Post by Moses on Jan 31, 2005 20:52:00 GMT -5
January 30, 2005
More on PNAC and that Bullet-Stopper Slavery Letter
It is interesting the PNAC Strausscon letter to Congress, demanding a larger military in the face of shrinking recruitment and re-enlistment, arrived a few weeks after Bush sent a retired senior general to Iraq to review overall military operations there. “As well as assessing Iraqi forces, he will also look at overall US operations against insurgents, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman” told the BBC. “There are signs that the recalcitrant Rumsfeld is beginning to get the message,” Mike Whitney commented on January 15.
Last week he dispatched retired General Gary Luck to Iraq to produce a detailed breakdown of force strength and vulnerabilities. When Luck returns he will appear before Congress and make an energetic appeal for more troops and stiffer resolve. He can be expected to draw a dismal picture of a failed state that threatens to destabilize the entire region unless America makes a greater commitment. Both the Congress and the media will play a role in calling on the American people for steadfastness in the face of a very long and bloody occupation. Many believe that Luck’s assessment will determine whether Bush will approach Congress to reinstate the draft.
“While our ultimate objectives are very ambitious we will never achieve democracy and stability [in Iraq] without being willing to commit 500,000 troops, spend $200 billion a year, probably have a draft, and have some form of war compensation,” Zbigniew Brzezinski told the New America Foundation. For Brzezinski, the United States faces either a “moment of wisdom” —the willingness to fight endlessly against an “insurgency” that logic dictates cannot be defeated, so long as the Iraqi people view the United States as a foreign occupier—or “resign” itself to “cultural decay” and a “loss of credibility,” that is to say abandon its role as hegemon and imperialist, the overriding goal of U.S. foreign policy for more than a hundred years.
“Sometime soon Rep. Rangel is preparing to reintroduce legislation to reinstitute the military draft since he strongly feels everyone should share the burden of war,” Emile Milne, Rangel’s press representative and legislative director, said last week. “He is essentially reintroducing legislation [H.R. 163] that failed to gain support last session. However, this time around, I think, it has a better chance of passing.” As Greg Szymanski writes, with “the election now over, opponents of the draft claim the path is now clear for politicians from both sides of the aisle to get behind the draft, with Rangel obviously leading the charge,” even though the Bushcons, at least publicly, want us to believe they are opposed to bullet-stopper slavery. “A White House spokesman this week refused to comment on Rangel’s initiative, but said Bush has publicly opposed any legislation to reinstitute the draft,” Szymanski notes. “Privately, however, [Bill Galvin, head of the Center of Conscience and War] and others fear Bush is just waiting for the right moment ‘to spring the draft back on the American people’ since he no longer has to worry about getting re-elected.”<br>
Thus the Strausscon letter appearing at the critical juncture between Luck’s assessment of troop insufficiency in Iraq and the re-introduction of Rangel’s bullet-stopper slavery bill. One thing is certain: Bush does not have the “boots on the ground” the Strausscons—and non-Strausscons such as Zbigniew Brzezinski—believe are necessary to maintain U.S. “legitimacy,” that is say the ability to invade, occupy, or bombard other countries, particularly Muslim countries in the Middle East and, for Brzezinski, central Asia.
As I said when Bush began beating the drums of war after 9/11, bullet-stopper slavery is inevitable. I also said, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq, that “engagement” would break the so-called “volunteer” military because, as history repeatedly demonstrates, invasions and occupations engender resistance and asymmetrical warfare of the sort the United States is wholly unprepared both physically and psychologically to fight, short of unleashing massive violence against civilian populations and infrastructure (as in Fallujah, although the resistance was not defeated there, as it wasn’t in Stalingrad, much to the dismay of the Nazis who believed their scorched earth policy in Russia would break the will of the Russian people). The Strausscons and the reactionary intelligensia, as epitomized by Brzezinski, who quibble over tactics yet share the same basic objectives, consistently, through arrogance and a belief in American “exceptionalism,” disregard the lessons of history, most notably the national liberation struggles in Vietnam and Algeria, the latter essentially the inspiration and template of the Iraqi resistance. Bullet-stopper conscription did not work in Vietnam and it will not work in Iraq, Iran, or Syria. Short of apocalyptic violence it will fail.
Faced with the inevitability of a Bush draft, supported by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress as a response to “staying the course” in Iraq, the American people, especially young Americans, who will be the victims of bullet-stopper slavery, will once again rise in opposition, as they did in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Of course, the Strausscons expect this and that is why the Patriot Act was put in place and the FBI—with help from the CIA and, we can only presume, intelligence operations run out of the Pentagon—will work double-time to undermine and characterize as terrorist any effective anti-war and anti-draft movement. Opposition will be far more difficult than it was in the 1960s, as brutal as the government’s response was at the time, culminating in COINTELPRO and murder at Kent State and elsewhere. It will be up to the cell phone generation, far more brainwashed by consumerism and the corporate media than the previous generation, to resist the bullet-stopper slavery that will decimate the lower and middle classes in this country. It remains to be seen if they are up to the challenge, especially if another 9/11, or something worse, is engineered between now and when the draft notices begin arriving.
