the U.S. military is conducting a war against the earth itself.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Oh yeah? Well that butch started it!

sad sally  (752 posts)      Thu Apr-14-11 06:05 PM
Original message
the U.S. military is conducting a war against the earth itself.
 the entire article is worth reading.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/visalli4.1.1.html?du

Deconstructing the U.S. Military; or How to Cut a Cool Trillion Dollars a Year from the U.S. Budget
by Dana Visalli April 11, 2011

Dana Visalli is an ecologist, botanist and organic farmer living in Twisp, Washington. He is currently traveling in Afghanistan. Additional writings can be found here.

While in Kabul in March of this year, I visited the U.S. military base in that city, Camp Eggers. Knowing I would need a pretext to gain entry, I typed up a letter offering to give a presentation on wildlife in Afghanistan, which I had been studying. When approaching the base, one passes through an initial checkpoint, where a Hummer topped with a machine-gun nest stands guard. Then there is a 100-yard walk down a narrow corridor between high concrete blast walls, at which point one arrives at a guarded entry point through the wall. I showed my passport and letter, and was escorted through a second layer of blast walls to a little wooden information booth in this still-peripheral circle of defense. The pimply young lad manning the booth was flustered by my request; he had never seen anything quite like it. He did what all soldiers do when faced with something new; he phoned his superior for orders on how to proceed.
...
In the mid-1960s, political scientist Hannah Arendt published a book-length study of how some of the great evils of history, such as slavery and the Holocaust, managed to occur. Her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, concluded that generally such crimes are not carried out by fanatics or sociopaths, but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their superiors and their state and therefore do what they are told to do, and participate with the view that their actions are normal. The word "banal" is defined as "something that is trite, normal, and commonplace." The root of the word comes from the Old French word ban, referring to feudal military service, which was compulsory and thus commonly accepted. Thus, military culture is by definition synonymous with banal, which my acquaintances at Camp Eggers demonstrated as they strove to find orders to follow and avoid responsibility for their actions.
...
War itself is not only "a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed," as Dwight Eisenhower noted in a speech in 1953, but war is also destructive to the physical earth, the very source of human life, and indeed of all life. The U.S. has dropped 15 million tons of bombs on the earth’s surface in last 60 years, spread 1 million tons of napalm on fields and forests, and sprayed 20 million gallons of defoliants on some of the most diverse rainforests on the planet. By any measure, the U.S. military is conducting a war against the earth itself. Such an inane effort does not come cheaply. The total cost of all military expenses for 2012 is estimated to be $1.2 trillion dollars, one-third of the total federal budget. It is the U.S. military that is driving the U.S. itself into bankruptcy.

In summary, the U.S. military is destroying the lives of its own young men while at the same time it devastates other human cultures; it threatens the economic survival of the United States while it is fraying the ecological fabric that makes life on earth possible.

Mikhail Gorbachev once noted that the Soviet system was evil and had to be dismantled. The U.S. military is a similarly evil force loosened on the world. As was done to the repugnant Soviet system, the equally repugnant U.S. military should be completely dismantled, with all soldiers and ships and planes and weapons brought home from the vast web of 1000 American military bases spanning the globe. The savings in terms of human lives, human suffering, ecological integrity and American dollars will be immeasurable. We can then begin to rebuild a national defense consisting of a small militia that can guard our borders and "repel invasions," as called for in the U.S. Constitution, all the while remembering that the best defense is the making of friends.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x893324

And AdBot is pitching for the American Military University.

[Mike220]

Are we winning?   

[NHSparky]

Further proof that as formerlurker originally opined, "Lew Rockwell will rot your brain."

[ChuckJ]

Mikhail Gorbachev once noted that the Soviet system was evil and had to be dismantled. The U.S. military is a similarly evil force loosened on the world. As was done to the repugnant Soviet system, the equally repugnant U.S. military should be completely dismantled, with all soldiers and ships and planes and weapons brought home from the vast web of 1000 American military bases spanning the globe. The savings in terms of human lives, human suffering, ecological integrity and American dollars will be immeasurable. We can then begin to rebuild a national defense consisting of a small militia that can guard our borders and "repel invasions," as called for in the U.S. Constitution, all the while remembering that the best defense is the making of friends.

I remember way back in grade school, maybe 3rd or 4th grade, we had just finished recess and were lined up at the water fountain. I was kind of a scrawny guy back then. A large black guy was somewhere in line behind me. He was the same age. Just big. He tried to cut in front of me. I tried to get him back where he was supposed to be in the line by being friendly and joking. It didn't work. He still insisted on cutting in front of me. Finally I had enough and told him it wasn't going to happen. He told me that he'd whip my behind. I agreed that it was possible that he would whip me but he was definitely going to have to whip me in order to get in front of me. When he saw I was serious he smiled and went back to his original place in the line. We were friends afterwards all the way through high school.

The moral of the story is that trying to make friends was no real kind of defense but being will to kick ass created a real friendship.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

The moral of the story is that trying to make friends was no real kind of defense but being will to kick ass created a real friendship.

But thereing lies the rub.

Is everyone  worth being the friend of? Who wants to be friends with the Axis powers or Mao or Pol Pot or the Taliban? Shouldn't the friendship of presumably decent people be predicated on the quality of the recipient?

And for that matter will DUmbasses suddenly cry, "In the name of peace and goodwill we shall be friends with the Tea-hadists!"

It's just so much self-serving pap for the DUmbasses to concince themselves they are morally supperior as they race to the next thread to spew hate for those who react against conformity.

[DumbAss Tanker]

It shows we value our Soldiers' lives a whole Hell of a lot more than we value a few bucks here and there from skimping on perimeter defenses, you stupid hippie ****wit.

 

I hope your ignorant, naive, and overconfident self gets featured being separated into two pieces or Kavkaz or some other stinking jihadi website, the sooner the better.

[Duke Nukum]

In spite of the fact the earth is where I keep all my stuff, there is no denying it has a very dark side. It is very a hostile environment and nothing here seems to get out alive.

Plus, earth created and evolved  humans, which, according to DUmmies and eco-wacktovists, is some sort of evil virus.  So, I have to side with the US military on this one. At best, the earth is bipolar.

[GOBUCKS]

Mikhail Gorbachev once noted that the Soviet system was evil and had to be dismantled.

I'll be damned. After twenty years, the DUmp is still having Gorbasms.

[compaqxp]

Are we winning?   

The only person winning is Charlie Sheen.