Endless War category archive

Der Spiegel interviews Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who did more than anyone else to end the Cold War, regardless of the claims of Ronald Reagan’s PR machine. Read it.

Here’s a bit.

SPIEGEL: What do you think of the oft-cited theory that mutually assured destruction prevents nuclear wars?

Gorbachev: There’s a dangerous logic in that. Here’s another question: If five or 10 countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons, then why can’t 20 or 30? Today, a few dozen countries have the technical prerequisites to build nuclear weapons. The alternative is clear: Either we move toward a nuclear-free world or we have to accept that nuclear weapons will continue to spread, step by step, across the globe. And can we really imagine a world without nuclear weapons if a single country amasses so many conventional weapons that its military budget nearly tops that of all other countries combined? This country would enjoy total military supremacy if nuclear weapons were abolished.

SPIEGEL: You’re talking about the US?

Gorbachev: You said it. It is an insurmountable obstacle on the road to a nuclear-free world.

Eric Schwartz and Brian Atwood note that those who monger war seem incapable of learning (emphasis added):

Remarkably, there are still unrepentant cheerleaders for that war (the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq–ed.), as well as those who argue that the U.S. invasion was a good idea in principle that was just executed poorly. And they are among the most influential voices opposed to the agreement with Iran.

Why does it matter that the pundits who were so convinced about invading Iraq more than a decade ago now pursue with passionate certainty the defeat of the diplomatic effort involving Iran?

Follow the link for their answer.

Republicans: Always ready to sacrifice . . . .

. . . the children of others.

Via Job’s Anger.

At Talking Points Memo, Brendan Gilfillan tries to understand the Republican Party’s fascination with war as the first and only solution for every dispute.  A snippet:

How, exactly, do we get the unicorn deal that dismantles every piece of nuclear infrastructure in Iran and forces their scientists to forget everything they know about the periodic table of elements?

(snip)

The uncomfortable (and unpopular) subtext of many opponents’ public statements is clear: Despite the immense amount of blood and treasure spent in Iraq, some have still not learned the lesson that wars in the Middle East fought in the name of nuclear non-proliferation are best avoided ifs there is a better option.

Frankly, I think the reason is simple, but not at all pretty or even sane. It’s the same reason someone might have for shooting a horse grazing peacefully in a pasture: the lust for carnage, especially vicarious carnage from a safe distance, war as a spectator sport.

Dan Simpson points out that the military-industrial complex is still a Very Big Thing, a self-styled Golden Calf desirous of suckling deeply at the government teat.

Hell. It beats doing something productive.

Here’s a bit (emphasis added):

First was the hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee of Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., whom President Barack Obama has nominated as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Appearing before warmonger and committee chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and reflecting U.S. military nostalgia for an enemy who required expensive equipment to fight, Mr. Dunford deemed Russia an “existential threat to the United States” and called its recent activities “alarming.”

Any head-scratching that this alarmist assessment might have stimulated, among the senators or the public, was overshadowed by the reporting the same day of the Obama administration’s intention to cut U.S. Army force levels from 490,000 to 450,000 by 2017, with the possibility of more cuts if budget “sequestration” continues as a means of taming federal deficits.

The Dunford-McCain thesis runs that if we make these cuts — part of a long-awaited peace dividend — the Russians will get us. This is silly, but it is fully consistent with Pentagon and arms industry efforts to scare Americans into continuing to shell out enormous sums of money for “defense,” as opposed to meeting the urgent need to fix our roads, bridges and schools and to provide other public services.

Afterthought:

General Motors might have invented “planned obsolescence,” but defense contractors have perfected it.

Trevor Timm cuts to the chase:

For Republicans, the Iran nuclear negotiations have never been about getting “a good deal” for the US. They’ve simply wanted to preserve their ability to kill people in the Middle East whenever they want, and continue to indulge their fetish of American superpower.

More at the link.

The Republican Party has a strange fascination with sending the children of others to their deaths.

Shaun Mullen tries to make sense of the Republican Party’s fascination with sending the children of others to die in foreign lands.

Follow the link for the picture, if nothing else.

Chew ’em up, spit ’em out.

Click for a larger image.

And history repeats itself once more all over again redundantly . . . .

It’s apparently a very lucrative thing.

At Asia Times, Spengler applies Hanlon’s Razor:

Beijing and Moscow made up their minds some time ago that the United States had deliberately unleashed chaos on the Levant as part of a malevolent plan of some kind. The Chinese and Russians (and most of the rest of the world) simply cannot process the notion that the United States is run by clueless amateurs who stumble from one half-baked initiative to another, with no overall plan . . . .