John Feffer of Foreign Policy in Focus says "peace" is a word that no longer sits well in Washington.
Peace has never been a particularly popular word in Washington, DC. This is, after all, the home of the Pentagon and the major military contractors, not to mention all the think tanks and congressional lapdogs that lie in the king-size family bed with them. But the word "peace" has acquired such a negative reputation inside the Beltway that the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), which saw Congress nearly ax all its funding over the summer, is now considering a name change.
"Peace," the Institute's president Richard Solomon recently told The Washington Post, "is too abstract and academic." One alternative he is proposing: the U.S. Institute for Conflict Management.
Freedom is slavery.
ReplyDeleteIgnorance is strength.
We've got 1984 on one side and a Brave New World on the other. Why pick one or the other for world domination when you can have both at once?
How do you implement 1984's oppression without riots in the streets? How do you deal with those individuals that just won't shut up and take their soma? The country is going to hell... but American Idol is on! The people that make the effort to get up and do something get beat down by police at the G20. Each is the answer to the other.
When "peace" becomes an abstract and an academic term, the world is in deep trouble.
ReplyDeleteI suspect Huxley and Orwell would be relieved they weren't around to see their fiction become so prophetic.
ReplyDeleteOwen, we have witnessed the evolution of the true "warfare state." America's military machine is now a trillion dollar a year economic engine and, with the multiplier effect of any government spending, represents two to three times that much in economic activity yet, of itself, generates almost no return. A 2000-lb JDAM or an M-1A1 tank create nothing.
Andrew Bacevich in his seminal work "The New American Militarism" chronicles the incestuous merger of the military/industrial/commercial warfighting complex with the radical political right and the radical fundamentalist Christian movement.
It's a fascinating look inside this voracious machine. I posted a 3-part review of the book which you can find by searching "Bacevich" on this blog. It's eerie to realize how the development of precision guided munitions triggered a shift to military force in lieu of diplomacy as America's preferred instrument of foreign policy.
Mound, under what name you have done the review because I can't find it under Mound of Sound or The Disaffected Liberal.
ReplyDeleteLD, if you use the search option above on the left and type in "America's Cancerous Militarism" you'll get links to 2010, August 19, 20 and 21 posts.
ReplyDelete