It's an interesting question. What are the long term effects of blowing
up a house full of civilians, including women and children in order to
attempt to kill one suspected terrorist? Is there any chance such acts
might create more terrorists than they kill? (They don't fly planes
into building in Stockholm or Bern.) The use of mercenaries (aka
"contractors") is a threat to our civil liberties because their loyalty
is to their cor****ation or commanders rather than to We the People. Does
anybody doubt the "warlords" of Afghanistan or Somalia are a threat to
the people of those countries? Isn't the head of Blackwater a warlord
under contract to the DoD and State Department? The US military was
certainly a threat to thousands of our best young men who were killed
after being drafted or hoodwinked into fighting wars of aggression in
Southeast Asia and now Iraq. The economic consequences of these wars
were severe -- stagflation in the late '70s and similar results today.
In response to a commentary I sent out yesterday, one of my online
friends pointed out that the US Military contributes a very large
****tion of the US energy bill. How much is anybody's guess, considering
the state of the Pentagon's un-accounting methods, but considering the
fuel mileage of a tank, MRAP or even a humvee, it must be huge. If the
idea is to burn a little gas to force others to sell their oil at the
price we'd prefer -- well, it hasn't worked too well, has it? And now
this: it seems the Pentagon is not just an environmental disaster for
foreign countries in which we operate, spewing out depleted uranium to
poison generations after our wars are over. The Military is also
polluting the US itself with perchlorate, and nobody is holding them
accountable.
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair05122008.html
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