Tuesday, January 5, 2010

GWOT: In The "Eye" Of The Beholder?

The GWOT, or global war on terror, is a military doctrine which some observers see as false propaganda.

Why not take a look at that assertion?

One of the reasons listed in The Declaration of Independence, for breaking away from King George III of England to become The United States, was:
He [the king] has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
(Independence From What). The early presidents explained why civilian over military was an integral part of freedom:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.
(Greatest Source, emphasis added). Some academics, diplomats, and leaders of various sorts say that the U.S. has returned to that once-rejected reality:
The Worldwide control of humanity's economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultimately consist in a process of global subordination ... US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualised the greatest fraud in US history, namely "the Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony ... The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain ... The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide ... In this regard, Hugh d’Andrade and Bob Wing's 2002 Map 1 entitled "U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of 'Permanent War'", confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries ... The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries ... In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide ... These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).
(Canadian Professor, emphasis added). U.S. observers during the era of WW II noticed that the military was in firm control even then:
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells."
(Wikipedia, John T. Flynn's As We Go Marching, 1944, emphasis added). Other academics of our own system have even shown when and how the military media oil complex began to take over.

The big picture here is that the right wing warsters are firmly in power, peace is a farce, along with peace movements, a kinder and gentler nation movements, as well as the green revolution.

These movements are engendered by a notion of natural human rights which tend to originate on the left.

They are not a farce in the eyes of the world in terms of what is best for the world of humanity, but rather they are a farce in terms of whether or not the civilian authorities are in control over military authorities.

The United States is now a warmonger nation ruled by the military media oil complex and its 1% who have plundered the money of the people for their own illegitimate purposes.

A large segment of the left and the right in the United States are deluded into not seeing what is not all that hard to see.

Concerning the "Canadian Professor" mentioned and linked to above:
"Jules Dufour is President of the United Nations Association of Canada (UNA-C) – Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean branch and Research Associate at the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Quebec, Chicoutimi.

In 2007, Professor Jules Dufour became Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Québec, a distinction conferred by the Quebec government, for his contributions to World peace and human rights, his numerous scholarly writings and the work he accomplished in the context of national and international commissions on issues pertaining to regional development, human rights and the protection of the environment."
The next post in this series is here.

1 comment:

  1. Couldn't help but notice over the holiday break while watching all the football games, all the obligatory pro-military segments and/or wishes, almost always with fawning commentary referring to them as "our brave young men and women serving overseas to defend our freedom," or words to that effect. The military propoganda machine has truly gone prime time. Well, at least corporate America finally realizes whose interests are really being served, and in some small way acknowledges it, that's a start. For the mere price of a little commercial air time, they can appease the sheeple with visions of worldwide US military imposed "freedom" and all that. Illusions die hard.
    -disaffected-

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