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

[sad sally]

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.

[bigmonkey]

1. I think self-defense is a valuable goal.

The problem is, who defines its limits? Once you lose any concept that developing positive relations with others promotes your own welfare and safety, then there's no limit to the military "protection" that you need. I agree: As it's currently constituted, the American military is a clear threat to positive developments on this planet, and is damaging the web of life.

[Thunderstruck]

2. I don't think I would get much out of a study that concludes

that evil is a "learned normality", disassociated with fanaticism or sociopathy. I don't know when it happened or how long it took but human instinct is able to discern on it's own whether an agenda or action or thought is evil or not, with the probable exception of those cases where mental illness as an overriding factor.

Arendt's conclusion would seem to be a cop out, though I admittedly have not read the study. And, to further disclaim, this is only my lay opinion base on the barest of assumptions. :)

[PavePusher]

3. And some of you wonder why the U.S. military is predominently conservative.....

With enemies like this, who needs more friends?

"The military culture of thoughtless submission to authority combined with heavy conditioning to snuff out human life..."

"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..."



Much slander, ignorant of context, with a ferociously broad brush indiscriminently applied.

Next time you need a humanitarian mission or intervention accomplished, do it your own fucking self.

[Karmadillo]

4. The military is conservative because of an article from LewRockwell.com?

nt

[PavePusher]

7. Sigh... Miss a point, often?

When someone makes broad-brush attacks like this, against any group, the victims will tend to react... badly. Myself included. And the authors' attitude is reflected much more often amongst so-called "Progressives" than Conservatives. This merely strengthens the belief that liberal elements dislike/hate the military.

Is that any clearer?

[Karmadillo]

10. Clearer and just as silly. Members of the military

do not embrace conservatism because of articles on websites. They might not like it when people list the atrocities committed by our troops and the massive misdirection of our resources into an incredibly bloated war budget and the criminal misuse of our military by our duly elected oligarchy, but it doesn't make them conservative.

[PavePusher]

11. I don't think I said it "makes" them conservative....

but it certainly doesn't help to endear them to liberalism.

Broad-brushing the many with the acts of the few is no way to win friends and allies.

[zappaman]

5. We have the best military in the world

so we should be able to kick the Earth's ass pretty quick

[BeFree]

6. They've been held back

The earth would be a 'hole 'nuther place in about 10 seconds if the bush loving neanderthals who wanted to turn Iraq into glass had their way.

We could, as you so inelegantly put it, kick earth's ass.
Thank gawd we liberals have prevailed, eh?

[deaniac21]

8. Small point. The US military doesn't have a single hummer.

They have quite a few humvees which is a totally different animal.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. K&R

[indepat]

12. Fear not: isn't 400 billion dollars to be cut from the MIC budget over the next

ten years: man, that's really a substantial reduction, maybe even 3% or so. :patriot: