The toll of permanent war

What is the domestic damage done by a country that lurches from war to war? Chris Hedges proposes an answer at Truthdig.com: countries that are perennially at war get eaten up from the inside out:

It is a state of permanent war that is finishing off the liberal traditions in Israel and the United States. The moral and intellectual trolls—the Dick Cheneys, the Avigdor Liebermans, the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads—personify the moral nihilism of perpetual war. They manipulate fear and paranoia. They abolish civil liberties in the name of national security. They crush legitimate dissent. They bilk state treasuries. They stoke racism.

“War,” Randolph Bourne commented acidly, “is the health of the state.”

Hedges further alleges that Obama is not in a hurry to stop the wars, because it's too much of an uphill climb and it's, in the long run, beneficial to Obama (as it was to Bush):

They support its destructive fury because it funds them. They validate its evil assumptions because to take them on is political suicide. They repeat the narrative of fear because it keeps us dormant. They do this because they have become weaker than the corporate forces that profit from permanent war.

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Jesse Ventura on torture

Jesse Ventura appeared on The View and spoke plain truth about torture, i.e., waterboarding is torture. If you can bear it, listen to Elisabeth Hasselbeck chattering away in support of torture (even though she claims that she is against torture). Ventura won't put up with Hasselbeck's inanity, and puts the blame squarely where it belongs, given that U.S. torture hasn't exactly been a recent revelation to anyone who gave a crap about it.

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Rumsfeld’s religious war

I'm truly disgusted to learn of newest evidence for the religious underpinnings for Donald Rumsfeld's (and George Bush's) thought process. GQ has revealed that Rumsfeld authored an entire series of Bible/war memos, "Top Secret Briefings," to get Bush fired up that he was on God's side in a Manichean struggle.

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine.

For those who say that religion is good, that is sometimes true. Many people have been inspired by religion to channel their natural empathy into acts of kindness. To those who say religion is dangerous, that is also sometimes true, as witnessed by America's religious war waged in Iraq. Thanks to the Bush Administration's application of religion, 100,000 people are dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, and millions of Iraqis who have lost their homes. I would say, as a general rule that we should always discourage violence in the name of religion. Religion is too often a potent mind-altering trip. Too often, it causes people to unplug their pre-frontal cortices, so that their base instincts, especially their xenophobia, rise's to the top. Religion is too often used to concoct needless imaginary lines between and among groups of people, resulting in growing distrust, which too often ripens into seething hate. Bottom line: Thanks to Rumsfeld's (and Bush's) embrace of what we now know (better than ever) to be religious violence, our "secular" government was able to conclude that their religious ends justified their military means, and that any lie, any torture, and any amount of collateral damage was justified. All of this in the name of God.

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More details about torture conducted by the U.S.

Details of the senseless torture committed by Americans continue to come out, but many details have been easily available for several years. Consider this 2006 article by Esquire, which I found at the Daily Dish. It is incredibly disturbing not only because of the behavior of the personnel, but because the information inexorably points to complicity by high-ranking officers and members of the Bush Administration.

[W]hen Church issued his report in March 2005, it found "no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse" and blamed all the trouble with torture on rogue soldiers.

That's when Fishback contacted Garlasco.

Bottom Line: I am concerned that the Army is deliberately misleading the American people about detainee treatment within our custody. This behavior violates the professional military ethic of "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do" and it violates the constitutional principle of a government accountable to the people.

MARC GARLASCO PUSHES the tape recorder across the table, a little closer to Jeff . . .

This is where one of the stories begins. It's one of many disturbing stories, they are increasingly coming out, and they are all pointing to systematic torture, not just a rogue soldier here or there. It's time for Congressional hearings and war crimes prosecutions. Shouldn't we move forward, though? Yes, we should. We should move forward through this unseemly American conduct, not around it. We need to understand how this could have happened, or else it will occur again at the whim of the military. If it isn't prosecuted, it will occur at the whim of state and local police. We need to look at this conduct up close, as difficult as it is. We need those who were responsible, especially high-ranking officials, to feel intense shame.

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A long-time admirer of Israel is disillusioned

In a U.K. Guardian article entitled, "The Paradox of Israel's Pursuit of Might," long-time admirer of Israel Max Hastings writes of his disillusionment regarding Israel's ambitions:

I was a correspondent there in October 1973, during the Yom Kippur war. It was an extraordinarily moving spectacle, to behold the people of Israel rallying to meet what they perceived as a threat to their national survival. One morning I stood on the Golan Heights and watched Israeli tanks duelling with the Syrians, amid pillars of smoke and flame . . . For someone like me, who enjoyed a love affair with Israel 40 years ago, it is heart-breaking to see the story come to such a pass. It is because so many of us so much want to see Israel prosper in security and peace that we share a sense of tragedy that 61 years after the state was born amid such lofty ideals, it should be led by such a man as Bibi Netanyahu, committed to policies which can yield nothing honourable or lasting.

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