militarism

Let’s stop showering the world with Bomb Love

Jeff Huber is a retired Naval commander who provides a pretty refreshing insiderish perspective on our runaway military culture. This is a typical offering. He is also one of the few writers who have mentioned the one thing that makes our insane military state superfluous. Two things, actually: the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The oceans and our size provide us with ample security protection, just as they did in the day of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin. No one can invade and occupy us. Nobody would ever be crazy enough to pop a nuclear missile off in our direction, or in the direction of any of our friends (do we have any of those left?)

No one is interested in competing with us militarily, not even Russia or China. Let’s start coming home and fixing our own problems, and take the world off our shoulders. It will get along fine without us bombing it on a regular basis.

He also is nicely succinct in dismissing the Iran hysteria that afflicts both parties

Iran serves a vital role in the Pentagon’s long war strategy. It’s a neo-East Germany; a pseudo-client state of Russia, plopped in the middle of the Middle East. It gives us a reason to keep troops located in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though none of the 9/11 attackers came from Iraq or even Afghanistan and certainly not from Iran.

Iran is an excuse to keep the war machine rolling.

Iran’s defense budget is less than one percent of ours. It can’t project conventional land power much beyond its borders. Its navy is a coast guard and its air force is a junkyard. It doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program. Yet we’re up in arms about it. How senseless.

And he saves some choice words for a former ViceCo-President:

Speaking of senseless, Dick Cheney is on the rampage again. He is the most dishonest, most misguided villain of the 21st century, but when he speaks, he gets more bandwidth than the World Series, the Super Bowl and Internet porn combined. He’s not even attractive to look at or listen to, and he has a proven track record of not knowing what he’s talking about. He’s a militaristic dipswitch.

Huber is often on antiwar.com, and has a blog at Pen and Sword. He is also one of the few writers to follow the grotesque acts of insubordination and/or treason by top military brass. See General Treachery.

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