40 Comments

1. Stan Moore:

   Before I answer Matthew Hoh’s question for him, I wonder if Nancy Powell is the wife of Colin. I thought Nancy was Colin’s wife’s name, but I could be wrong, or it could be a different Nancy Powell. Does anyone here know?

   Here is my answer to Matthew Hoh –

   Dear Sir –

   There is a strategic strategy behind US military presence in Afghanistan, and I am sure that if you could sit in on meetings of the National Security Council or the President’s Cabinet or even the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you would find out what it is. And, of course, it is not as advertised, because if the seriousness of the world, and thus national energy situation was known to the general public, panic could erupt, consumer confidence could shrivel, and the stock market would plummet instantaneously.

   You could take a look at http://www.TheOilDrum.Com (today’s edition) and read energy analyst Colin Campbell’s letter to the Guardian Newspaper about the relationship between oil abundance/depletion, and the credit-based world and US economies and start to get the picture very quickly, if you are astute.

   Or, if you did a diligent search of world literature, you would find that French reporters actually wrote a book years ago describing the planning for the Afghanistan War and Occupation by US forces prior to the events of 9/11/2001.

   The truth in a nutshell is that the US military is occupying Afghanistan to provide strategic protection for the transport of oil from Central Asia to world markets, including the planned building of pipelines.

   It is all about strategic control of petroleum resources and it has to do with US relationships with Russia, China, Europe, and even Iran. It also has to do with US strategic positioning of forces relative to those other nations, which at minimum are competitors for strategic control of oil if not for future access to oil for national security and economic purposes.

   Dear Sir, the US does not care about Karzai, the Afghan people, the women, the Taliban, or even Al Qaeda. It beggars the imagination that Al Qaeda, a little militant outfit with a few hundred members, could pose a strategic threat to the US. And moreso since the US helped organize Al Qaeda in its formative years as a foil to the Russians in Afghanistan, using the very same tool of Islamic militancy to praise and support the same group now declared to be our own mortal enemy. Even the Taliban were courted by the US Government, including the Bush family, and if they had “played ball” in organizing the necessary petroleum/pipeline contracts we would be having diplomatic relations with a Taliban government in Kabul, no doubt.

   My friend, it would behoove you to think, use your god-given brain. Read http://www.Counterpunch.org or find some other venue where the reality is explored rather than propaganda and obfuscation. The facts are available and they make sense.

   Of course, everything is relative when we talk about making sense. The US military is probably the biggest energy consumer in the world, and all the energy used to control the region is being burned at great financial cost to the US taxpayer, who is already sold out for six or seven human generations of debt. We are nearing the end of another failed world empire, and the desperation with which the US government is trying to hold onto glory and power is as sad as the tragedies heaped upon the innocent peoples of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq by virtue of our lust for black gold. Blood for oil is what it is all about, my friend.

   Pretty simple, isn’t it?

   Stan Moore

   17 November 2009, 12:04 am

2. Michael Anderson:

   For this man, it is (hopefully) time to pay the ignorance tax. I find his resignation letter eerily similar to the view of the British diplomats trying to find “peace” with Germany in 1938, chronicled in the book “Anatomy Of A Failure”. The powers-that-be are pissing on your leg and telling you it’s raining, Mr. Hoh, and you’re buying the jive…are you? Sinclair Lewis was right—it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

   I’ll bet we see a book from him next year vying for space on the NYT book list.

   17 November 2009, 9:11 am

3. Stan Moore:

   An interesting corollary to the above (which I have not verified, but seems plausible) can be found today at:

   http://lukery.blogspot.com/2009/07/bombshell-bin-laden-worked-for-us-till.html

   Stan Moore

   17 November 2009, 10:09 am

4. Stan Moore:

   A little Wikipedia hopping reveals that:

   Colin Powell’s wife is named Alma, and not Nancy. Nancy Jo Powell is a career diplomat, and a past and present US ambassador to several nations, including Pakistan and Nepal. She seems like a real heavyweight of the Empire.

   Stan Moore

   17 November 2009, 10:18 am

5. Seb:

   I’m thinkin’ that the “distribute widely” bit is much more important than the content of the letter.

   Unless we’re expecting a Smedley Butler from everyone who has something different to say from a position of authority.

   Geez! Shoot the good messenger, why don’t you? He’s already on his way…

   17 November 2009, 4:02 pm

6. Seb:

   (…towards better understanding. The ellipses looked a little ominous)

   17 November 2009, 4:03 pm

7. Stan:

   Critique is good, but Seb also has it. The consensus is breaking up inside the inside. This is an indicator, and an accelerant. Everything doesn’t have to achieve the most profound clarity available (by our/my/your lights); there are expressions – more accessible to more people – that demonstrate and even widen fissures in ruling class consensus. Responses to these phenomena are simultaneously ideational and practical, and we need to think not so much in terms of ultimate goals or ultimate analysis (as if there were such a critter), but in terms of how we “bind and loose” in reply. These expressions of disjunction need amplification (loosing) along with an element of respect for the intelligence of others to use it as they will. The powers are binding it, trying to contain it, paraphrasing and minimizing it, trying to domesticate it.

   Context: this is the number one representative of the President of the United States in Afghanistan, a direct proxy for American executive power in an occupied nation; and he has challenged the whole war there. This is as remarkable as it gets, yo. Look at this like a historian, instead of as a theoretical testing ground where we parse every word. I like the critique, don’t get me wrong. But let’s also see how many people we can get this whole text to. It’s sand in the machine. Keep throwing it in.

   18 November 2009, 7:32 am

8. Stan Moore:

   I disagree with Stan and Seb on their analysis. They, and Matthew, seem to imply that a different or differently stated strategic mission would justify the bloodshed. Wel, we are willing to shed a lot of blood for oil and the American people are willing to tolerate a lot of bloodshed for oil, if past history is a guide.

   Some of Matthew’s Hoh’s assertions are questionable instrinsically, such as his claims that the American military is the finest the world has ever known. It is also the most heavily funded military the world has ever seen, by several orders of magnitude, and yet these misadventures all the way back to Korea prove that a determined foe with willingness to take inevitable casualties due to American firepower can win by stalemating the US with all its alleged military “superiority”. I think it probably takes a lot more courage and military prowess to attack American military formations of any size than it takes for the US military to respond.

