Together, credo and trinity … our purpose
by reader Ilsm
American Empire and “exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit” (Henry R. Luce); why the generals push back on Gates’ minimal 3% increase in their war machine, disguised as cuts. Generals push back on GAT
Andrew Bacevich on the New American Century: Empire
“Global Leadership: Empire:
“Henry R. Luce made the case for this specious conception of global leadership. Writing in Life magazine in early 1941, the influential publisher exhorted his fellow citizens to “accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.” Luce thereby captured what remains even today the credo’s essence.”
…
“Along with respectful allusions to God and “the troops,” adherence to Luce’s credo has become a de facto prerequisite for high office.”
…
“Note, however, that the duty Luce ascribed to Americans has two components. It is not only up to Americans, he wrote, to choose the purposes for which they would bring their influence to bear, but to choose the means as well.”
Militarism to provide the means for empire:
“With regard to means, that tradition has emphasized activism over example, hard power over soft, and coercion (often styled “negotiating from a position of strength”) over suasion. Above all, the exercise of global leadership as prescribed by the credo obliges the United States to maintain military capabilities staggeringly in excess of those required for self-defense.”
The philosophy that sustains the Military Industrial Complex, top cover for war profits:
“By the midpoint of the twentieth century, “the Pentagon” had ceased to be merely a gigantic five-sided building. Like “Wall Street” at the end of the nineteenth century, it had become Leviathan, its actions veiled in secrecy, its reach extending around the world. Yet while the concentration of power in Wall Street had once evoked deep fear and suspicion, Americans by and large saw the concentration of power in the Pentagon as benign. Most found it reassuring.”
Numbed population forgets its roots:
“A people who had long seen standing armies as a threat to liberty now came to believe that the preservation of liberty required them to lavish resources on the armed forces.”
Noble Lie: Perpetual Mobilization and Militarism, Why have forces to deploy and sustain in remote areas of the world with no threats to the “common defense”:
“Yet an examination of the past 60 years of U.S. military policy and practice does reveal important elements of continuity. Call them the sacred trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.”
…
“Together, credo and trinity — the one defining purpose, the other practice — constitute the essence of the way that Washington has attempted to govern and police the American Century.”
Full read here
The US has a sacred duty to squander its treasure and institutions on the Military Industrial Complex for American Empire. What steps make re-directing this energy and treasure to productive economy possible?
Things that blow up are good business. They have to be replaced. It’s the kind of transfer payment conservatives hate when it goes to the poor.
I also highly reccomend Bacevich’s book, THE LIMITS OF POWER.
American foreign policy is the one aspect of governemnt that has remained almost constant since the 50’s, irrespective of Dem – Rep politics.
Sixty years of continuous and massive screw-ups.
Wie Schade,
JzB
I was reading Eisenhower’s somewhat infamous 1954 letter to his Bircher/Teabagger brother, and was caught surprised by Ike’s casual reference to Iran:
“A year ago last January we were in imminent danger of losing Iran, and sixty percent of the known oil reserves of the world. You may have forgotten this. Lots of people have. But there has been no greater threat that has in recent years overhung the free world. That threat has been largely, if not totally, removed. I could name at least a half dozen other spots of the same character. “
jimi,
You can say exploitation for profit, concentrating wealth in a few and using the nations productive capacity for war instead of humanity is charity.
Same as Glenn Beck selling christianity, except to not for Catholics, and Muslims.
The New Testament is not the Old Testament. Something about a new Temple.
And the problem is what?
Jimi, we never spend much money on social engineering. Besides, a good economy with well paying jobs does not need much social engineering at all. Flint is not one of a kind. There are all the little steel mill towns around Pittsburgh. Why do all these people have to blame themselves? What did they do other people did not do? The unions made concessions after concessions nothing was good enough, the economical floor fell out anyway. The cities and states had no money then as now. Nothing was invested in the infrastructure in all of the US.
I would like to see 5% of GDP invested in social engineering and infrastructure and see what a difference it would make.
The nation wastes on military spending and invests little in infrastructure and the quality of life. Our cities in general are ugly and unlivable. When the nation was prosperous they build the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire state building, now they build nothing. Where the WTC stood there is still a big hole and NOLA has still a long way to go, 5 years after Katryna. Michael Moore did not do that and neither did the people of Flint MI do it.
Should be, Flint is not the only one.
jimi
TANG came from NASA. Atrillion for TANG, wow!!
How much has the society lost from war profiteering? Since 1950?
Each dollar for the F-35 is a dollar taken from the grandkids.
You keep telling yourself thAT!