According to House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R – CA), the generals in charge of the new US war in Iraq have been pushing hard for President Obama to agree to an outright ground invasion of the nation.
“Our military commanders have all laid out scenarios where we need more troops,” McKeon insisted, adding that they have warned “if we don’t put boots on the ground, we can’t form the coalition.”
Obama has been clashing semi-publicly with the Pentagon for about a month on the question of ground troops, as the president tries to insist an unpopular ground war is not even being considered, and generals continuing to treat it as all but inevitable.
Rep. McKeon is an outspoken hawk on the matter, but the fact that he is being used as a sounding board for the Pentagon’s desires for escalation of the ISIS war is a sign that, despite the administration laying out the war as a many year campaign, the generals are getting itchy trigger fingers on adding the ground component.
Who calls all the shots?
For when it comes to war, surely the corporate rich call all the shots and the military politicians called generals together with the civilian paid actors called politicians, they neither hope for war nor bargain for peace, but simply obey orders.
Fair enough, JE, but many career politicians are an integral part of the MIC, not mere puppets. The current interventionist-to-the-core President is one who always plays the reluctant leader being dragged to war by the "others".
Who calls the shots? Certainly NOT the civilian government in the United States. the Military Industrial Complex calls the shots and don't you forget it!
The political situation hasn't changed. The troops will re-enter a quagmire in a regional civil war. The troops will be a honey pot again drawing in even more fighters from across the region. The US government is unwilling and unable to effectively administer Iraq. It sounds like they are bored sitting on the sidelines and want a piece of the military budget. We had a ground war, a surge, people were bought off, but no acceptable political solution. I guess it doesn't matter when the goal seems to be perpetual war. The Clean Break strategy is working very well for them. If that isn't what they wanted then they need to rethink what they are doing, who they are supporting in the Middle East, and how to deal with the lobbies and governments that are in favor of the regional war.
To — WashingtonDC
Wealth is the standard for power in our Empire, highest law in the land being: No one shall rule over a person or power combine that has more wealth.
Second Highest Law in the Empire
(2) In any court of law, the party with the best ability
to advance the judge’s political ambitions, namely
the party most wealthy, he shall always win.
It ‘s like the price of sweet corn at Wal-Mart, for last year the price was $.25 an ear, but this year the price is $.50 an ear and the ears are half the normal size.
So, let us guess: The farmers were told that Wal-Mart would continue to buy their corn, but only on the condition that the price per ear be cut in half by the corn being harvested early when it was half the normal size.
And so, what would happen if a poor man were to go to court claming that Wal-Mart making 400% more profit on each ear of corn was price gouging?