From the Virginia Bill of Rights of June 12, 1776:
13. That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
http://www.constitution.org/bor/vir_bor.htm
The occupation of the the office of president by Bush and Cheney has destroyed the myth of American exceptionalism.
Posted by citizen Able at March 3, 2007 08:37 AMPhallic worship in the form of the Myth of Exceptionalism is rooted in a combination of Arthurian Aquitaine legend and Viking berserkang. A romantification of the usurping of traditional matriarchal agrarian culture. Every culture has it's rights of passage, it's marks of manhood; the white eyes, it seems, is to in adolescent tantrum destroy everyone, and everything, around them.
Seems to me that would have disterous long term consequence.
Posted by Thomas Ware at March 3, 2007 08:40 AMlook at http://www.amazon.com/Dominion-War-Liberty-America-1500-2000/dp/0143036513/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-5590670-4193223?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1172940549&sr=8-1
The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (Paperback)
by Fred Anderson (Author), Andrew Cayton
there is a new school of american history being developed in contrast to the exceptionalism school
Thanks, excellent post.
Bush has submitted a military budget requesting an amount - that exceeds the GNP of all but 14 countries. No doubt the Democrats will be trying to increase this amount to demonstrate their resolve.
Madness. However, I am more pessimistic than Taibbi. This stuff is so deeply seated that it is beyond change. It will just run its course to an outcome that will be catastrophic for everyone.
I recommend The New American Militarism by Andrew J. Bacevich on this subject. A good summary can be found here
Posted by tgs at March 3, 2007 10:15 AMWars are ugly. In order to win a war, unspeakable things happen. In WW II we firebombed Japan and Germany. We nuked Japan. But these are the things that defeat the other side. Wills are broken. Peace at any cost is the result.
Today, we fight a politically correct war. We try to avoid the unspeakable things. We don't break the will of the other side, but encourage opposition.
Unless we are willing to do the unspeakable, wars will be difficult if not impossible to win.
Wars are not clean and pretty. Wars are not safe. War should never be taken lightly. Wars should be fought to win. Wars are ugly.
Posted by muckdog at March 3, 2007 10:16 AMan unprovoked wars are criminal
Posted by benjoya at March 3, 2007 10:17 AMWar should never be taken lightly.
"WMDs in Iraq," anyone?
"Greeting us with flowers," anyone?
"Iraqi resistance limited and Iraqi citizens welcoming," anyone?
"It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months," anyone?
"What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. . . . Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," anyone?
"I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months," anyone?
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator," anyone?
Wars are not clean and pretty.
Fucking republi-con idiot.
Posted by phidipides at March 3, 2007 10:54 AMMuckfool, you really should send your stirring war poem in to the Army Times, you're a regular T.S. Eliot!
WARS....by Muckfool (2007):
Wars and not clean...and pretty
Wars are not safe--
Wars should never be [under]taken lightly.
Wars should be fought....
to WIN. We are willing to do
The Unspeakable....to....win?
Wars are ugly. Brains are broken.
(silence)
I predict a Pulitzer for our own Muckdog! And to think we knew him when he was just an ordinary Authoritarian Rightist! An amoral nothing!
Posted by euzoius at March 3, 2007 11:32 AMTime for all of us to put Chalmers Johnson's "Nemesis" on our reading list?
Posted by Marie at March 3, 2007 12:38 PMmuckdog,
Japan was defeated by the American submarine campaign on their maritme logistics.
Germany was defeated by the Soviet army which engaged nearly two thirds of the Wehrmacht.
Neither the Soviet army nor American submarines engaged in strategic bombing of enemy cities.
Posted by Pvt. Keepout at March 3, 2007 03:01 PMJapan was defeated by the American submarine campaign on their maritme logistics.
If we didn't fire bomb them and nuke them, we'd still be there fighting a war of "occupation" and losing troops everyday.
Posted by muckdog at March 3, 2007 04:19 PMIf we didn't fire bomb them and nuke them, we'd still be there fighting a war of "occupation" and losing troops everyday.
That's why we have 1,000 military bases in this world. We never left. You don't have much of a grasp of history, do you?
Posted by phidipides at March 3, 2007 05:28 PMMuckdog, our exponent of "the windpipe-slitting art", recommends to us for our edification, the campaigns of Bush and Cheney, who, like those treacherous war-dogs of Shakespearean tragedy, Macbeth and Richard III, "are in blood so deep" they "cannot turn back".
Posted by Copeland at March 3, 2007 09:03 PMMatt Taibbi has written a really wise column. The problem with having our entire economy based on the military, every problem is a nail for our hammer to hit. Can we ever reclaim language that allows an honest discussion of conflict resolution rather than war?
Posted by Mary at March 3, 2007 10:48 PM"War should never be taken lightly."
They sure shouldn't. I think our blind hog has found his acorn.
So, muckdog, when will you decide this war is important enough to pay for it, instead of putting it on our grandkids' charge card?
I know The Greatest Generation thought WWII was important. One piece of evidence is that they paid a 90% top marginal income tax rate. Bushco made sure they and their buddies got a top rate cut (from 39.6%) for this one.
Posted by bartcopfan at March 5, 2007 09:28 AM"Unless we are willing to do the unspeakable...."
And congrats for "supporting the troops", by which I mean justifying our enemies' T-O-R-T-U-R-E of any of our fighting men and women unfortunate enough to get captured.
You and your Kool-Aid drinkers have taken the moral high-ground that heroes and martyrs gave us from Bataan, stalags, and gulags (shoot, I'll even throw in Calvary!) and thrown it away with both hands. Nice job.
Posted by bartcopfan at March 5, 2007 09:35 AM