Chris Hedges: The Enemy Is Within

[ancianita]

This essay is a warning.

You've heard about "The Golden Rule" = Those who got the gold make the rules, right? Well, "The Gun Rule" trumps the golden rule -- Those who got the guns make the rules.

Since the Kennedy coup d'etat in 1963, we have lost civilian command of the military. It's NOT "our" military. It hasn't been for 51 years. Because the military stole our command from us, and because in 2013, Congress named its own country a "battleground" that allows total military control under any commander-in-chief.

Those who care about the Constitution continuing as the law of the land must care about the finalizing of that coup by 2013. The Military Code is nowhere near the same as civilian law. Read up on it.

As undeclared wars (from Korea to Iraq) have circumvented the War Powers Act, so too has undeclared martial law circumvented civilian justice.

One of the most important recent comments made by a fellow DU'er here (I'm sorry I forgot your name!) is that under George W. BushCo.'s pre-crime Patriot Atrocity, here's the gift that Congress gave to the military:

1. There are secret laws.

2. You can unknowingly break those unknown secret laws;

3. You can be charged with breaking those laws you didn’t know existed, and you’re not allowed to tell anyone;

4. You can be tried in a secret court for breaking the secret laws you didn’t know about, and you’re not allowed to tell anyone;

5. You can be indefinitely detained -- effectively "disappeared" from the face of the earth -- and no one will be allowed to know why, where you are, who/what caused your disappearance.

Are we so frightened by the Patriot Act, NDAA of 2013 and our constant undeclared war imperialism that we can't even talk about this? Are we too frightened to conduct our own research into this?

The real enemy is not the left, right, foreigners, the uneducated, ignorant, immigrants or even gun nuts. The enemy is the military that brand you -- me -- or any of us as enemy or insurgent if/when any of us even try to impose -- nevermind regain -- civilian command.

Climate change is important. Taking money out of politics is important. Education and politics are important. But until we regain civilian command of the entire Military Industrial Corporate Complex -- Military Schools, War Colleges, The Pentagon, Defense Contractors -- we won't ever change any those things except by military endorsement. That's why an issue like climate change can recently be labeled a "national security" issue.

This is why Hedges' essay is important. Especially during Labor Day Weekend.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_enemy_is_within_20150906

[Doctor_J]

1. please read, all

Lot of links to the whole background

[navarth]

2. kick!

[sorechasm]

3. Nearly half your taxes go to feed war, nearly a third to feed our debt.

Any wonder why we can't seem to get ahead?

The war machine is not, and almost never has been, a force for liberty or democracy. It does not make us safe. It does not make the world safe. And its immense economic and political power internally, including its management of the security and surveillance state and its huge defense contracts, has turned it into the most dangerous institution in America.

Military expenditures bleed the federal budget—officially—of $598.49 billion a year, or 53.71 percent of all spending. This does not, however, include veterans’ benefits at $65.32 billion a year or hidden costs in other budgets that see the military and the war profiteers take as much as $1.6 trillion a year out of the pockets of taxpayers. The working and middle class fund the endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and a host of other countries while suffering crippling “austerity” programs, massive debt peonage, collapsing infrastructures, chronic underemployment and unemployment and mounting internal repression. The war industry, feeding off the carcass of the state, grows fat and powerful with profits. This is not unique. It is how all empires are hollowed out from the inside. As we are impoverished and stripped of our rights, the tools used to maintain control on the outer reaches of empire—drones, militarized police, indiscriminate violence, a loss of civil liberties, and security and surveillance—are used on us. We have devolved, because of the poison of empire, into a Third World nation with nukes. We are ruled by an omnipotent, corporate oligarchy and their Pretorian Guard. The political class, Republican and Democrat, dances to the tune played by these oligarchs and militarists and mouths the words they want it to say.