"Without Reservation" - The Military Industrial Complex

[keithyboy]

http://www.militaryweek.com/includes/kk050404pr.html

A biweekly column by Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)
<snip>

"Ike advised America to stay vigilant, observant, "alert and knowledgeable." Smedley Butler, more of a realist I suppose, simply advised that when talk of war raged, all of the industrialists and politician be conscripted first, then their children, and lastly, the rest of us. Butler conceived a simple democratic plan that would require a decision for war be approved by a majority of all those who would be sent to fight. Draftable young men would vote yea or nay for the next war. No votes by older folks or politicians and industrialists would be considered. Such a system would ensure that truly defensive wars would be fought, and all other wars rejected."

(This is a great article)

[teryang]

1. Good essay

But she's got it backwards. The Constitution is undermined first, with a coup d'etat, and then followed by the unjust war.

The huge Vietnam war commitment was preceded by the Kennedy assassination.

The Iraq war was preceded by the Dec. 2000, coup d'etat by the Supreme Court and the treasonous 911 attack facilitated by government insiders to foment the support for war.

[IrateCitizen]

2. No, she's got it dead-on.

Apparently you never read Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" speech. You can easily find it on the internet.

The very fact that such coup d'etats could take place is proof that this military-industrial-congressional complex is far, far, far bigger than just one man. It is the system itself that has come to fully undermine democracy for the sole purpose of its further entrenchment and short-term success.

[teryang]

3. Not to quibble

...I'm familiar with the work of Butler and no doubt it is prescient but this is what I'm getting at:

<Rational people may debate whether America's occupation of Iraq is purely defensive, a Republic behaving imperially, or the blueprint for a new kind of empire. But underlying the debate is a fact – that by its very existence – undermines the Constitution, American traditions of justice, and the laws of armed conflict.>

The Iraq occupation undermines the Constitution. This is what she said. But the Constitution was undermined first, by a crooked election, bogus Sup. Ct. decision, and treasonous acts leading to 911, then the war occurred. This is the sequence with both Vietnam and this war. It is a small point but a critically important one.