More on PNAC and that Bullet-Stopper Slavery Letter
It is interesting the PNAC Strausscon letter to Congress, demanding a larger military in the face of shrinking recruitment and re-enlistment, arrived a few weeks after Bush sent a retired senior general to Iraq to review overall military operations there. “As well as assessing Iraqi forces, he will also look at overall US operations against insurgents, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman” told the BBC. “There are signs that the recalcitrant Rumsfeld is beginning to get the message,” Mike Whitney commented on January 15.
Last week he dispatched retired General Gary Luck to Iraq to produce a detailed breakdown of force strength and vulnerabilities. When Luck returns he will appear before Congress and make an energetic appeal for more troops and stiffer resolve. He can be expected to draw a dismal picture of a failed state that threatens to destabilize the entire region unless America makes a greater commitment. Both the Congress and the media will play a role in calling on the American people for steadfastness in the face of a very long and bloody occupation. Many believe that Luck’s assessment will determine whether Bush will approach Congress to reinstate the draft.
“While our ultimate objectives are very ambitious we will never achieve democracy and stability [in Iraq] without being willing to commit 500,000 troops, spend $200 billion a year, probably have a draft, and have some form of war compensation,” Zbigniew Brzezinski told the New America Foundation. For Brzezinski, the United States faces either a “moment of wisdom” —the willingness to fight endlessly against an “insurgency” that logic dictates cannot be defeated, so long as the Iraqi people view the United States as a foreign occupier—or “resign” itself to “cultural decay” and a “loss of credibility,” that is to say abandon its role as hegemon and imperialist, the overriding goal of U.S. foreign policy for more than a hundred years.
“Sometime soon Rep. Rangel is preparing to reintroduce legislation to reinstitute the military draft since he strongly feels everyone should share the burden of war,” Emile Milne, Rangel’s press representative and legislative director, said last week. “He is essentially reintroducing legislation [H.R. 163] that failed to gain support last session. However, this time around, I think, it has a better chance of passing.” As Greg Szymanski writes, with “the election now over, opponents of the draft claim the path is now clear for politicians from both sides of the aisle to get behind the draft, with Rangel obviously leading the charge,” even though the Bushcons, at least publicly, want us to believe they are opposed to bullet-stopper slavery. “A White House spokesman this week refused to comment on Rangel’s initiative, but said Bush has publicly opposed any legislation to reinstitute the draft,” Szymanski notes. “Privately, however, [Bill Galvin, head of the Center of Conscience and War] and others fear Bush is just waiting for the right moment ‘to spring the draft back on the American people’ since he no longer has to worry about getting re-elected.”<br>
Thus the Strausscon letter appearing at the critical juncture between Luck’s assessment of troop insufficiency in Iraq and the re-introduction of Rangel’s bullet-stopper slavery bill. One thing is certain: Bush does not have the “boots on the ground” the Strausscons—and non-Strausscons such as Zbigniew Brzezinski—believe are necessary to maintain U.S. “legitimacy,” that is say the ability to invade, occupy, or bombard other countries, particularly Muslim countries in the Middle East and, for Brzezinski, central Asia.
As I said when Bush began beating the drums of war after 9/11, bullet-stopper slavery is inevitable. I also said, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq, that “engagement” would break the so-called “volunteer” military because, as history repeatedly demonstrates, invasions and occupations engender resistance and asymmetrical warfare of the sort the United States is wholly unprepared both physically and psychologically to fight, short of unleashing massive violence against civilian populations and infrastructure (as in Fallujah, although the resistance was not defeated there, as it wasn’t in Stalingrad, much to the dismay of the Nazis who believed their scorched earth policy in Russia would break the will of the Russian people). The Strausscons and the reactionary intelligensia, as epitomized by Brzezinski, who quibble over tactics yet share the same basic objectives, consistently, through arrogance and a belief in American “exceptionalism,” disregard the lessons of history, most notably the national liberation struggles in Vietnam and Algeria, the latter essentially the inspiration and template of the Iraqi resistance. Bullet-stopper conscription did not work in Vietnam and it will not work in Iraq, Iran, or Syria. Short of apocalyptic violence it will fail.
Faced with the inevitability of a Bush draft, supported by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress as a response to “staying the course” in Iraq, the American people, especially young Americans, who will be the victims of bullet-stopper slavery, will once again rise in opposition, as they did in the 1960s and the early 1970s. Of course, the Strausscons expect this and that is why the Patriot Act was put in place and the FBI—with help from the CIA and, we can only presume, intelligence operations run out of the Pentagon—will work double-time to undermine and characterize as terrorist any effective anti-war and anti-draft movement. Opposition will be far more difficult than it was in the 1960s, as brutal as the government’s response was at the time, culminating in COINTELPRO and murder at Kent State and elsewhere. It will be up to the cell phone generation, far more brainwashed by consumerism and the corporate media than the previous generation, to resist the bullet-stopper slavery that will decimate the lower and middle classes in this country. It remains to be seen if they are up to the challenge, especially if another 9/11, or something worse, is engineered between now and when the draft notices begin arriving.