the threat, and I felt like I was the only one who
saw the air raid sirens and knew that the school
basement was the fallout shelter.
It's best to be prepared, right?
Nowadays, the threat is unseen, but everpresent
so governments have to keep us on a war
footing forever. This war footing will make
the rich very rich, because we need weapons,
lots of 'em.
We also have to start innumerable wars and
use drones, where war is not warranted.
Oh, and it will never end. It only took them
almost 12 years to admit it, since 11 Sept 2001.
checkit: Liberty
blitzkrieg
The
Pentagon Admits: The “War on Terror” Will Never End
Posted
on May 21, 2013
It
is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its
own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the
end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it
is precisely this endless war – justified in the name of stopping the threat of
terrorism – that is the single greatest cause of that threat.
-
Glenn Greenwald from his recent article:
Washington Gets Explicit: Its “War on Terror” is Permanent
So
last Thursday at a hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee, we
found out what many of us already knew.
That the “war on terror” is never going to end. Indeed, it was never supposed to end. This never-ending “war” on a fantastical
enemy provides the American oligarch class with too much money and too much
power to ever make it worthwhile for the establishment to shut down. It matters not to them that this civil
liberties destroying fraud has been going on for my entire post-college life
and, if they have their way, for the remainder of it. It matters not to them that the “war on
terror” itself has done more to destroy the Constitution and vital essence of
this nation than any terrorist act ever could.
No, it matters very little indeed.
What matters to them is money and power, and the “war on terror”
provides them with boatloads of both.
My
favorite excerpts from Glenn’s article are below:
On
Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the
statutory basis for this “war” – the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force
(AUMF) – should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how Wired’s Spencer
Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US’s national security editor) described the
most significant exchange:
“Asked at a Senate hearing today how long
the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of
defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, ’At least
10 to 20 years.’ . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that
Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today –
atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America’s
Thirty Years War.”