   For all we know, Matthew Hoh may put himself in line for a government promotion by his “resignation” and be working the will of the government. I heard a radio interview with “conspiracy theorist” John Judge recently on Pacifica Radio’s program “Guns and Butter” which told some of the story of Linda Tripp, the lady who happened to become the confidente of Monica Lewinski in bringing the Clinton White House to the debacle of impeachment over casual presidential oral sex. Turns out that Linda Tripp was not just a garden variety administrative secretary in the White House, she was a long-time trained intelligence asset dating back to the Kennedy era and had workings with the Lee Harvey Oswald, Marina Oswald intrigue in which Oswald somehow deserted to Russia, spent a few years there, married Marina (who also dated other defectors) and then somehow was allowed to return to the US during the height of the Cold War and allegedly fire the one rifle that the authorities said killed Kennedy.

   No, I think Matthew Hoh’s testimony could be a plant and a sign of government machinations rather than an indicator of internal fracturing. It really does not matter, because Obama is not going to let go of Afghanistan any more than his “withdrawal of combat troops” is going to mean an end to US occupation of Iraq by any stretch of the imagination. Obama is playing a strategic game of blood for oil and Empire and he has already proved that the peace movement has no traction on his psyche.

   And Matthew Hoh is far from a Peacenik. He just wants a better stated reason for the costs of war. I say he probably knows the reason for war and his letter may very well be a deliberate act of puffery to make the war opponents feel like they have some hope and are accomplishing something.

   Stan Moore

   18 November 2009, 10:43 am

9. Michael Anderson:

   I see your point…a good idea not to let our own ill-tempered responses run our perceptions. Engage brain before opening mouth….Mr. Hoh obviously DID do that.

   18 November 2009, 1:37 pm

10. cabdriver:

    fwiw, I just saw a picture of Hillary Clinton at the airport in Kabul, flanked by Maj. Gen. McChrystal on one side, and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry (Lt. General, ret.) on the other. Eikenberry has recently expressed skepticism about the wisdom of deploying more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

    And Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.) has also recently provided his view that it’s time for the U.S. military to return home http://rawstory.com/2009/11/gen-wesley-clark-calls-exit-afghanistan/

    It seems to me that this is how the politics of policy change toward withdrawal would, in fact, commence. There are a lot of “finish-the-job” Americans out there- psychologically harnessed to the “tempo task” of it, the only way they’re able to reply to the question “how do we know when it’s finished” is to respond in the abstract: “Victory.” Whatever it takes- H-bombs, whatever.

    I think that the Americans here have all encountered that mentality among a substantial number of our fellow citizens. (It’s really that bad, isn’t it?)

    And the only thing that stands a chance of getting some ordinary good sense reality through to them on that score is an Appeal From Authority. By Generals- not civilians, like Obama/Clinton/Pelosi/Reid et. al.

    (The Jingoists only seem to want to confer honorary Hero status on Civilians if they’re War-mongering. Curiously enough, as a rule the actual amount of physical courage required to simply take a political position or advance a policy in that regard is negligible, either way. It’s been a long. long while since the top commanders ordering armies into battle actually got out on the battlefield to lead the charge.)

    So my hope is that there’s a slowly spreading outbreak of sanity going on here- as voiced by people in the top ranks of the U. S. military, the people whom even the most rabid right-wing American jingoists have a tough time dismissing or demeaning.

    The political reality of this country is that ignorant right-wing jingoist Americans- chronological adults, of voting age- number in the tens of millions, and they’d rather yell in chorus than listen. In this day and age. And they have to be dealt with. The fact that there are actually U.S. Army Generals willing to broach views that they’d otherwise summarily dismiss as “cowardice” and “treason” is presently giving me cause for optimism in that department. Although it’s still to early to know for sure.

    (Sometimes I wonder if anything less than a resounding military catastrophe will ever really shut up the American jingoist contingent. And considering that I have to live here too, that most certainly is not a price that I feel like paying. But I feel compelled to express my frustration at the unrealistic attitudes of anyone who lives in such secure, comfortable and affluent circumstances as most Americans do, treating the commitment of American military might like triumphalist fans of the ranked champions in a college football bowl game.)

    19 November 2009, 6:51 am

11. xenia:

    he did approve of killing people in iraq though.

    19 November 2009, 7:28 am

12. Sean:

    I’m on board with Stan Moore’s take here. Hoh’s not a hero. He’s just being a meritocrat and complaining about “competence,” which makes it seem imperialist agenda goals are not problematic in any way — merely their incompetent pursuit.

    The same line of thought supports Obama’s “right war” argument on Afghanistan.

    In other words, it’s a shield made of words, and will stop just as many deadly projectiles or weapons as a shield made of words.

    None of what is happening will change until people begin discussing the morality of Imperial Conquest. Absent that discussion, we’re just paining smiley faces on bombs, missiles and bullets.

    19 November 2009, 6:01 pm

13. cabdriver:

    xenia, Stan’s point- which I share- is that the project of attempting to convert Mathew Hoh to the Gospel of Pacifism is separate, and of an entirely different order, from that of pressuring America’s political leaders to extricate our military forces from the insidious mission creep of their commitment in Afghanistan.

    I also take issue with your over-simplified phrasing- “approve of killing people in Iraq”- which to my reading implicitly dismisses the notion that someone might be sincerely persuaded of a self-defense justification along that line, or that they might have any reasons for supporting military action other than homicidal mania.

    I find that an important distinction for this reason: if one accepts the possibility that someone is sincerely persuaded of self-defense justifications for the Iraq invasion, the rational course is to challenge those justifications and contest them in debate. (After we’re done allying with them on the question of getting the troops out of Afghanistan, of course. To divert energy from that aim by contesting Mathew Hoh, and those of similar opinion, on their support for the Iraq invasion would be to demonstrate a baffling degree of strategic ineptitude. If anyone is unclear on why that might be the case, please feel free to reply to me in this thread.)

    On the other hand, declaring- or implying- that someone supports the Iraq invasion for reasons of homicidal mania is a form of final judgment. And that judgment entails the idea that such a person isn’t even worth engaging in a discussion, or worthy of sharing points of agreement on any issue whatsoever, until they acknowledge their Moral Inferiority to the Judge, and Repent.

    I’m a Christian who holds with the idea that moral absolutes exist. But that isn’t the same as thinking that every question of morality and ethics is invariably to be decided by setting myself up as the judge of everyone else’s views and actions, on that basis. In the usual case, it’s all I can do to confront moral dilemmas in my own 1st-person existence. And I’ve observed the calamities of moral extremism enough times to be dreadfully wary of offering support for that course. That goes for moral extremism of all types- Christian, Islamic, Jewish, pantheist, Leninist, liberal, right-wing, secular, atheist, etc….no one should think that their brand of self-righteous moral superiority is any less prone to folly than any other type.

