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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica Has Turned a World Without Serious Enemies into the Most Threatening Place in the Universe
http://www.alternet.org/america-has-turned-world-without-serious-enemies-most-threatening-place-universeThe communist enemy, with the worlds fourth largest military, has been trundling missiles around and threatening the United States with nuclear obliteration. Guam, Hawaii, Washington: all, it claims, are targetable. The coverage in the media has been hair-raising. The U.S. is rushing an untested missile defense system to Guam, deploying missile-interceptor ships off the South Korean coast, sending nuclear capable B-2 Stealth bombers thousands of miles on mock bombing runs, pressuring China, and conducting large-scale war games with its South Korean ally.
Only one small problem: there is as yet little evidence that the enemy with a few nuclear weapons facing off (rhetorically at least) against an American arsenal of 4,650 of them has the ability to miniaturize and mount even one on a missile, no less deliver it accurately, nor does it have a missile capable of reaching Hawaii or Washington, and I wouldn't count on Guam either.
It also happens to be a desperate country, one possibly without enough fuel to fly a modern air force, whose people, on average, are inches shorter than their southern neighbors thanks to decades of intermittent famine and malnutrition, and who are ruled by a bizarre three-generational family cult. If that other communist, Karl Marx, hadnt once famously written that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce, we would have had to invent the phrase for this very moment.
In the previous century, there were two devastating global wars, which left significant parts of the planet in ruins. There was also a "cold war" between two superpowers locked in a system of mutual assured destruction (aptly acronymed as MAD) whose nuclear arsenals were capable of destroying the planet many times over. Had you woken up any morning in the years between December 7, 1941, and December 26, 1991, and been told that the leading international candidate for America's Public Enemy Number One was Kim Jong-uns ramshackle, comic-opera regime in North Korea, you might have gotten down on your hands and knees and sent thanks to pagan gods.
malaise
(267,838 posts)belligerent - what word would then describe the world's greatest bully.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)kicking each other asses,screams of smack talk on vent over the game table kept us friendly
bemildred
(90,061 posts)That we have been reduced to the likes of N. Korea is quite indicative of the situation.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)KansDem
(28,498 posts)You just have to plan!
liberal N proud
(60,302 posts)The above statement is driven by our economic dependence on the military contractors which are almost the only manufacturing left in this country.
DaveJ
(5,023 posts)Soldiers need to stay trained and (unfortunately) bloodthirsty in the event something real where to happen. Regardless, we'll be pouring money into the MIC which surely is developing inconceivably advanced weapons they never tell us about, when that effort could be put to such better use.
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)justify its obscenities.
And we ENABLE that by hating the U.N. which in turn allows the IMF/Disaster Capitalism to do whatever IT wants, thus creating fertile ground for those assault weapons merchants.
ALL protected by our NRA bought and paid for Senate, e.g. S. 2205 The Second Amendment Protection Act of 2012 which is a Grover Norquist style oath that senators will not allow the U.S. to participate in U.N. any arms control treaties that affect our gun manufacturers, currently under the sponsorship of Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, but also an aggressive pet protect in the recent past of Rand Paul.
All of the Big Brother/One World Order hysteria on what calls itself "the Left" is part of what makes U.N. haters viable and ultimately all of that causes political pressure for drone programs to deal with "threats" that WE ARE CREATING.
cali
(114,904 posts)everyone would be besties. What I hate so much about this puling analysis- and really it's not deserving of that that word, is that it totally ignores human nature and history and it's essentially the same moronic crap on the other side of the American Exceptionalism coin.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)but your response hardly addressed my post. not that that's news.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)Enrique
(27,461 posts)It appears you are responding to your misunderstanding of what Engelhardt is saying, rather than what he is actually saying. That's not fair to him, and also you are missing out on a good article.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)It's just saying we are exaggerating their capabilities and overreacting militarily.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)every child we obliterate with drones for example.
+1
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)It's called the middle/working/poor of America, and they've been conducting this silent attack on us for the past 45 years (or 400, depending on which historian you ask).
quinnox
(20,600 posts)No wonder they have to try and create a world full of super villains and terrorists to frighten 'Amurikans, we have to protect ourselves!
cartach
(511 posts)and the industrial/military complex encourage and feeds off it.
mother earth
(6,002 posts)money trail, there doesn't have to be a real threat, only a perceived threat...and the war drums drone on...$$$$$$$$
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)Jupiter is far more threatening than Earth. Mankind would last there for less than a microsecomd.
Tom Englehardt's title, "The Enemy-Industrial Complex," makes a lot more sense than yours does.
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)In a weapons producing nation under Jesus
In the fabled crucible of the free world
Camera crews search for clues amid the detritus
And entertainment shapes the land
The way the hammer shapes the hand
Gleaming faces in the checkout counter at the Church of Fame
The lucky winners cheer Casino Nation
All those not on TV only have themselves to blame
And don't quite seem to understand
The way the hammer shapes the hand
Out beyond the ethernet the spectrum spreads
DC to daylight, the cowboy mogul rides
Never worry where the gold for all this glory's gonna come from
Get along dogies, it's coming out of your hides
The intentional cultivation of a criminal class
The future lit by brightly burning bridges
Justice fully clothed to hide the heart of glass
That shatters in a thousand Ruby Ridges
And everywhere the good prepare for perpetual war
And let their weapons shape the plan
The way the hammer shapes the hand
Release date: September 24, 2002
Artist: Jackson Browne
Cool independent animation: http://m.&feature=related
mountain grammy
(26,571 posts)whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)Genius indeed.
mountain grammy
(26,571 posts)Now, the world has to be saved from us.
polly7
(20,582 posts)mountain grammy
(26,571 posts)saved then rebuilt Europe..
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Is China going in there and cutting down their forests.? There is no way they can keep them out, long border They are sandwiched in between China and NK-that must suck.
here's the map, zoom in close to the borders, resourses are stripped and the roads go towards China
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=north+korea&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&rlz=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&ei=aPxrUdnSKNOI2gWwzoCQAQ&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAg
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)That's the American Way.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)In terms of the threats we face, we are definitely in the realm of farce.
North Korea? Iraq? Iran?
These nations are as big a threat as, say, Nazi Germany, which at the time had a population close to our own, and industrial might? Or the Soviet Union?
Might as well cower from and obsess over Grenada....oh, wait...