We don't want to believe that our greatest threat is internal

[cali]

I suppose that's just human nature, and it's much more complex, involves more complex analysis, presents less straightforward "solutions".

I'm not saying that ISIS isn't a threat, though I see its threat directly to the U.S. as not being a huge one. I'm not even convinced that the threat is that great to the middle east. I think, and yes of course I could be wrong, that ISIS' growth is self-limiting. But we have clear visuals of what ISIS is and does. We don't have those clear visuals about other threats, be they disease, corporate control, climate change, right wing ideology right here at home. We don't have images of helpless men on their knees awaiting a dreadful death, stuck in our minds, from those other threats.

ISIS arose out of our military and political interventions in the middle east and those interventions were about oil and the money to be made as much as anything else. Are we just going in frenzied circles when we use military force, and fueling radical groups when we keep doing the same thing again and again?

I see ISIS as a distraction as much or more than a threat, and our reaction to ISIS as a potent threat in and of itself. Want to bet that military sequestration cuts are reversed? that the military budget gets a big boost from this? How about the odds that our projected years long war with ISIS/other groups, results in budget cuts for social welfare spending and infrastructure and bolsters the privatization movement?

What is the threat to us from being on a perpetual war footing? What is the threat to our civil liberties from believing that we are constantly under the threat of evil hordes? What more are we willing to give up in order to be safe? And what about the billions and billions spent protecting the "homeland" over the past 13 years or so?

I don't know. I don't have any answers, just unsettling questions.

[onwardsand upwards]

1. I think you're right to be skeptical ...

Hamid Karzai, in his farewell speech as departing President of Afghanistan, spelled it out: there is war in Afghanistan because the US wants war there.

Of course, by this he does not mean that the people of the US want war there, but that the US government does. The US government acts in the interests of US corporations, not its people.

To make peace, you make deals -- you negotiate and compromise. War can stop on a dime when a deal is struck between the powers that are at loggerheads.

Corporations make profits from wars, and that's why they continue ...

[blkmusclmachine]

2. Is the Nation run by a cache of sociopathic "Christian" Corporations and their greedy CEO's ???

War = Death = PROFIT = War

[JustAnotherGen]

3. Agree on it all

And the sheep who don't pay attention to anything except the cattle prod are being lead to their own slaughter. I posted this yesterday:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025574073


^Thats how they get away with it^. Ignorant people fall for the fear mongering hook line and sinker.


ETA: the village idiot they were watching yesterday. I looked it up last night. Vile.
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/09/14/judge-jeanine-scorches-with-statement-to-obama-you-are-not-a-man-of-your-word-145626

[Vattel]

4. Very good questions.

I have been disturbed by how once again cheap rhetoric seems so effective in making so many Americans so willing to accept war. Ultimately escaping the "permanent war footing" Obama talked about escaping requires more than a weak President's commitment to avoid "dumb wars." It requires reshaping our economic system so that war doesn't feed so many of our families and line the pockets of so many of the wealthy. It is not hard to see that, in principle, devoting resources to humanitarian projects that don't involve killing people is almost always a more effective way to make the world better than fighting wars of choice. War has a huge price tag in terms of death and injury and suffering and expense, and in a nation like ours that can deter invasion war is typically aimed at benefits that are highly speculative. But threats like ISIS will always be exaggerated, the costs of war will always be underestimated, and consequently war will always be chosen so long as our economic system is structured to produce war.

[cali]

5. there's a "look over here" element to all of this that's disturbing

[Vattel]

6. Maybe I am being dense, but could you explain what you mean?

[cali]

7. when all our attention is focused on the dangers of ISIS etc

we're not focused on what else is happening- some of which is made possible by all our attention being focused on ISIS etc.

[Vattel]

33. That seems right. Highlighting any problem tends to get people fixated on solving that problem

rather than others.

[Enthusiast]

8. There is a huge element of look over here.

[oberliner]

9. "ISIS arose out of our military and political interventions in the middle east..."

Not true.

Groups like ISIS have been seeking a caliphate for a long time.

With today's technology, these sorts of groups can operate differently (YouTube videos being a relative recent phenomenon, for instance).

[CJCRANE]

11. How much power did these groups have

in Saddam era Iraq or Gadaffi era Libya?

[oberliner]

15. Waxed and waned

But I don't think it's fair to say that these sorts of groups only exist as a result of the US.

[CJCRANE]

17. But it's fair to say that they prosper

as a result of those actions.

[cali]

21. they did not wax and wane in power. they had very little power.

and I didn't use the word "only"

[oberliner]

23. Sometimes they had a lot, sometimes a little

Last edited Wed Sep 24, 2014, 09:37 AM - Edit history (1)

Kinda depending on the way the winds were blowing.

