Even as the Obama administration acknowledges that 21st century conflicts will not be fought with tens of thousands of boots on the ground or colossal weapons systems, Washington continues to carry through bloated military budgets and outdated armaments.
In his State of the Union address this month, President Obama said “we don’t need to send tens of thousands of our sons and daughters abroad, or occupy other nations,” in order to fight the terrorist threat. And cyber-warfare is the only other major threat, as opposed to hot wars with other world powers.
“Nevertheless, the defense budget contains hundreds of billions of dollars for new generations of aircraft carriers and stealth fighters, tanks that even the Army says it doesn’t need and combat vehicles too heavy to maneuver in desert sands or cross most bridges in Asia, Africa or the Middle East,” reports Gopal Ratnam at Bloomberg News.
“There’s a fundamental need to have a conversation about what kind of military we need to have and what we should expect it to do,” Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and former Army colonel who now teaches at Boston University, told Bloomberg in an interview.
Not only does the military industrial complex insist on continuing to overspend on irrelevant weapons systems, but lobbyists and government officials have issued desperate warnings of doom in the face of minor sequestration budget cuts that would cut $500 billion over ten years (merely a reduction in the rate of growth in spending).
The defense budget and the military it pays for has no direct relationship to the actual threats America faces. Instead it serves as a boon to defense corporations on the public dole and to politicians eager to project power the world over.
After making war on the rest of Planet Earth, the next step for the Pentagram is to fake an attack from outer space so we will now have the Klingons, the Romulans and the Borg to worry about and continue the MIC gravy train.
In fact, the Keynesian imbecile Paul Krugman advocated that very thing a few years ago.
Project Bluebeam?
What, cut the bloated defense budget by 2%. Oh no. Now, we must fear the Baskerville hound, a plunge into the abyss, a date with Voldernort in one of his less pleasant moods. Not buying it. I didn't buy into the Rumsfeld/Powell WMD in iraq or the Panetta Chinese cyber attack rhetoric. Military and federal government workers live in an iron bubble. When i see the 4 day passes end for Presidents day and other precious holidays, I'll have a better ear for their proletarian pretense. Until then, sequestor away.
Tell us something we don't know.
If the meteor that exploded over Russia recently had impacted in the USA and destroyed a large city, it's possible Washington could have spun it in some manner like this. Meteors and other space debris are natural phenomena of course, but if 99% of the sheeple supposedly believe Iran is a threat, they can be made to buy into a space alien invasion, especially with the spate of Hollyweird movies psychologically conditioning them for it.