The biggest threat to the USA
is not ISIS or Russia. It is the gullibility of the American voter in the face
of a union among the media and the Military/Industrial/Secrecy/Prison Complex.
General Electric and its subsidiary NBC are prominent examples. Norman Solomon
is well informed on this and you can read one of his articles on the Fairness
& Accuracy In Reporting website here:
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-military-industrial-media-complex/
We The People are in the dark
and so are most reporters. We just don’t know what the secret institutions of our
government are up to. I argue that, in our imposed ignorance, we must use our
minds, our hearts, and our guts in a kind of three-branch exercise of reaching
conclusions. I believe that our government either utterly failed us in the
months before 9/11 or that components of our government were involved. Either
way they were nothing short of criminal and incompetent. Their answer was to
spend trillions of dollars on war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the creation of a
new bureaucracy, Homeland Security that does more to add to the national debt
and militarize our police forces than it does to protect us. The CIA, et al,
failed us so let’s create a new agency to add to the confused and deadly
menace. Jeez. The military incursions have been proven through the hands of
ISIS and the Taliban to be more deadly than helpful. Our troops were pawns in
the hands of the Military/Industrial/Secrecy/Prison complex. The fact that they
died and were maimed in numbers far less than in the Viet Nam War results in
fewer and smaller protests, though the wars were equally dismal failures.
I hear Vice-President Joe
Biden say we will follow ISIS to “the gates of hell.” The upcoming Presidential
campaign will pit two main candidates against each other in a bid to outdo each
other in hawkish rhetoric. Voices of peace will be called traitorous and weak –
un-American. President Obama will be trashed by both Republicans and Democrats.
In short, Mr. Biden, we are more likely to follow our terrorist enemies to the
halls of bankruptcy and ruin than to the gates of hell. We will spent a
trillion here and a trillion there and end up with more terrorists than we
started with.
Our willingness to be bled
dry leads us to give terrorists their cheapest weapon. We are more than willing
to bleed money. And terrorism, like education, is such a handy issue to spout
off about in campaigns while never admitting that our actions don’t fix
anything in the long run.
I have an idea that would work, I think.
Let’s reinstate the draft with new provisions. One provision
is to draft every single able-bodied young man and woman of average and
above-average intelligence into service. Conscious Objectors, in my plan, would
be defined in the same way they were during Viet Nam. As I remember, and know
from a Mennonite friend from those days, one needed a family history of
belonging to a pacifist sect. You can’t become a pacifist at age 16 or 17 and
have it recognized by the government. The way to prove you are a pacifist will be to accept
non-combatant service in and near the most dangerous places or to go to jail
for the length of mandated military service. No college exemptions. No mental
health exemptions. They can be weeded out and placed in treatment facilities in
which the living conditions are no better than field conditions for the
fighting private. No deferments. No cushy jobs for the kids of the rich. Come
to think of it, since we are so gung-ho about privatization, let’s no longer
allow cushy, but necessary, jobs to be military positions. Privatize those
jobs, no deferments. Congress must prove its patriotism by passing a law that
all non-pacifist children of Congressmen/women currently serving or out of
office be put on the battlefield or in the most dangerous locations. We must,
I’m afraid, exempt the Congressmen and women or we will never have young people
eligible to run and hold office.
In addition to the draft law,
there will be funding/tax laws. No more credit card warfare. When Congress (or
the president or any damn thing public or private) wishes violence to be done
in the name of We The People, we will have an immediate flat tax imposed to pay
for it. As costs increase, so will the tax rate.
There. In a short, but impolitic
phrase, Americans must feel the
pain of what we do in the world. It’s done in our name. We must share the
burden or not pick up the load at all! Oh wait! If we are sharing the burden,
why the hell do we allow General Electric, et al, to profit? It’s more insane
than my proposed laws.
