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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOur Massive National Security State: True Believers and Gargantuan Failures
http://www.alternet.org/visions/our-massive-national-security-state-true-believers-and-gargantuan-failuresIn a 1950s civics textbook of mine, I can remember a Martian landing on Main Street, U.S.A., to be instructed in the glories of our political system. You know, our tripartite government, checks and balances, miraculous set of rights, and vibrant democracy. There was, Americans then thought, much to be proud of, and so for that generation of children, many Martians were instructed in the American way of life. These days, I suspect, not so many.
Still, I wondered just what lessons might be offered to such a Martian crash-landing in Washington as 2014 begins. Certainly checks, balances, rights, and democracy wouldnt top any New Years list. Since my childhood, in fact, that tripartite government has grown a fourth part, a national security state that is remarkably unchecked and unbalanced. In recent times, that labyrinthine structure of intelligence agencies morphing into war-fighting outfits, the U.S. military (with its own secret military, the special operations forces, gestating inside it), and the Department of Homeland Security, a monster conglomeration of agencies that is an actual defense department, as well as a vast contingent of weapons makers, contractors, and profiteers bolstered by an army of lobbyists, has never stopped growing. It has won the undying fealty of Congress, embraced the power of the presidency, made itself into a jobs program for the American people, and been largely free to do as it pleased with almost unlimited taxpayer dollars.
The expansion of Washingtons national security state -- lets call it the NSS -- to gargantuan proportions has historically met little opposition. In the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, however, some resistance has arisen, especially when it comes to the right of one part of the NSS to turn the world into a listening post and gather, in particular, American communications of every sort. The debate about this -- invariably framed within the boundaries of whether or not we should have more security or more privacy and how exactly to balance the two -- has been reasonably vigorous. The problem is: it doesnt begin to get at the real nature of the NSS or the problems it poses.
If I were to instruct that stray Martian lost in the nations capital, I might choose another framework entirely for my lesson. After all, the focus of the NSS, which has like an incubus grown to monumental proportions inside the body of the political system, would seem distinctly monomaniacal, if only we could step outside our normal way of thinking for a moment. At a cost of nearly a trillion dollars a year, its main global enemy consists of thousands of lightly armed jihadis and wannabe jihadis scattered mainly across the backlands of the planet. They are capable of causing genuine damage -- though far less to the United States than numerous other countries -- but not of shaking our way of life. And yet for the leaders, bureaucrats, corporate cronies, rank and file, and acolytes of the NSS, its a focus that can never be intense enough on behalf of a system that can never grow large enough or be well funded enough.
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Our Massive National Security State: True Believers and Gargantuan Failures (Original Post)
xchrom
Jan 2014
OP
Our National Security state is the scariest man-made thing on the planet today.
LuvNewcastle
Jan 2014
#1
LuvNewcastle
(16,834 posts)1. Our National Security state is the scariest man-made thing on the planet today.
It is the antithesis of everything America is supposed to stand for. We must look like a huge, out-of-control monster to the rest of the world. They must be scared as hell of what we're going to do next. I know I am.