which supplies 28 percent of the world’s supply of oil (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Persian_Gulf/Background.html), while the United States sitting president at the time, George H. Bush, and his Secretary of State, James A. Baker, and their repective families, held, and today still hold, huge interests in American oil companies. It is difficult to see the United States as an oligarchy, but when the pretext for war is spreading American democratic values, along with faulty alligations of WMD, one may get a clearer picture, as most combatants come from working class backgrounds, and recruiting agents use snazy commericialized tactics to lure working class urban african americans.
Do you think the Pentagon is a weapon of mass destruction, or a department of national defense. Perahps a strange question, but one to ponder.
- Links: Bush oil interests:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CAV111A.html
http://www.bushwatch.org/oil.htm
- Recommended:
Ralph Nader, The Meaning of Freedom in the United States Today: http://www.pdxjustice.org/#Nader_13May2008
Noam Chomsky, The Futrure of Iraq and Us Occupation http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20050126.htm
Disputes and Media Dislocations 
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