Remember the old commercial, "What's good for General Electric is
good for the Nation"? or was it General Motors? or General Mills?
I remember Ronald Reagan's oft repeated line, "At General Electric,
progress is our most important product". Actually he only needed to
change one word. Change Progress to Profit, and it speaks to the
point that our nation is not one united collection of states. It is a
nation of corporations. The nation is run by Private Enterprise. So
every action our nation takes can be answered by simply asking, Who
Profits? And sure enough, at the bottom of the Pig Pile there is a
corporation(or more)profiting.
People, the Working Class Majority, are nothing more than a natural resource.
Congress does not call the shots. Nor does the president or the
Supreme Court.
Indeed, "we the people" do not have access to the classified
information we would need in order to make decisions that would
benefit the Working Class Majority. Congress is not allowed to see
all of the classified documaants. Nor is the president. Our ship of
state is sailing for the benefit of Corporate America. What's good
for the Ruling Class is good for the Ruling Class.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/18/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And why, in the name of God, was an attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan
necessary as a response to the 9/11 attacks on the US? It wasn't the
Taliban
who attacked us. It was individuals from Saudi Arabia. Insanity! But
almost
everyone, except a tiny minority of people, supported that unnecessary
attack. Yes, murder some extremists in a poverty stricken country for the
sake of our national pride!
Miriam
A Typical Democratic Official on the Pentagon & War-as DOD Confirms Iraq,
Afghanistan Withdrawal
November 18, 2020
William J. Astore takes on Jeh Johnson's opposition to any haste in
bringing
troops home from the nearly two-decade-long war in Afghanistan, before
Pentagon confirmed Wednesday Iraq and Afghan withdrawals.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Nov. 15, 2020. (YouTube
screenshot)
By William J. Astore
Bracing Views
Jeh Johnson, formerly homeland security secretary under President Barack
Obama, showed how a typical Democratic official approaches the Pentagon and
war as he spoke on ABC's This Week on Sunday (11/15).
For Johnson, the Pentagon "is typically an island of stability" in the U.S.
government, but President Donald Trump was destabilizing that island
because
of recent changes to Pentagon personnel. Trump's changes could be driven
by
his desire to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, speculated Johnson, which
was not a good thing:
"If he [Trump] wants troops out of Afghanistan, as I know most Americans
do,
we have to do it in a way that makes sense, in an orderly manner, and that
comports with battlefield reality . in trying to strike a deal, you don't
unilaterally surrender your greatest point of leverage by unilaterally
withdrawing troops before the Afghan government and the Taliban have stuck
a
deal. So this is very concerning and if I were in the Biden transition team
right now, I'd be very focused . on restoring stability in our national
security."
[On Wednesday the Pentagon confirmed that the U.S. is pulling 2,500 troops
from both Iraq and Afghanistan, causing alarm among U.S. allies and senior
Republicans.]
We can't surrender our "leverage," those thousands of U.S. troops that
remain in harm's way in an unnecessary war that was won and then lost
almost
two decades ago, because it's that "leverage" that will compel the Taliban,
who have already won the war, to strike a deal with an Afghan government
that exists mainly because the U.S. government props it up. Makes sense to
me.
By the way, only "most Americans" want our troops to come home? Where are
all the other Americans who want them to stay there indefinitely? Within
the Washington Beltway, I'd wager.
The Afghan war has always struck me as nonsensical. Yes, some kind of
response to the 9/11 attacks was needed, and initial U.S. military strikes
in 2001-02 succeeded in toppling the Taliban, in the sense they saw no
reason to stand and fight against withering fire. At that moment, the U.S.
military should have declared victory and left. Instead, the Bush/Cheney
administration decided on its own disastrous occupation, extended another
eight years by Obama/Biden, even though we knew full well the extent of the
Soviet disaster in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
'Leverage' & 'Stability'
Aug. 19, 2020: Military honors for U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Paul Voss who
died during a crash of a Bombardier E-11A aircraft in Ghazni Province,
Afghanistan. (Arlington National Cemetery, Flickr, Elizabeth Fraser)
The Afghan war has lasted so long that I've been writing articles against
it
for more than a decade. You'd think any sensible and sane Democrat would
love to see U.S. troops withdrawn and the war finally come to an end. Not
so. The war must continue in the name of "leverage" and "stability."
I like Johnson's truly absurdist reference to "battlefield reality," which,
if we're being real for a moment, reflects a Taliban victory. Unless the
U.S. wants to occupy Afghanistan forever, with hundreds of thousands of
troops, that victory is not about to be reversed. And what kind of
"victory" would that be?
"Stability" is not preserved by fighting unwinnable wars on the imperial
periphery, unless you're talking about the stability of Pentagon finances
and corporate profits. Johnson's wiki bio does mention he's on the boards
of Lockheed Martin Corporation and U.S. Steel, which certainly hints at a
conflict of interest when it comes to offering advice on ending wars.
In the meantime, we probably shouldn't tell our troops, whom we're supposed
to love and support, that we're keeping them in Afghanistan for "leverage"
until the "battlefield reality" is more in our favor. That's truly a
recipe
for endless war in a place that well deserves its reputation as the
graveyard of empires.
Finally, a reminder to Democrats: your Pentagon is an island of stability,
and your troops are creating the leverage that allows democracy to flourish
everywhere. If this makes sense to you, and if this is the guiding
philosophy of Joe Biden's national security team, we're truly in deep
trouble.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history
professor, is a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an
organization of critical veteran military and national security
professionals.
This article is from Bracing Views.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not
reflect those of Consortium News.
