No matter how you feel about the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, you can’t help but be impressed at how they are able to successfully plunder and loot American taxpayers, no matter how much needless death, suffering, and destruction they wreak on people around the world.
Think about it: They just exited Afghanistan after their 20-year failed war against the Taliban, a war that left thousands of American soldiers and countless Afghans dead and the entire country destroyed. On top of all that death and destruction was the total waste of hundreds of billions of dollars in US taxpayer money. It’s also worth mentioning that for those entire 20 years, they intentionally lied to the American people regarding progress in their undeclared forever war.
And what has been the result? They get rewarded! Congress is on the verge of giving them more taxpayer money than ever before! That’s impressive, even if in a negative way!
In other words, they are no longer wasting money in Afghanistan in the form of bombs, bullets, gasoline, oil, medicare care for wounded soldiers, etc. That’s got to mean that a lot of money is now being saved.
So, does Congress reduce the military’s budget by the amount of money that is no longer being wasted in Afghanistan? Are you kidding? Like I say, believe it or not, they are actually upping the amount of US taxpayer money that they are allocating to these people! They are giving them more taxpayer money than when they were in Afghanistan wasting all that taxpayer money!
That is power, sheer power! How can anyone not be impressed by it, even if In a negative way?
The fact is that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA own Congress, lock, stock, and barrel. Not only is Congress filled with national-security state assets, even those members of Congress who maintain the appearance of some degree of independence do not dare to buck the national-security establishment. They know that if they were to buck them, they would soon be targeted with extinction in the next election.
There is another factor that is impressive in a negative way — the ability of the Pentagon and the CIA to engender official enemies to scare Congress into granting the national-security establishment whatever it wants.
Just look how they have succeeded in converting their old Cold War enemies, China and Russia, into new big official enemies of the United States. After milking the “war on terrorism” racket for as much as they could for the past 20 years, they’re now circling back to milk their old Cold War racket against their old Cold War communist enemies.
What’s also fascinating is how they are able to engender these official enemies while convincing people that they are the innocent victims who are forced into defending America and the world from the barbarians at the gate.
Consider how they have done this with Russia. Their strategy has been absolutely brilliant, again in a negative way.
First, they tell Russia that NATO will not expand eastward after Russia called it quits on the Cold War racket. It was a lie. Instead, NATO began gobbling up former members of the Warsaw Pact, moving NATO’s forces and US missiles inexorably closer to Russia’s borders.
When NATO threatened to absorb Ukraine, which would have given the Pentagon and the CIA control over Crimea and also enable the US to station missiles right on Russia’s border, NATO officials and US officials knew precisely that Russia would have to react.
When Russia did react in the predicable way, the US response was brilliant, again in a negative way. Instead of NATO and the US creating the crisis, it was Russia who was presented as the aggressor. NATO, Ukraine, and the US were all seen as the victims of Russian aggression. The only thing that was missing was the threat of “godless communism,” which was the basis of their Cold War racket against Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union.
It’s been pretty much the same with China. While the US government was mired down with its forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China was prospering and establishing friendly relations with countries all over the world. The US Empire could not tolerate that. That’s when they launched their vicious trade war against China and began doing everything they could to destroy China’s economic prosperity. Among their favorite weapons was economic sanctions, a foreign-policy tool that targets the civilian population of a country as as way to achieve political ends.
Today, China is portrayed by the US mainstream press as a grave threat to US national security, just like it was during the Cold War racket. In one way, the situation with China is even better than with Russia. Given that China is still a communist regime, US officials and their assets in the US mainstream press can still use the “godless communism” angle that they did during the Cold War racket.
Since the Pentagon and the CIA are still killing people in the Middle East, the threat of anti-American terrorism continues to exist. Combine that with the scary notion that the Russians and Chinese Reds are coming to get us, and you have the perfect justification for the continuation and expansion of the US national-security state and its deadly, destructive, and very expensive rackets.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