    A further observation: mixing a strict moral agenda into politics ultimately takes the form of a question of Power. If a political movement holds sufficient Power, the demand for actively pursuing a strict and pervasive Moral Agenda in political questions invariably takes the form of Coercion. And if it lacks that power, all that can ever result from the demand is self-marginalizing, ineffectual Posturing.

    I’m not interested in taking either of those courses. My allegiance to a standard of morality takes the form of personal witness, not politicized force. I’m not out to make everyone do my thing on every moral issue, or else.

    My own view is that on political questions, it’s more important to pursue practical results as a goal than it is to demand that others meet a rigid set of standards for Moral Purity. In this case, the goal is removing U.S. troops from a foreign land where they’ve long overstayed any rational justification of national defense of this country, and they’re doing more harm than good- to the Afghanis, to the national treasury, and to themselves.

    19 November 2009, 6:34 pm

14. Stan Moore:

    I think a major point is still being missed. The US government and military would prefer to control Afghanistan AND Iraq by proxy forces as much as possible. They want the control without the cost of American lives. They are not concerned about Afghan lives. If they can convince the American public that Karzai is battling corruption, and reduce US military casualties by drone warfare and training Afghan soldiers to fight Afghan insurgents, then US imperial policy is served.

    The US military continues to be stretched very, very thin. Stress and morale are very problematic, though the reduction in offensive operations in Iraq has reduced stress somewhat. But soldiers and Marines are still being deployed overseas in huge numbers and family separations are still burdening the Army and military greatly. The generals know this full well and they are trying to buy some time to (A) recruit some additional forces into the US military and (B) increase Iraqi and Afghan involvement in the pursuit of the US proxy governments in those occupied countries.

    I see no way in hell that all American forces will be withdrawn from Iraq or Afghanistan in the next twenty years, but it would be a big victory for The Empire if the US military role is reduced and focuses primarily in protecting the proxy governments and not in controlling the ground in either country.

    Democracy and security of the natives is of little real concern, except for propaganda purposes.

    I believe that all these retired military men serving as pundits have their own agendas, including future government office, paid punditry, etc. and their views must always be treated with great suspicion. Understanding the real American strategy in the region is essential to understanding what future moves are possible and unlikely.

    It is very easy for the American Left to grasp wildly onto promising statements with fervor, just as they grabbed onto Obama as if he were a peacemaker, when he is, in fact, just another Bush.

    An important point that I have never heard commented on anywhere, but which I thought of today is that warfare in American economics is part and parcel and a primary part of the transfer of wealth from the working people to the elite.
    The permanent war machine gobbles assets, income and taxes like no other aspect of the American economy, and is fundamentally sacrosanct because the American people are far more afraid of “terrorists” than of depauperization.
    The American public begs to be made safe from all threats and worries incredibly much about being “attacked”, even while we routinely launch military attacks dozens, if not hundreds of times per day in countries far and wide. Our attacks provoke some responses, and drive a cycle of very profitable violence for the War Machine. Dwight Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex, and he was right then, but the situation is far worse now. We have incredibly high military budgets, and on top of those we have black budgets, nuclear budgets, emergency budgets, secret budgets, and much of that wealth goes into relatively few hands.

    If the US could keep the Vietnam war going despite massive protests at home, they will easily be able to keep Central Asian in flames, keep the drones flyign by the thousands, launching million dollar missiles to kill brides and grooms and the occasional militant. The inevitable blowback in the form of “terrorism” and counterattacks keeps the money cycle turning and turning.

    And the contracts with American oil producers are starting to come online in Iraq and sooner or later there will surely be work started on new Central Asian pipelines, needed among other things to circumvent Russian control of energy to Europe and elsewhere.

    This is intended to go on for many years, and as petroleum gets more and more scarce, the profit motive increases, because there will always be willing buyers for what energy is available, at least until energy return on investment is less than the cost of the financial investments.

    Stan Moore

    20 November 2009, 12:05 am

15. Stan:

    Lots to get hold of here.

    Here a while back, one commenter who had worked himself into a pique summed one aspect of this discussion up very succinctly: “Violence works!” he said. And this is precisley one point about the issue CD raises, that being morality. For morality to mean anything, it has to trump utilitarianism, while not being intrinsically opposed to utilitarianism. In Harriet Arnow’s marvelous novel The Dollmaker, there is a pocket knife that is used in the first chapter to perform an emergency cricothyroidotomy to save a child with whooping cough. Later in the novel, after the family has been forced off the land by circumstance and into a factory town, the cicumstances change, and the same rustic pocket knife is used to commit a murder.

    I would add along this stream of consciousness, a lot of things “work.” Cars work. But beyond the working of an individual automobile, there is a larger cycle of time/history in operation here; and when we study how cars “work” together, in the millions and millions, they create a reality that puts the engine that cranks and the machine that travels into a different, and more critical, light. Pretty good summary of the predicament we are in. We can make stuff that works, but we can’t predict or control the evolution of our practices – that are influenced by the stuff we do and make that “works.”

    The evolution of society is like that, too. The Empire, capitalized, is not a thoughtful entity, a personification, a sentient being. It’s a name we give to one of those perspectives that goes beyond what works discretely to see how things are working in concert, how they have become self-organized and self-perpetuating as expressions of interests held within society… and also the inability of those all along the hierarchies of humanity to figure out how to get off the train. Oil is a factor in all that, an important one, but not the sole determinant, or even the ultimate determinant.

    The ultimate determinant – imo – is not a substance, but the perpetuation of national power. If this could be accomplished without oil, the forces of governance within the United States would leap on the opportunity. Many still believe that this future of power (and with it the way of life we consume in the center of a global tributary economy, based on dollar hegemony) can be sustained with alternative energy and whatnot (the green capitalism delusion). But that’s because most people haven’t studied energy. The empirical information is already pretty clear; there is no substitute for oil. We are already on that cul-de-sac.

    There are at least two issues that are raised here in my own ever more feeble mind: (1) What’s really going on? and (2) How are folks to discern a righteous response? This, of course, assumes that number 2 matters. I think it does.

    Hoh’s letter gives us a peek into number 1. I can assure anyone who hasn’t worked for the government that the government has a very limited capacity to conduct conspiracies; in fact, it is mind-bogglingly effective — vast bureaucratic meshwork of constipated committees that it is — at stifling any form of intiative whatsoever (and effective conspiracies require a lot of initiative at a very low level, or the non-linear dymanics of reality eat our “plans” and shit them out before our befuddled memory).

