McCrystal Scandal Shows Us the Military No Longer Protects America -- It Guards Empire

[unhappycamper]

McCrystal Scandal Shows Us the Military No Longer Protects America -- It Guards Empire
June 24, 2010
AlterNet / By Frank Schaeffer

June 24, 2010 | The Obama/McChrystal debacle is symptomatic of a wider divide -- the widening estrangement between our civilian elites and our military. McChrystal deserved to be fired and has been. But this event is a symptom of a bigger problem.

General McChrystal's disdain for President Obama did not arise in a vacuum. The context is: 1) the disconnect between our "all-volunteer military" -- that is now really a professional mercenary force by another name -- and the civilian political leadership with less and less personal military service experience. And 2) the fact that the Republican Party has wrapped itself in the flag while the Democrats have had a harder time distancing themselves from some voices that have been perceived as offensively anti-military within their big tent.

The real reason that Rolling Stone was able to quote so many highly placed military people's disdain for members of the Obama administration is because the military sees itself as more moral and better -- and certainly more conservative -- than the types who serve in civilian roles today, especially within a Democratic administration.

Disclosure: I'm someone who has experienced this "disconnect" first hand. When my son volunteered for the Marines it was a shock to me. As a typical member of the white upper middle classes, as a writer living in Boston and as someone who never served, I was shocked by his choice.

My son John and I wrote a book describing our journey together to a place where I came to value the military and he came to understand my post-Vietnam parental anxiety: Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps. What we both discovered is that class warfare is part of the equation. Our "kind" just don't volunteer much these days. I then co-authored another book (this time with former Clinton appointee Kathy Roth-Douquet) on this problem, AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country.

[Swamp Rat]

1. It's run by private contractors who have no problem killing Americans in their own towns and homes

Welcome to the 21st Century American Dystopia.

[Hubert Flottz]

2. 21st Century

The more things change the more they stay the same.

[HillbillyBob]

6. There was also the Battle of Blair Mountain WV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Mountain

Which was put on the national preservation list 2 years ago, then removed with shenanigans from coal cos so they can blow it up for mining the coal..and of course destroying union history.

"The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest organized armed uprising in United States labor history and led almost directly to the labor laws currently in effect in the United States. For nearly a week in late August and early September 1921, in Logan County, West Virginia, between 10,000 and 15,000 coal miners confronted company-paid private detectives in an effort to unionize the southwestern West Virginia mine counties. Unionization had succeeded elsewhere as part of a demographic boom that was triggered by the extension of the railroad and was characterized by unprecedented immigrant hiring in the region."

snip

"Result--Setback of Miners' rights until early 1930s when Federal Government recognized American labor unions."

snip
"Sheriff of Logan County, Don Chafin (1887–1954),<1> had begun to set up defenses on Blair Mountain. Chafin was supported financially by the Logan County Coal Operators Association creating the nation's largest private armed force of nearly 2,000."
snip
There is much more in this involved story..my point is that the mine cos used names of dead people and people who do not actually own land on Blair Mountain were used write compliant against this becoming a real national park so they can blow it up for the coal under it and destroy our heritages with it.
I have relatives all over WV and our family has been in what is now WV for 8 generations.

[saigon68]

3. Thugs in Uniform

They do look at themselves as "More Moral"

There are a lot of Christian Killers there ready to grease a few "Rag Heads" (their words--also see the epithet "Sand Nigger"

[JohnnyLib2]

4. Which brings us to the recruiters in high schools.....

My sense is that what was formerly gung-ho patriotism is deliberately corrupted. Bait and switch, etc. :banghead:

[Mika]

5. War is a Racket

War is a Racket
A speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm

---

[unhappycamper]

7. Cool. Two unreccs to get off the Greatest page.

I guess the Empire lovers take exception to the OP.

[Octafish]

8. K&R for Truth

It went from "4" to "2" before I got to the Post Page. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

For those interested in learning, rather than shutting up discussion:

Know your BFEE: Scions of the Military Industrial Complex

Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit.

Know your BFEE: America’s Ruling Gangster Class

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

IMFO, DU stands for Truth. What do those who stand in the way of Truth stand for?

[unhappycamper]

9. Thanks. That make four unrecs now. n/t

[Ikonoklast]

10. The military runs on oil. They need it, like a drug.

No oil, no military.

Foreign country with oil not friendly our government?

Send in the CIA to destabilize it, set up an oppressive right-wing puppet government easy to bribe and control, and the military gets their oil.


Along with their oil, they get a war to wage against the legally elected government of that country, justifying their existence.


Lather, rinse, repeat.

They have become a parasite to this nation.

[closeupready]

11. Yes, those deploying troops seem to be using them to defend financial and commercial interests

abroad, NOT to fight just wars.

[Octafish]

12. If this were a democracy, the wars would've been over long ago.

Wars enrich and empower the very few. And they are a certain class of sociopath.

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich