(Military Times) Op-Ed: Johnny and the Warmongers

[unhappycamper]

Parts I, II and III of "Johnny and the Warmongers" described John McCain's intimate relationships with the neoconservatives and the military/industrial complex. The fourth and final essay in the series discusses how, even with a Barack Obama presidency, militarism will continue to be the single greatest threat to America's security.

Johnny and the Warmongers
Jeff Huber | October 28, 2008

John McCain's policy positions reflect the same formula for disaster that America has followed throughout the past eight years.

According to his campaign web site, "John McCain believes we must enlarge the size of our armed forces to meet new challenges to our security." What are these new challenges? "The global war on terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats from rogue states like Iran and North Korea, and the rise of potential strategic competitors like China and Russia." That sounds like the same old set of boogeymen the neoconservative Bush administration has been making scare noise about, and the "threat" they pose doesn’t sound any more credible coming from the mouth of John McCain.

~snip~

We spend more money on defense than the rest of the world combined. We don't need a larger military. We don't need the one we have now. We don't need half of it.

Yet John McCain and the war oligarchs he fronts for would have us continue to buy $330 million fighter jets to dogfight rogue airliners, and $2 billion bombers to do the job of $600,000 cruise missiles, and $8 billion dollar aircraft carriers to chase pirates around the Indian Ocean, and a $63 billion missile defense system that couldn't shoot down a butterfly.

~snip~

It would be nice to think we're about to leave the lunacy of the last eight years in the rear view mirror, but it's not prudent to expect fairy tale narratives from real life. Call them what you like—mongers, hawks, neocons, Pavlov's dogs of war—they've been among us since apes first used sticks and bones to take food from other apes by force. This latest batch, Bill Kristol's gorillas, won't let a McCain loss on election day defeat their grand purpose. They'll skulk off and hunker down in the right wing media, think tank and academia sanctuaries and execute a Fabian strategy. They've already covered their retreat route with booby traps: Iraq, Iran, the Bananastans, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, North Korea, Russia, and now this monkey business in Syria, all of it is designed to distract attention and resources from our real security challenges involving the economy, education, health, the environment, infrastructure and so on.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,178147,00.html?wh=wh



uhc comment: The article on MT has tons of links. I'd recommend you go over there to read it all.