    There is a mistaken belief out there that the government has as much power as it pretends; but until you get caught in the machinery, it’s really a pathetic apparatus. There are a hundred people getting away with every thing that gets caught and punished by the government for infringement of the rules. Far more effective at policing conformity are the manufacture of culture (and thereby ideas and rationalizations) and our individual embrication in a system of forced consumption and debt. Nothing as complex as American society – the ultimate core in the world system now, though that status is changing – can be run from the top. It simply can’t be done. Obama, for example, didn’t invent the presidency. He entered into the system – observing its mindless, suprapersonal protocols every step of the way – and played the game according to established practices, forging a few, minor new tactics along the way that did little but appropriate existing networks.

    The energy politics of Central, South, and Southwest Asia are a game, too. Many like to refer to it historically as The Great Game, but it is not the ultimate game, nor is it a game that can operate indiependent of many other games (struggles) and variables. Learning about that particular game can lead those who are versed in its particulars to believe that this is THE overarching perspective/determinant.

    But if you shift from the subject of oil to food, eg, then the particulars overlap with oil, but the analysis changes, too.

    If Hoh fails to meet our fully-fledged, and systematic moral criteria, that’s one thing. But in terms of Question 1, What’s really going on?, this judgement does little to illuminate what this means. The question here is, not what are Hoh’s beliefs and how do we adjudge them, but what does this indicate about the consensus – public and ruling class – with regard to the military adventure that is pulling Barack Obama into its vortex? There are fissures in the unity of the ruling class, but even more specifically, there is a fissure within the (emphasizing the term) administration. The management!

    Judgement and anlaysis are not identical, and it is a fallacious method of argument to mobilize (justified) moral outrage, detailing the crimes, for example, as a method to tear up analysis. It suggests that anyone who looks outside this outrage is deficient, and sets up a mutual exclusion that is false. It’s a reduction to Good and Evil embodied in particular people, who are now enemy people and therefore unworthy of our study, support, or even acknowledgement as members of the human family. I believe in Good and Evil, btw. But they are spirits that do not possess anyone entire, and that cannot be eliminated with individuals.

    Person X is neither good nor evil. And as our interlocutor pointed out, violence (evil) works, but these are actions, permanantly written and undelined by time once complete; and people… change. I’ll present my own bona fides on this as ex-military, who is trying now to follow a 1st Century Nazarene construction worker turned teacher/preacher in the ways of non-violence.

    On Management, sorry for the digression, we’ve addressed this before… Dunbar’s number and all that. At certain scales, early on in fact, management goes over and above what it manages, and begins to look out for the interests of sustaining itself as apparatus, beginning with thousands and thousands of people who depend on their management/administraton jobs.

    I’m sorry, but I don’t find a false flag operation (Hoh is performing as a disciplined member of a conspiracy) credible. Among many other reservations, I don’t believe Hamad Karzai can remain in power without US troops. As Patrick Cockburn pointed out recently, one of the reasons Afghan fighters have proven so durable in the past is they are adept at side-switching to hunker down among the now-dominant faction until the currents change again. Without the US, Karzai’s support would depend more on his drug-baron brother than on his political legitimacy in the eyes of Afghan “society” (a conceptual stretch that ignores the tribal bases of kinship and loyalty in Afghanistan).

    Hoh’s resignation is a scandal, and therein lies the sparkle of hope.

    20 November 2009, 8:08 am

16. Stan Moore:

    I have been hearing radio interviews and reading published opinion pieces almost daily about how Obama’s hands are tied on health care, how he inherited wars, how he is qualitatively superior to his precedecessors, etc.

    I say just the opposite. I say Obama is the perfect new emblem of the status quo, because he puts a sympathetic face on what I consider evil (which (evil I intentionally and simplisticsly define as putting the interests of the few ahead of those of the many)

    Obama is given a free pass on single payer because it is considered politically untenable. But Obama is not advancing the arguments for single payer, but he is staking out a position of compromise as his basic position and then negotiating backwards from a self-chosen starting point far from the interests of the many. He should have used his formidable intellect, oratory skills, and public acceptance to fight powerfully for single payer and then compromised if he must. He is surrendering without a real fight and then saying he fought hard.

    In the past, Obama has spoken powerfully about the moral fallacy warmaking for the wrong reasons, but he has failed to use those same formidable personal powers to fight for a change in the status quo at the fundamental level. Instead, he toys with the status quo by playing with words, as in redefining “combat troops” into some less ominous category, while keeping them and their weapons in theater and also quietly continuing the shift of privatization of warmaking capabilities to private contractors. I don’t think the American public and the media have even begun to piece together the dramatic shift in warmaking that gives the appearance of a smaller military force by relegating and delegating formerly purely military jobs to contractors, who do everything from provide infrastructure to soldiers to servicing combat hardware to performing actual armed security missions. This is not only a continuation of militarism on behalf of empire, but it is very expensive to the taxpayer who thinks the military has been downsourced.

    If I were to create a new nickname for Obama that I had heard no one use previously, it might be “The Chameleon”. He is neither black nor white. He is not green, but can appear to be. Perceptions of him vary according to the color of light provided by the viewer.

    The worst thing I can say of Obama as a person of conscience, is that I really do not believe he is one of “us”. And from a personal point of view, I recognize huge variation and even opposite polarism within communities of conscience that can be overcome by focus on overriding mutual concerns. I ally with people whose views I do not hold. But I do not feel that Obama is like me. I do not see him as an ally in matters of conscience in practical terms. He is a professional politician, a deceiver, and fundamentally a proponent of a status quo I want to see permanently changed.

    If Obama resigned tomorrow and somehow we could put Cynthia McKinney in his place, I would feel much better, but I am not suggesting it is a real proposition, just a fantasy dream…

    Stan Moore

    20 November 2009, 9:08 am

17. cabdriver:

    I think that there is such a thing as “imperial hubris.” It’s akin to the “Peter Principle”, which states that individuals tend to advance- or are promoted- to their level of INcompetence in a hierarchy. I think that as applied to hegemonic nations, that’s an even more sure bet than it is in the case of individuals.

    And in this case, that argues against the interpretation of events that indicates that Mathew Hoh is acting as part of a falsified opposition voice to draw off resistance to the Afghanistan campaign.

    Ambassador Eikenberry’s comments are significantly less critical than Hoh’s, and his expressed skepticism on the Karzai government may be an attempt to buffer the substance of Hoh’s communication. Although it also may not be.

