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Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable.
Ironically, although American leaders are deaf to the desires of the protesters, the US Department of Defense has actually adopted the movement's main premise - that current global economic arrangements mean more wealth for the "West" and more misery for the "rest" - as a reason why the United States should place weapons in space. The US Space Command's pamphlet "Vision for 2020" argues that "the globalization of the world economy will continue, with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots'" and that we have a mission to "dominate the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investments" in an increasingly dangerous and implicitly anti-American world.
"Collateral damage" is another of those hateful euphemisms invented by the Pentagon to disguise its killing of the defenseless.
Classical tools of international relations, such as diplomacy, foreign aid, international education, and the making of one’s country a model of international behavior, atrophy as the carrier task force and cruise missiles become the first choices as instruments to solve global problems.
Vietnam also contributed to the advance of militarism because the United States lost the war. This defeat was disillusioning to American elites and set off a never concluded debate about what “lessons” were to be learned from it. For the newly ascendant far right in American politics, Vietnam became a just war that the left wing did not have the will or courage to win.
Another aspect of the Pentagon’s creative efforts to attract more recruits is its support for pro-war Hollywood films. The latest example of this strategem is the Pentagon’s backing of Disney Studios’ Pearl Harbor. The movie premiered on May 21, 2001, at a special showing on the flight deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis that had bleachers and a huge screen installed and that was moved without its aircraft from its home port in San Diego to Pearl Harbor specifically for this purpose. As the credits reveal, numerous US military commands helped make the film and in turn extracted changes to the scenario in order to portray the American military in a favorable light and to promote the idea that service in the armed forces is romantic, patriotic, and fun. According to the Chicago Tribune, military recruiters set up tables in the lobbies of theaters where Pearl Harbor was being shown in hopes of catching a few youths on their way out after viewing the three-hour recruiting pitch.
The Navy and Disney invited more than 2500 guests to the film premier of Pearl Harbor on Battleship Row aboard the USS John C. Stennis. This suggests that the Navy did not learn any lessons from the case of the USS Greeneville, a 6500-ton nuclear-powered attack submarine that on February 9, 2001, only a few months before the party on the Stennis, performed an emergency surfacing off Honolulu and collided with and sank the 190-foot Japanese high school training ship Ehime Maru with a loss of nine Japanese lives. It is also possible that the Navy high command was so confident of its cover-up of what actually happened that it went ahead with the Pearl Harbor promotion undisturbed. The Greeneville put to sea on February 9 solely in order to give 16 rich civilian backers of the Navy a joyride… such a collision between a surfacing submarine and another ship could only be caused by negligence on the part of the submarine’s crew… A Texas oil company executive was actually at the controls when the submarine shot to the surface.
- Chalmers Johnson: "American Militarism and Blowback: The Costs of Letting the Pentagon Dominate Foreign Policy"
Johnson's a lovely writer, but that last part nearly made me vomit.
Ironically, although American leaders are deaf to the desires of the protesters, the US Department of Defense has actually adopted the movement's main premise - that current global economic arrangements mean more wealth for the "West" and more misery for the "rest" - as a reason why the United States should place weapons in space. The US Space Command's pamphlet "Vision for 2020" argues that "the globalization of the world economy will continue, with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots'" and that we have a mission to "dominate the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investments" in an increasingly dangerous and implicitly anti-American world.
"Collateral damage" is another of those hateful euphemisms invented by the Pentagon to disguise its killing of the defenseless.
Classical tools of international relations, such as diplomacy, foreign aid, international education, and the making of one’s country a model of international behavior, atrophy as the carrier task force and cruise missiles become the first choices as instruments to solve global problems.
Vietnam also contributed to the advance of militarism because the United States lost the war. This defeat was disillusioning to American elites and set off a never concluded debate about what “lessons” were to be learned from it. For the newly ascendant far right in American politics, Vietnam became a just war that the left wing did not have the will or courage to win.
Another aspect of the Pentagon’s creative efforts to attract more recruits is its support for pro-war Hollywood films. The latest example of this strategem is the Pentagon’s backing of Disney Studios’ Pearl Harbor. The movie premiered on May 21, 2001, at a special showing on the flight deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis that had bleachers and a huge screen installed and that was moved without its aircraft from its home port in San Diego to Pearl Harbor specifically for this purpose. As the credits reveal, numerous US military commands helped make the film and in turn extracted changes to the scenario in order to portray the American military in a favorable light and to promote the idea that service in the armed forces is romantic, patriotic, and fun. According to the Chicago Tribune, military recruiters set up tables in the lobbies of theaters where Pearl Harbor was being shown in hopes of catching a few youths on their way out after viewing the three-hour recruiting pitch.
The Navy and Disney invited more than 2500 guests to the film premier of Pearl Harbor on Battleship Row aboard the USS John C. Stennis. This suggests that the Navy did not learn any lessons from the case of the USS Greeneville, a 6500-ton nuclear-powered attack submarine that on February 9, 2001, only a few months before the party on the Stennis, performed an emergency surfacing off Honolulu and collided with and sank the 190-foot Japanese high school training ship Ehime Maru with a loss of nine Japanese lives. It is also possible that the Navy high command was so confident of its cover-up of what actually happened that it went ahead with the Pearl Harbor promotion undisturbed. The Greeneville put to sea on February 9 solely in order to give 16 rich civilian backers of the Navy a joyride… such a collision between a surfacing submarine and another ship could only be caused by negligence on the part of the submarine’s crew… A Texas oil company executive was actually at the controls when the submarine shot to the surface.
- Chalmers Johnson: "American Militarism and Blowback: The Costs of Letting the Pentagon Dominate Foreign Policy"
Johnson's a lovely writer, but that last part nearly made me vomit.
