To be fair, the Nuland-Kagan mom-and-pop shop is really only a microcosm of how the Military-Industrial Complex has worked for decades: think-tank analysts generate the reasons for military spending, the government bureaucrats implement the necessary war policies, and the military contractors make lots of money before kicking back some to the think tanks — so the bloody but profitable cycle can spin again.
What makes Tierney’s triumphant militarist smut so annoying isn’t how he’s wrong, it’s how he’s right. You can take issue all you like with his use of the word “left” to describe liberal supporters of capitalism and empire who just want the empire to be a bit less embarrassing and maybe forgive their student loans, but that’s the fault of the generations of psyops that have gone into sabotaging the left and destroying its memory, not Tierney’s.
“There must be an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine followed by a Russian troop withdrawal and agreement between Russia and Ukraine on future security arrangements. All wars end in a negotiation of some sort — so why not now?” - Jeremy Corbyn
“A full-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia could produce 150 million tonnes of soot. The globe-encircling pall would persist for years until the skies eventually cleared. - Alexandra Witze"
Twenty years of America’s Global War on Terror produced little tangible success while exacting enormous harm. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States sustained tens of thousands of casualties, expended trillions of dollars, and inflicted massive suffering on the very populations that we sought to “liberate.” --Macmillan Publishers
Cognitive war is waged against the U.S. population to capture our minds and assimilate us thoroughly into a militaristic 'weltanschauung' or worldview.
The U.S. military, following its fiascos in the Middle East, has shifted its focus from fighting terrorism and asymmetrical warfare to confronting China and Russia. *** At no time, including the Cuban missile crisis, have we stood closer to the precipice of nuclear war.
There’s a long tradition in the West wherein foreign policy is the preserve of an elite not answerable to any electorate. This has been the case in the U.S. since it first had a foreign policy to speak of, in the late 19th century.
"The question, here, is why democratic institutions aren’t able to stop power-hungry elites who would concentrate power and economic resources.
"The insistence is upon the United States exercising global primacy of continuing to be number one, a position we've become accustomed to having ever since the end of World War II. I think that conviction remains and is taken seriously, so it's less about a mission to spread democracy [and] it's more about a conviction of history having chosen the United States uniquely to preside over the future of humankind."
President Biden has asked the U.S. Congress to give $33 billion more. It will overwhelmingly go to military weapons, presumably, some humanitarian aid.
"Between theory and practice — between the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, on the one hand, and the pervasive presence of what King labeled the “giant triplets” of racism, materialism, and militarism on the other — there still looms, even in our own day, a massive gap. [King's Riverside Vietnam] speech address eloquently reflected on that gap, which, with the passage of time, has not appreciably narrowed."