    Also- by drawing an explicit analogy to the Vietnam conflict, Wesley Clark sounds to me as if he’s hinting pretty strongly that he foresees serious difficulties in continuing to commit U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Clark is broaching what might be termed the “liberal” part of the Powell Doctrine- that committing forces to military conflict overseas needs to be predicated on a clearly outlined set of goals and a well-mapped out exit strategy- to avoid, well, imperial hubris. That’s a very practical, “utilitarian” viewpoint. And if “utilitarian realism” is what leads U.S. Army and Marines out of Afghanistan rather than moral qualms or anti-imperialism, that’s fine with me.

    But the idea that this is being talked up as a provocateur strategy doesn’t carry much weight with me, as of now. The simple fact of significant popular discontent with the situation in Afghanistan doesn’t seem to be THE critical factor in what the leaders of the American government decide in that regard. And it has to be mentioned that at least some of that discontent is emerging from the sentiment that the war isn’t being prosecuted aggressively enough.

    The administrative-executive levels of American leadership themselves need to come around to the idea Afghanistan comprises a textbook example of the maxim that American “hard power” has it’s limits (unless of course utter derangement gets the upper hand, and the use of atomic weapons is employed…that hideous tactic of overkill was also brought up as the “final solution leading to victory” in Vietnam, by those so obdurately committed to the principle that “defeat is not an option” in American military affairs that they simply wanted to leave Hanoi, Haiphong, and the Ho Chi Mink trail as radioactive craters.) The savants delegated to manage the U.S. empire are assuredly uncomfortable with being reminded of that, but they can ill afford to disregard it. The risk that the US could bleed itself out from overstretch looms very large, to the point where even visions of the sought-after benefit of oil pipelines and mineral wealth have to face the possibility that winning those capabilities and resources could come at too high a cost- a Pyhrric victory, one of such magnitude that it could drastically diminish American power and reserves.

    (All initially motivated- at least ostensibly- by the actions of 19 hijackers, at that! A terror cell not much larger than the old “Symbionese Liberation Army”!)

    Stan continually brings up the fact that we Feral Scholar types are after a larger goal than simply getting US forces out of Afghanistan, of course. We’re after demanding, and working for, a wholesale reassessment of societal values, the role of the U.S.A. as a political entity and world actor, and the development of sane and humane alternatives as far as our attitudes and practices concerning material culture and resource consumption. He’s one of a number of people who are getting me to think on those wide-scale terms, as the best way to cope with some absolutely daunting future crises that loom very large, and advance closer each day.

    Simply getting out of Afghanistan won’t be sufficient to resolve those challenges. But it’s a step toward clarity. And quite importantly, it would be a move that diminishes the amount of resources devoted to what Buckminster Fuller referred to as “illth”, or destruction.

    And by doing that, many of those resources are instead preserved and conserved toward the future possibility of creating productive wealth- on behalf of the common future of humanity and the health of the planet, if the best paradigm is actually able to win out on its merits. A huge bonus, and a very practical score.

    It’s important for people of good will to not get mired in pessimism and dystopia, or to imagine that the overseers of the American empire are omnipotent. I hear a lot of whistling in the dark out of them, personally. And attempts by them at manipulating the public are fraught with intrinsic vulnerabilites- like their own blinkered ambitions and mendacity, for one thing. They’d prefer to be seen as awesome. They aren’t.

    20 November 2009, 11:09 am

18. Sean:

    Stan, how is Hoh’s resignation a scandal? And what, pray tell, is a “scandal” to the US military, which routinely kills, rapes, tortures innocents? Something is scandalous compared to the killing, raping, torturing of innocents whose lands we have invaded unjustly?

    I don’t follow.

    How can it not be a limited hangout, which would be a variant on a false flag? Seems to me Hoh’s letter talks only of efficiency and competence and mission doubt, without even tackling the idea of wrongful invasion, war crimes, murder, etc. That would make it a limited hangout, a discrete situation of non-disclosure of items and data points that undercut American Empire’s exceptional blamelessness.

    Also, the idea that conspiracies can’t happen in the US Govt is ludicrous. A conspiracy is nothing more than people working together toward a common goal. Footbal teams use conspiracies all the time. It’s how they try to win games. Bureaucratic entities use conspiracies constantly. Every organization that pursues goals with >1 person working toward that goal is using conspiracy.

    20 November 2009, 11:26 am

19. Stan:

    Scandal here refers to how it is received by his own culture, not how it is used as a popular adjective. Maybe an anachronistic use.

    And conspiricies are as successful as their unity of effort. A football team has a much better chance of successfuly conspiring, precisely because they are small and agile and remaining in the tactical domain, than does a geograhically dispersed government with millions of employees and billions of rules.

    20 November 2009, 1:02 pm

20. cabdriver:

    Sean, I know that you are addressing your questions to Stan. But I’m going to drop in here again and provide my own take on what you’ve said.

    “How is Hoh’s resignation a scandal?”

    I’m not sure that “scandal” is exactly the right term. But if you know anything about Beltway mentalities, the comments that Hoh submitted in connection with his resignation are iconoclastic- even arguably subversive. The Best & Brightest cadres are in some ways more insecure about having the practical wisdom of their plans challenged than they are about having their morality critiqued- and challenging their wisdom is exactly what Hoh is doing, in this passage:

    “…I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. Military has received in Afghanistan. The tactical proficiency and performance of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines is unmatched and unquestioned. However, this is not the European or Pacific theaters of World War II, but rather is a war for which our leaders, uniformed civilian and elected, have inadequately prepared and resourced our men and women. Our forces, devoted and faithful, have been committed to conflict in an indefinite and unplanned manner that has become a cavalier, politically expedient and Pollyannaish misadventure. Similarly, the United State has a dedicated and talented cadre of civilians, both U.S. government employees and contractors, who believe in and sacrifice for their mission, but have been ineffectually trained and led with guidance and intent shaped more by the political climate in Washington, D.C. than in Afghan cities, villages, mountains and valleys.

    “We are spending ourselves into oblivion” a very talented and intelligent commander, one of America’s best, briefs every visitor, staff delegation and senior officer. We are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come. Success and victory, whatever they may be, will be realized not in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations. The United States does not enjoy a national treasury for such success and victory…”

    Heresy!

    I seriously doubt that the movers and shakers behind the Big Footprint approach to Central Asia like having the shakiness of their cherished enterprise exposed so baldly.

    “How can it not be a limited hangout?”

