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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Wealthy, tough-talking chosen class who've never served a day in the military eager to back up their coddled existence with U.S. military blood

Introduction by Chris Moore:

There is something incredibly noxious about the post WWII generations of American elites, (and particularly the post Vietnam) most of whom have never served a day in the military, yet are oh-so-eager to prove their "patriotic" and "national security" bona-fides by committing other people's blood (which comes almost entirely from lower downs in the economic pecking order) to back their endless wars against Islamic civilization on behalf of the corrupt status-quo that has so richly rewarded them.

Their haughty mentality seems to be: "We are of a higher caste, a line of chosen. It is our duty to reap the rewards of American society, and the duty of others to sacrifice themselves on our behalf. Our comfortable, grandiose, self-aggrandizing, trifling existence is the highest yearning of society and of the most crucial importance. Never mind that our existence is parasitic upon the masses, and detrimental to the vast majority; that's the natural order, the cosmic-ordained hierarchy. It's only natural that others should sacrifice and die so that we may live out a coddled, self-serving existence and perpetuate our culture of parasitism."

Other than Ron Paul, this is the well-concealed but visceral mentality not only of the current crop of GOP candidates and hierarchy, but of the limousine liberal caste that runs the Democratic Party as well...a mentality that Philip Giraldi captures all too well in the following critique of the new class of chickenhawks that rules Washington, and seeks to rule the world.

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From:
Meet the Republican Chickenhawks

(AntiWar.com) -- by Philip Giraldi --

Nearly all the Republican presidential candidates are showing their muscles, supporting the war on terror and a robust military while also vowing to do whatever it takes to disarm Iran. They know that it is essential to play the jingoistic “American exceptionalism” card, and they understand that being president also means becoming commander in chief of America’s armed forces with the responsibility for committing U.S. soldiers to die for their country. But how are they qualified to do that? Of the sorry lot on display, only Ron Paul and Rick Perry have ever served in the military in any capacity, Paul as a U.S. Air Force medical officer and Perry as an Air Force pilot. The dramatically bellicose Newt Gingrich, who wants to coordinate a joint military operation with Israel to attack Iran, did not serve during the Vietnam War. He received deferments because he was a student and because he was, at the time, married to his first of three wives. Other candidates, including Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, are too young to have been subject to the draft, but neither volunteered for military service. Santorum entered a law firm, and Huntsman went to Indonesia as a Mormon missionary before stepping into the business run by his father.

But perhaps the most spectacular chickenhawk of all is Mitt Romney, frequently cited as the likely Republican candidate, who alone among GOP aspirants to the highest office in the land has advocated increasing the size of the Defense Department. Romney apparently is not aware of the foreign policy misadventures of the past 10 years and is eager to double down on a formula that has not worked very well. He believes that the correct response to the many threats in the world is to throw more money at the Pentagon. He also apparently has not noted the sinking economy, which might suggest to anyone but the politically ambitious that retrenchment would be preferable to more interventionism. But as an experienced self-described “businessman” he is not afraid of running up a little more debt.

Romney has several times declared that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon if he is president, suggesting that the other candidates are pusillanimous on the issue and implying that he alone will attack the mullahs “preventively” if such a development appears to be imminent. The willingness to start a war with a country that can hardly threaten the United States is the cornerstone of his foreign policy, which he describes as dealing with the world from a position of strength. If that sounds a bit like the Bush Doctrine, it should...

...It has often been suggested that if the children of leading politicians and neocon pundits were required to take up arms to carry out the schemes concocted by their parents, the desire to engage in frivolous wars would quickly vanish. Be that as it may, Romney is far from unique in that one does not see the children of Huntsman, Santorum, Bachmann, and Gingrich rushing off to enlist either. To give Sarah Palin her due, her eldest son did join the Alaskan National Guard and did do combat duty in Iraq, so she, at least, put her money where her mouth most assuredly was.

One can easily argue that President Barack Obama is even worse than the Mitt Romneys of this world, because he was elected in large part by antiwar voters but he has brought more war and a frightful expansion of the state security apparatus, including the indefinite military detention and even assassination of American citizens. But that is to avoid the issue of how a country that so desperately needs peace and reconstruction can produce so many clueless but hawkish politicians who are themselves completely ignorant of war and soldiering except insofar as they follow the Gingrich model of reading about it in books. Nevertheless, the poor fools persist in mouthing the slogans of empire. And it has consequences. Constant warfare might well mean the end of our experiment in republican government and could quite possibly bring about the impoverishment and death of many of us...MORE...LINK

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