Robert Scheer at Truthdig discusses the eternal war envisioned by Mitt Romney:
Poor President Obama, as Colin Powell pointed out in endorsing him Thursday, clearly holds what should be a winning hand in the war-on-terror game, and yet Mitt Romney and his neocon speechwriters won’t cut him any slack. Suddenly it’s not Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida that matter, but rather the military threat from Red China that is killing us with slick iPhones and cheap solar panels.
Throw in some good old Russia baiting, and if Romney has his way, the military-industrial complex will get its beloved Cold War back despite the fact that the communist threat is now one of conquering space on the shelves at Wal-Mart. Obama, the naive community organizer, thinks the foreign policy debate is about national security, but Romney, the quintessential vulture capitalist, knows that it’s always been about maximizing profit.
The neocon argument seems to go something like this: no matter how much the U.S. spends on its military (currently more than all other countries combined, despite winding down the wars in Iraq and Afganistan), the U.S. is still dangerously undermilitarized. No explanation for this conclusion is ever given and no military goals are ever stated, so it’s hard to attack their argument (other than by simply pointing out, “They’re insane”).
The function of the military is to protect the government from its enemies. The function of the police is to protect the civilians from each other. When the military and the police are one and the same, the civilians become the enemy.