    Well, in order to have a “limited hangout”, in the Nixonian sense of the word, you have to have feel under some serious pressure to hang something out in the first place, so to speak. The references in Nixon’s Watergate-era conferences with his advisers to offering a “limited hangout” came in reference to an effort to explain away various high crimes and misdemeanors for which Pres. Nixon was being investigated.

    That sort of pressure is simply absent, in this case. There’s no hoard of secrets that’s being protected by Hoh’s resignation and appended comments. So if there’s any covert reason for that move, I’d like to hear what it might be. From you, Sean.

    Additionally, your comments clearly indicate to me that you see no difference between the U.S. military and a self-willed organized crime syndicate. I consider that lack of distinction to be an intellectually slipshod analysis. And the lack of an inclination and/or ability to offer an accurate analysis inevitably impacts one one’s own overall credibility. That’s the case no matter the idealism being advanced or professed as far as one’s own motivations. There comes a point where oversimplifications and conflations offered from a viewpoint of moral superiority are simply functions of one’s own egotism.

    I feel it necessary to offer some personal background on what’s informing my opinion on the issues related to your claim. I’m not a military veteran, but my now departed father was a combat veteran of Korea, and later a Public Information Officer for the 173rd Airborne during the Vietnam War.

    There are people, possibly including yourself, who may judge him to “have blood on his hands”, in the parlance. And that may in fact be the case, although for my own part I’m terribly averse to offering judgements like that, as a rule.

    But I assure you that never on his worst day did my father endorse the idea that the mission of the U.S. military was “the killing, raping, torturing of innocents whose lands we have invaded unjustly.”

    And I doubt that Michael Hoh is motivated by the idea that he’s involved in protecting any such Inner Secret of the U.S. Military Conspiracy, either.

    To return to the topic of Afghanistan: on reviewing the military initiatives of nation-state actors in history, I assure you that it was a absolute certainty that at some point following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack, that the USA was going to deploy American armed forces into the country of Afghanistan.

    I’d like to hear your personal argument that doing so was obviously an “unjust invasion”, Sean.

    I’m willing to be persuaded. But the Taliban regime of Afghanistan was hosting terrorist training camps of some scale and sophistication in that country, and it seems to me that at some point they were due to be forcibly eradicated. And while you might be able to persuade me with your argument, the leaders of nation-states tend to be unsympathetic to appeals to benevolence and forgiveness in those cases. For one thing, in democracies, they have to answer to the aroused sentiments of their public on the question of what to do about the training camps of terrorist groups that are implicated in serious, high-casualty attacks on targets inside their own borders.

    The point I’m attempting to make is that the initial phase of Afghanistan invasion isn’t nearly the open-and-shut case of armed banditry that you appear to be claiming. You’d have a very hard time trying to make that case to almost any American, whether military or civilian.

    (You might be effective with some people by propounding the view that 9/11 was an inside job- “MIHOP or LIHOP”, so to speak. I’ve heard no reference to that argument in your comments in this thread. But I suspect you’d get further with more random passerby with an argument like that than with any other premise that I can imagine.)

    Finally, your definition of “conspiracy” is spurious. More is required of a conspiracy than “people working together toward a common goal.” In conspiracies, people plot in secret to keep both their identities and their purposes hidden, in service of illegal goals. So if you’re going to postulate a conspiratorial motive in the case of Mathew Hoh, you’ll need to be specific- about what illegal purpose he’s attempting to serve, and who he’s conspiring with in order to accomplish it. As it stands now, you’ve only made an allegation about the means- that his resignation and comments serve some clandestine purpose other than their surface appearance indicates. You also need to furnish “motive” and “opportunity”- the motive and the accomplishment of the task that serves it.

    As of now- I don’t see it.

    20 November 2009, 1:52 pm

21. seb:

    Good lord, people! This guy isn’t Kissinger!

    We can sit on our asses and continue to lambaste the guy (not that he’s undeserving), but clearly that’s not enough!

    I haven’t seen this on the news. The likes of Rachel Maddow aren’t even reporting it. What’s much much more interesting about this letter is its potential to tell the ignorant (FAR more ignorant than we are, or he is) about what’s failing. Failing! Tell the world it’s failing! Who are “they” gonna trust: you, whomever you are, or the guy who was a direct line to the president?

    It’s a matter of capital. We’re focusing waaay too inward on this matter. Can we try to see what happens if we push it outward?

    How do we do that?

    20 November 2009, 1:55 pm

22. seb:

    (political capital, I mean)… gah, I’ve been typing too long for this.

    20 November 2009, 1:56 pm

23. m.c.:

    One difference between now and WWII for example, is that all 4 of President Roosevelt’s sons(all grown) served in the military in combat theater{not desk jobs in Washington}. This may help understand why he won natl. elections 4 times.

    20 November 2009, 2:12 pm

24. Sean:

    If it is a scandal within the military then that would be a terrific irony since the military’s purpose and its use since the 1800s gave way to the 1900s has been murder, rape, torture and destruction for the profits of a rarefied few. In any case it seems Hoh’s decision and the formalized version in his letter of resignation are tepid and toothless, given that he never hits on the crucial points and talks only about efficiency and mission creep. What’s scandalous about thinking on efficiency and mission scope?

    W/R/T “conspiracy” I think you are twisting the point I’m making. I didn’t say that every single employee of the Fed Govt had to be involved. Your recasting of the discussion is distractive. Going back to my football analogy, I didn’t say that the waterboy is part of the 11-man on-field team’s conspiracy to win. Anyone riding the pine, not playing the game… not part of the conspiracy. Thus in the Fed Govt, a conspiracy easily can and does exist, and does get implemented, within the scope of practical governmental policy and action. I have witnessed it myself when working as a regional environmental planner — I saw conspiracy among local govt, state govt and US EPA personnel. The conspiracy that was unspoken but always pursued was obvious to anyone with a working brain — don’t try to clean up the environment by means that actually require sacrifice by affected businesses. This conspiracy has been in effect since the US EPA was created.

    In Hoh’s case, the conspiracy is one where nobody talks about imperial conquest and using the military for anything but defense.

    20 November 2009, 3:23 pm

25. Stan Moore:

    soldier poster may be of interest:

    http://www.allposters.com/-sp/82-Soldiers-Posters_i2882610_.htm

    20 November 2009, 8:46 pm

26. cabdriver:

    “the military’s purpose and its use since the 1800s gave way to the 1900s has been murder, rape, torture and destruction for the profits of a rarefied few.”

    Sean, as a historical synopsis, that doesn’t even make it as vulgar Marxism.

    Well, just barely so.