Have you spent a lot of time in Libya?

[cali]

25. No, I haven't spent a lot of time in Libya. What does that have to do with anything?

Give me specifics of when these groups had a lot of power.

[oberliner]

30. I thought maybe you had some inside info

I had a friend who I was discussing Saudi Arabia with and it turned out that he had actually lived there for a time in a US compound so much of what he was telling me was based on his own first-hand experiences.

From what I understand, the LIFG was pretty big in Libya through much of the 1990s. I know they sort of waned in the mid 2000s but they were a pretty significant force prior to that, were they not?

[cali]

12. it is true. they're using U.S. arms

and I doubt that they'd be anything more than a weak footnote if not for the intervention in Iraq. You can say it's independent of our interventions from now until the cow's come home, but that defies history and logic.

[oberliner]

16. The US didn't make the machete they used to behead those journalists

They are capable of inflicting damage in ways that have nothing to do with the US.

History and logic indicates that groups seeking to create an Islamic caliphate have existed throughout many generations. Even predating the existence of the USA.

[cali]

19. no, but that's fairly irrelevant.

clearly they haven't been making military advances with machetes. Clearly, Iraq, riven by civil war, was fertile and fairly easy ground to take.

The desire to establish a caliphate was fantasy before the IW.

[oberliner]

24. Not really

They could fly planes into buildings too without the use of any US-made weapons.

The desire to establish a caliphate is still a fantasy. Certainly more so than in the past, when there have actually been such caliphates in existence.

[cali]

27. I thought we were talking about ISIS, but 9/11 hardly

establishes the strength of a group to establish a caliphate. and one one more thing: Did our massive spending on "homeland security" and the degradation of rights that is part and parcel of homeland security, accomplish nothing as regards making us safer from such attacks?

[oberliner]

29. Are they still called ISIS?

I thought we were talking more broadly about groups who wish to establish a global caliphate. In my view, ISIS or ISIL or IS or whatever, is one of a myriad of such groups that have existed for some time.

Not meaning to belabor the point, but my argument is that these groups exist independent of any action the US may have taken or will take in the region. I guess we aren't going to agree on that.

[cali]

31. I don't think you've supported your argument at all.

No, we aren't going to agree.

[oberliner]

32. I realize that

And, thus, I will politely withdraw.

[Feral Child]

10. Excellent post, cali.

It really concerns me that there are so many here buying into the drama.

[cali]

13. thank you, FC.

[CJCRANE]

14. I have an acquaintance who is an Iraqi Kurd

who used that exact same word.

He said it's a "drama".

They know they have little choice but to play their allotted role.

[Feral Child]

18. Yes. It's criminal.

It's bad enough for our citizens. What we're doing, what we'll continue to do to the residents of the Military's playground is horrific.

Over nothing. Our "Gleiwitz Incident".

[snappyturtle]

22. First of all, thank you for your OP.

Yes, we've spent billions on homeland security. I deeply believe homeland security was set up to protect the government from us! Really. Our best homeland defense is our position on the planet and the rest could be acheived by protecting the borders and ports of entry. I am sickened by all the media driven rhetoric espousing fear. We created many of the problems in the ME and it's just too convenient that we also have the means (MIC) to get rid of the problems we helped create! It's no wonder you can't come up with answers....it's a vicious circle to be sure.

[NuclearDem]

26. Posts like these are why I'm glad you're back, cali.

[cali]

28. thank you so much. that's kind of you to say.

[woo me with science]

34. Great post.

K&R

[Initech]

35. It is. The biggest threat to America is the US military industrial complex.

It's KBR. It's Halliburton. It's Lockheed Martin. It's Raytheon. It's Booz Allen Hamilton. It's Boeing. It's the NSA and CIA. It's any number of companies who profit in the hundreds of billions off death and destruction - while sending our troops to die for nothing and buying Congress members to keep the perpetual war machine going. There's a special place in hell for the whole lot of 'em. Fuck 'em all.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

36. I was born in 1944 and have seen many scary bogeymen come and go.

But, the MIC remains and bleeds us far worse than any of them. We have fought many wars since WWII and haven't won one. We have fought even more proxy wars that usually enabled the corrupt governments we supported to either last longer, or lose any way.

In the meantime, we cower in fear every time some new scarier, hairier, worst ever, doomsday bogeyman is erected and the flags are waved. Then the bombers, drones, troops, are sent in to set up the next war.

Someday, hopefully, we won't be USA!! USA!!, or the World's only Superpower, and become just another nation among nations and spend some time and money educating and civilizing our own people.