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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Laureate undone spins Halloween ghost stories to keep public paying for war


From Jack A. Smith’s “‘Peace’ president’s war record”
Excerpt, editing 
By Carolyn Bennett

GWBushBama Global War on Terror
Home and abroad

U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign/military policy is a virtual continuation of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terrorism under a different name, Jack Smith writes. The Nobel laureate “has extended Bush’s wars to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere while ─

Greatly expanding the war in Afghanistan
Hiking the military budget
Encouraging the growth of militarism in U.S. society
Tightening the military encirclement of China


Laureate undone

An indicator of the Bush-Obama 11-year Afghan folly is the recent two thousandth death of a U.S. soldier ─ not at the hands of Taliban, but by a supposed ally, a U.S.-trained Afghan police officer.

Contrary to popular opinion in the United States, Afghan public opinion “has always overwhelmingly opposed the invasion,” Smith writes. 

Other indicators of a Nobel laureate undone are these:

Middle East and Far East in turmoil, experiencing troubled relations with Washington
Israel threatens attack Iran, an act that would transform turmoil into catastrophe.
Syria’s government refuses to fall, much to Washington’s chagrin.
Egypt’s new government declares partial independence from Washington domination.
Palestinians’ conditions worsen in the Obama era.
Relations with China and Russia are in decline


Halloween ghost stories
Default position: Lies stoking fear
Only one nation used
nuclear weapons of mass destruction
against civilians of another nation:
the United States of America

The president’s election declarations occasionally exaggerate increasing threats and hazards confronting the American people, a situation only he can manage. Overstating the threats confronting the United States is a constant practice for Democratic and Republican presidents and political candidates.

Former president George W. Bush at times sounded as if he were reciting Halloween ghost stories to gullible children. He excelled in bringing the mendacious practice of exaggerating threats to the United States to its zenith.

Referencing historian and academic Andrew J. Bacevich, Jack A. Smith recalls:

The national-security state derives its raison d’être from ─ and vigorously promotes a belief in ─ the existence of looming national peril….

What worked during the Cold War [fear of the ‘Communist menace’ and nuclear war] still works today: to get Americans on board with your military policy ─ scare the hell out of them.

Today this practice is intended to frighten the public into uncomplainingly investing tax money into the largest military/national security budget in the world — about $1.4 trillion this year (up to $700 billion for the Pentagon and an equal amount for national security).

Scaring the public into submission Smith says serves an elite ruling class that determines the course of empire:

It sustains the most powerful military apparatus in history [and]

It ensures a huge annual infusion of government cash (a stimulus?) into the economy via the military-industrial complex ─ without the ‘stigma’ of being called a welfare-like plan to create jobs or benefit the people.



Sources and notes

“‘Peace’ president’s war record: how Obama melted down his Nobel Prize to make bullets” (Jack A. Smith, Counterpunch, October 16, 2012, at Stop the War –UK, http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/usa-war-on-terror/1954-the-peace-presidents-war-record-how-obama-melted-down-his-nobel-prize-to-make-bullets

Jack A. Smith is the editor of the Activist Newsletter and is former editor of the (U.S.) Guardian Newsweekly. http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/ or jacdon@earthlink.net or
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/16/obamas-war-record/



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