    It simply leaves out too much history. It isn’t even an interpretation, it’s a wholesale moral condemnation.

    And you’ve evaded some specific questions I put to you: for example, from the moral perspective you adhere to, how would you have dealt with the practical fact on the ground of Al Qaeda training bases and command structures in the country of Afghanistan, following the 9/11 strikes?

    You also aren’t postulating anything that resembles a cover-up of illegal or secret conduct, by Mathew Hoh. All you’re doing is offering your personal gloss on what U.S. military intervention is doing in Afghanistan, and condemning Hoh for not taking your points. But that doesn’t by any means constitute proof of conspiratorial concealment or an attempt at evasion, in service of some covert agenda.

    I think it stretches the definition of “conspiracy” to allege that Hoh is s burying something from public view, just because he doesn’t bust out with a Noam Chomsky institutional critique of the military in service of Empire. With an accusation like that, I think you’re attributing conscious motives to him that he may not possess.

    Consider that almost nobody else in the general discourse of American society “talks about imperial conquest and using the military for anything but defense”, either. That isn’t a deficiency exclusive to the military.

    I also think that at minimum you ought to be able to postulate the nefarious goal of Hoh’s remarks, as serving a covert agenda. For instance, alleging that his remarks were actually intended to have the contrary effect from what’s at the surface- that despite all appearances to the contrary, they’re actually working ever so subtly to justify the continuation of the US military effort in Afghanistan.

    But you haven’t put forth any specific accusations in that respect.

    20 November 2009, 11:35 pm

27. Sean:

    cabdriver, I’m not sure what your point is. I made my argument. If you have rebuttal, make it. Merely asserting that I’m arguing unsupported or overbroad points is ad hominem nonsense, which I don’t typically expect here at Feral Scholar. If you can show my arguments lack a realistic basis, or are distorting facts, then please explain HOW.

    Thank you.

    21 November 2009, 11:49 am

28. Sean:

    PS to cabdriver — I’m not a vulgar marxist, I’m not a marxist of any type. Maybe you should read my posts without wrongly assuming you know my politics.

    21 November 2009, 11:51 am

29. m.c.:

    To his credit, Winston Churchill’s son Randolph served in the Army during WWII. On the topic of conspiracy, not all have to be involved. Take a govt. agency with 20,000 employees. If 20 are in-the-know, that’s .1% of the total group.

    21 November 2009, 1:25 pm

30. Stan Moore:

    reference link = http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24026.htm

    This Afghan woman, Malalai Joya is a very impressive person. Her views on what should be done to/for Afghanistan by the US are different from those of Code Pink and Matthew Hoh. I happened to hear a bit of an interview with Hoh on Pacifica Radio today, and could not help notice his paternalist viewpoint that what Afghanistan really needs is western assistance to develop itself so as to have our affluence and presumably our form of “democracy”, our consumerism, our wonderful eduction systems, etc.

    No, I think Malalai knows best… And she is utterly fearless, bold, and committed to her land and her people.

    Stan Moore

    Stan Moore

    21 November 2009, 9:48 pm

31. Stan Moore:

    Another article with interview of Malalai Joya can be read at:

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16182

    I love her quote that “Democracy by war is impossible”. Maybe someone ought to introduce her to Hillary Clinton.

    Stan Moore

    21 November 2009, 10:44 pm

32. Michael Anderson:

    Interesting link related to this:

    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4503

    A woman among warlords

    Joya: US backed fundamentalism is at the root of the Afghan problem; foreign troops should get out now.

    Malalai Joya is an Afghan politician who has been called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan.” As an elected member of the Wolesi Jirga from Farah province, she has publicly denounced the presence of what she considers warlords and war criminals in the parliament. She is the author of “A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice”

    I agree that the U.S. backs repressive fundamentalist regimes, and we may possibly be on the verge of one here as the empire edges into its dominate, exterminist phase, corporate-backed.

    22 November 2009, 2:54 pm

33. cabdriver:

    Sean: since I was in fact addressing your arguments and not calling you names, I wasn’t indulging in ad hominem fallacy.

    Nor did I label you as a Marxist. I pointed out that your argument is devoid of a structural interpretive framework of any sort, as far as I can tell- although your labelling the entire US military effort for the past 110 or so years as a program of “murder, rape, torture and destruction for the profits of a rarefied few”, without further qualification, does remind me of a “vulgar Marxist” complaint, i.e., a “one-sentence-fits-all” bumper-sticker label that posits an omnipotent ruling class as the sole agent of societal power, directing a military force bent solely on conscienceless destruction in service of accumulating wealth and power for their masters, via rape, pillage, and murder.

    Do you care to expound on the explanatory value of that critique as it applies to, say, the battle of Chateau-Thierry? The battle of the Marne? Anzio? Normandy? Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima? Lend-Lease? The Marshall Plan? The Pusan perimeter?

    Furthermore: notwithstanding your retorts, I think I’ve already expended considerable column inches challenging your framings, and requesting more clarification of your views. Enough so that I don’t feel any particular need to continue to engage you on the subject, unless and until you provide specific responses to my previous inquiries…

    Okay. Just one more time, I’ll ask you: what specific conspiratorial goal might be served by Mathew Hoh’s resignation and parting comments? Are they a ploy cleverly designed to facilitate continued US armed involvement in Afghanistan, through reverse psychology manipulation? If that isn’t the covert purpose, then what is it?

    If your only response is that it’s intended to whitewash the actual motivations, activities, and goals of the US military effort in Afghanistan- what do you suppose makes Hoh’s resignation and criticisms more effective at accomplishing that aim than the tactic of simply holding his tongue?

    Don’t feel obliged to answer- in the absence of any reply, I have no problem considering this dispute exhausted. We can agree to disagree, and those who read our point-counterpoint can make their own judgments on it if they care to, based on what’s already on the record.

    22 November 2009, 6:19 pm

34. Timothy R. Anderson:

    No Tillman Sequel.
    anyone ElsE noTicE how there’s not been a pro football ( or basketball or baseball )
    player that stopped his / her athletic career to go fight within Afghanistan
    on behalf of the USA ‘s military ? Anyone else NOTICE that ? Please chime in with some
    thoughts , y’all. In advance: ThANk YoU.

    Timothy R. Anderson

    22 November 2009, 7:57 pm

35. Stan Moore:

    Matthew Hoh shows up in a new essay on the moral travesty of US imperialism:

    http://counterpunch.org/alberts11232009.html

    And this reminds me — It is common to hear the US government and the corporate media speak relentlessly of the need to throttle Islamic “militants” with lethal force. But what about Christian militants, like the US Army General who went to war with the “comfort” that his god was more powerful than “their” god?

