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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:13 am |
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| koholinttakeout wrote: |
| A true end to military adventurism is when the people who make the policies actually think the threat is gone, or subdued enough. It'll happen. |
C'mon, do you really believe that? You're forgetting the profit motive. War is a racket. According to the recently passed Defense Authorization bill, the US is at war with the "Taliban, Al Qaeda, and associated forces." At what point will we be able to say for sure that the "threat" from these people is subdued enough? Will it ever? Who even are these 'associated forces?' The fact is that we are at war with an amorphous Other about which all we know is that It wants to Kill Us, so we have to Kill It First. We are at war with an idea, and aside from the few honest folk that do reside in DC, nobody there has any qualms with continuing to "fight" this idea as long as it means more $$$ for these motherfuckers.
Also: paragraphs! |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:41 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| The British military is vastly smaller than it was 150 years ago, isn't it? But war hasn't gotten any less profitable. The fact that "war = $ for defense contractors," which is an obvious truth that has no moral content in and of itself, cannot alone explain when and why states' militaries expand and contract. |
No moral content? Yeah, I don't know that I agree. I'm a little flabbergasted that you're actually defending war profiteers, to be honest. I thought the line was that private industry and profiteering was evil and the government should do everything they can to curtail it? But when it comes to war profiteers, the biggest and most profitable business in this country, they get a pass because... why?
I'm not saying that profiteering is the only reason states' militaries have ever expanded or contracted. What I'm saying is that, here and now, in this country, with this military, and with these psychopaths who are in charge of it, it's going to take something extremely dramatic/catastrophic for anything to change policy-wise. They will never see the threat from Al Qaeda as being 'subdued,' and if they did, then they'd just find some other threat to invent to justify more war.
For instance: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/06/02/136894234/u-s-military-will-always-have-a-full-menu-secretary-gates-says
| Sec. Gates wrote: |
And the Pentagon chief, who retires later this month, says that even as the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan hopefully wind down, there will be no shortage of threats for the U.S. military to be preparing for.
There are Iran and North Korea, he notes. Also, "you have a very aggressive weapons building program in China" and revolutions throughout the Middle East.
"The U.S. military has never been at a loss in being told to find things to do," he says. "They've always had a full menu." |
I'm sure the folks at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon will be happy to hear that. |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:49 am |
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| koholinttakeout wrote: |
| Also, its probably a good thing my flabbergast meter takes a lot to actually register anything. I think you and I come from pretty different places if you think government exists to do everything possible to curtail private enterprise. |
Noo nono, I don't think this at all. I was saying that what I hear from folks like Cuba is that that's what the government should being doing, because profit is inherently evil and turns everyone into Rockefellers and Rothschilds. I'm a free market guy, I think the government should stop actively supporting and subsidizing certain corporations and certain industries, which hurts small business owners and prevents real competition from taking place, all the while creating greater and greater class inequality.
| Quote: |
| I just think I need more of an explanation of why you buy some of these arguments regarding war profiteering and the unstoppable forces guiding the American government to fight endless wars. |
I'm just looking at history. The US has been in a state of constant warfare since the creation of the National Security state in '47. Even when we're not "at war," like in the Clinton years, we're bombing Iraq and Serbia. Or in the 80s we're sending our commandos into Latin America and setting up death camps and propping up dictators to 'defend' American business interests. I mean, read your Chomsky. In the 50s we're all over the place, rigging elections and assassinating democratically elected leaders. We're still doing this. I'd personally like to know why you buy the opposite arguments, aside from that you have a personal stake in it, being in the armed services and all.
The Charles Tilly rec sounds interesting! I'll look into that, though your brief summary is already what I basically believe. I'll never read a goddamn thing Condi Rice has written, however. A couple more responses:
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| I agree that the Defense Authorization Act for FY2012 was pretty poorly worded, but I don't think it uniquely impacts the future of American security policy. |
Right, I didn't mean to suggest it was a game-changer, but more that it was just stating officially what had heretofore been somewhat ambiguous. It's still ambiguous, but it's at least ambiguous on paper.
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| I know the "war as a racket" gets a lot of credence and there are some simply awful abuses in defense procurement (my shed is full of them), but I think you're confusing a relatively minor problem with that of the problem of threat construction in general. Buzan gets a lot of milage these days when it comes to threatcon, but I just don't buy it because it assumes the worst possible motives for anyone who thinks that US security interests are by nature incredibly expansive. |
I think the two issues are intimately intertwined. If there weren't so much of a profit motive in going to war, then maybe the threat construction would be a little less overt. And I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume the worst motives. Maybe you can say it's not the "worst possible motives" simply because the idea that "US security interests are by nature incredibly expansive" has been the norm since WWII, so it's not as if these people are doing anything unheard of, they're simply continuing the status quo that's been set. In that sense, maybe their motives are not evil, but the whole precedent that's been set is, and the actions that have resulted from it most certainly are. In any case it feels to me that you're defending a bunch of people who really should not be defended. |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 6:28 am |
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| Sure. And 1) leads directly into having 2). |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 1:51 am |
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fascinating stuff. Incredible how the facts are right there in front of our eyes and yet we do (or maybe can do) nothing.
| Joachim wrote: |
| It's a moderately interesting subject, but I can't take it entirely seriously (unfortunately or not), thanks to conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. |
this is the wrong attitude to have. |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2011 2:19 am |
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| Where the fuck are you in school smithee? |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:02 pm |
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| Talbain wrote: |
| It's also beginning to look more and more like capitalism itself is failing (which is inevitable). |
we don't have capitalism - what's failing is corporatism. |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:53 pm |
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| Talbain wrote: |
| Sure, but corporatism is just a result of capitalism (or vice-versa, it's kinda hard to say). Either way, they're both systems built to fail. |
I don't know - that's kind of like saying that mass murder is just a result of socialism. It's not inevitable that capitalism results in the concentration of wealth in very few hands (ie, corporatism). It's a direct result of government intervention favoring certain businesses and industries over others, driving out competition by driving up costs. |
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Vikram Ray
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2011 12:06 am |
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| Quote: |
So, the South Sea Company had no problem attracting investors when, with an IOU to the government worth £10,000,000.00, the company purchased the "rights" to all trade in the South Seas.
[snip]
Not long after the emergence of the SSC, another British company, the Mississippi Company, established itself in France. The company was the brainchild of an exiled Brit named John Law. His idea wasn't so much based in trade, but in switching the monetary system from gold and silver into a paper currency system. The Mississippi Company caught the attention of all the continental traders and gave them a space to put their hard-earned dollars. Soon the worth of the Mississippi Company's stock was worth 80 times more than all the gold and silver in France. Law also began collecting defunct companies to add to his massive conglomerate. |
Sounds like a classic case. The government distorts the market by arbitrarily loaning out massive sums of wealth into one sector of the economy; bubble is thereby created and then aggravated with fiat money, and eventually bursts because it's inflatedness was artificial in the first place. Then the government steps in and "stabilizes" the problem it allowed to happen in the first place.
Corrupt capitalism or crony capitalism or corporatism or whathaveyou does reward bubbles, but I don't agree with you that bubbles are an inherent feature of capitalism or the free market, at least not on the massive scale that we see them today. They are a direct result of the government propping up certain economic sectors (like housing or education). It has nothing to do with free markets. It has everything to do with central economic planning and the collusion of public and private sectors. This may be an inevitable result of capitalism, but that's why we have the Constitution to restrain government: "in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution." |
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