    Or the Jewish militants who believe their god gave them the entire land of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea?

    It seems unlikely that the pattern of US/Israeli violence in the Middle East could be accomplished without religion-oriented/directed militancy.

    If, for instance, the US government under Bush II had sought a “roadmap to justice” instead of a “roadmap to peace” (through coercion/violence, the whole concept of solving Middle Eastern violence would be far different.

    It is truly sad to see Obama, of all people, adopting the mindset and cruel heart of the militant in his support for the violence of the Empire. And with his emergence as the Militant-In-Chief, what has become of the anti-war movement, such as they were when Bush was Militant-In-Chief? Obama has taken the steam out of the so-called “progressive” movement and as I stated recently, put a sympathetic face on the (militant) status quo.

    When Obama was openly admiring Ronald Reagan during the presidential campaign, I trust he was sincere, and much more sincere than in his illusory admiration for progressive ideals.

    Stan Moore

    23 November 2009, 10:25 pm

36. Stan Moore:

    reference = http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/24-7

    Yet another mention of Matthew Hoh’s resignation in the context of Afghanistan’s long history as the graveyard of empires can be read in this informative piece of writing…

    It has been estimated that it takes a million dollars to keep one American soldier in Afghanistan for one year. Obama wants to send 30,000+ more soldiers to the graveyard of empires, at the annual expense of $30 Billion, plus I hear an equivalent number of contract mercenaries, who do not come cheap, either. B. Obama seems to be willing to bleed the US white, just as Osama B. L. predicted.

    Stan Moore

    24 November 2009, 3:48 pm

37. Stan Moore:

    The Lesson of Afghanistan in History

    Maybe the simple lesson is that by the time an empire sets its sights on conquest of the land and people of Afghanistan, it is already doomed and its push into that land seals its fate.

    Stan Moore

    25 November 2009, 11:43 am

38. Michael Anderson:

    New war—nice man, that Mr. Obama, to keep the system’s fires of freedom lit:

    US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America

    From the Caribbean to Brazil, political opposition to US plans for ‘full-spectrum operations’ is escalating rapidly

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-builds-up-its-bases-in-oilrich-south-america-1825398.html

    26 November 2009, 9:27 am

39. cabdriver:

    Something else Sean wrote has prompted me to revisit this thread:

    “the idea that conspiracies can’t happen in the US Govt is ludicrous. A conspiracy is nothing more than people working together toward a common goal. Football teams use conspiracies all the time. It’s how they try to win games. Bureaucratic entities use conspiracies constantly. Every organization that pursues goals with >1 person working toward that goal is using conspiracy.”

    I think it’s important to examine the differences between the way that conspiracies often get imagined- or are popularly portrayed-and the ways in which actual conspiracies work.

    For instance: it’s a common mistake to think that the fact of someone having a position in a bureaucracy necessarily provides them with an inside track- that their rank or office is necessarily a function of them having been admitted to a sanctum where Inner Secrets are disclosed that are forbidden to the outside world.

    That’s the intuitive view- the way in which almost everyone formulates such ideas when they consider them at the outset. And sometimes, that is indeed a view that leads to productive surmises.

    Not always, though. It’s far from an ironclad rule.

    In fact, the research I’ve done on such subjects is that when clandestine conspiracies do take place within a bureaucratic framework, they often depend on insulating the vast majority of the members of the organization from getting wind of them. Conspiracies require cover, after all- and no amount of lying or dissembling works as effectively as simply maintaining a public front of functionaries and spokespeople who are sincerely deceived- or perhaps it might be more accurate to say sincerely self-deceived.

    And I’ve seen very little that works as well to deceive people as the possession of a high quotient of what might be termed “naive idealism.”

    Naive idealism is what militaries depend on, in their recruits. And the institution works tirelessly and constantly to inculcate that conditioning in its functionaries.

    That perhaps helps to best explain why Mathew Hoh isn’t offering a full-scale criticism of the motivations of the Bush (and increasingly, Bush-Obama) military adventures. It isn’t because he’s consciously concealing ulterior motives, or doing a “limited hangout”- it’s because Hoh has spent so much of his life embedded in an institutional culture that discourages such self-examination that he’s at the further end of the scale from actually gaining any insight into the nature of the role that he’s playing.

    Someone in this thread brought up Smedley Butler, earlier. Remember this part of his speech?

    “…Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service…”

    http://www.twf.org/News/Y2001/0911-Racket.html

    That sort of “suspended animation” is not only common, it’s normative.

    And I’d say that it isn’t limited to the institution of the military, either: it’s found in lots of other institutional structures, from industries involved in exploitation and environmental destruction to government agencies that have long since lost sight of whether what they do actually benefits anyone but the perpetuation of the bureaucracy.

    But the military is where the most intense conditioning is found. There, and the paramilitary squads of the police, like narcotics agents.

    Ironically, the same qualities of idealism that get exploited to turn people into unthinking loyalists and obdurate defenders of the righteousness of their assigned duties can also manifest as- well, the way Smedley Butler eventually found himself thinking.

    That’s typically a very lonely path. And it takes internal fortitude to walk it, because it nearly always maeans foresaking security and status.

    But make no mistake: the actual networks of conspiracy that nest in institutional structures fear the idealists, because of that possibility that they may go “off the reservation”- that they might actually begin to recognize their own Cognitive Dissonance, and decide to do something about it.

    Note: I’m listening to NPR (Weekend Edition, 11/28/2009)right now, Tom Ricks…

    Ricks is a classic example of someone who’s been marinated in the Crackpot Wisdom of the Beltway. Much more so than Mathew Hoh.

    Mathew Hoh may still believe in The Mission of the Corps- but he found himself in a position where he couldn’t deny his own firsthand observations and experience any more.

    Beltway Bombardiers like Tom Ricks have considerably more latitude- both as far as the ability to decieve, and to deceive themselves.

    And I think it’s important to consider that Tom Ricks is probably not involved in a conscious deception, either.

    It’s frustrating. It’s a tougher nut to crack, to try to grapple with the probability that someone is a dupe, rather than a villain.

    Here is Tom Ricks’ blog: http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/

    28 November 2009, 12:24 pm

40. Iliketurtles:

    At the same time over in Norway they are using kids in military advertising. http://norwegian-news.blogspot.com/2009/11/royal-norwegian-military-runs-id-fraud.html
    Weird nation.

    30 November 2009, 8:03 am

Leave a comment