How Much is Enough? Peace Action Board Member Larry Wittner on Pentagon largesse

 In Afghanistan, Blogroll, Economy, government contracts, Iraq, military, military budget, Obama Administration, Peace Action, war profiteers

Larry Wittner, long-time activist, professor and author, has a terrific op-ed on History News Network on the gigantic U.S. military budget. Check it out and feel free to re-post and forward.

Recent Posts
Showing 6 comments
  • James Rogers
    Reply

    If we had real peace, there would not only be no war, there would be no preparation for war. The problem is there are some high rankers on the globe who really don’t want war gaming to end because they would stop enriching themselves. Moguls running the movie industry, for example. Remember the great war movies and how many millions of dollars filled their pockets?

    For a long time we’ve been trying to stop the games of war. The warring does not stop, but gets more violent and deadly. Shouldn’t we have realized by now that we’ve been doing the wrong things? We can hardly be unaware that our stupendous efforts at letter writing, telephone calling, meeting attending, peace rallies, persuasive talking and so on are ineffective exercises in futility. We are ignored, the wars continue, and a few million-billionaires get richer because the U.S.American young lives sacrificed on bloody, noisy battlefields make it happen. And richer. How much richer do they get for every innocent person (including the military) killed in wars? A person who invests in wars does not want the wars to stop.
    Anti war rhetoric is as self-contradictory as as the notion that making war will bring an end to warring. What would you call it? Diseased logic? Stupidity? Manifest ignorance? All of these? Or do you prefer another denote? It keeps the focus on war and fear of war, paralyzes creative thought, dooms our efforts at peacemaking to tragic failure, and may be counter-productive because the way we’ve been doing it actually promotes the causes of war.
    That’s a strange thing to say, isn’t it? Reverse psychology, like the forces that drove Patty Hearst to such devotion for her captors that she committed heinous crimes in their behalf when told to do so.
    War games are a human obsession. No other animal goes to war. I consider warring a consequence of intellectual malignancy and, like any other psychological perversion, it can be cured. Presently, even our own efforts, though claiming to be anti-war, not only feed the obsession to violence but intensity it, because we are as caught up in the war-making paradigm vicious cycling as the generals, presidents and kings who order us to sacrifice the youth of U.S.America to the “gods” of war who, interestingly, have ordinary human names, and make millions from it.

    We need to change our strategy. This does not mean stop letter writing, meeting attending, peace rallies, persuasive talking or anything else we do to bring peace to the world. We only have to change the content of our messages from anti-war to meaningful pro-peace exhortation, and thereby open avenues to activities that will indeed bring peace.
    To weaken the obsession with war-making and strengthen the ideology of peace, we must change the way people think and we must target young minds before growth and standard programming make them rigid. As Hillary Clinton said in 1999 in a meeting at the White House, we must “AIM AT THE CHILDREN”. More. We must aim directly at the children with peace-oriented literature and conversation; and indirectly as well as directly at their parents and especially at their teachers. If we can persuade the teachers, our clout will be multiplied manifold. But first we must begin with ourselves. We must learn to think in terms of peace, not of anti-war. Change the vocabulary we use. Absence of war does not equal peace. Absence of war is a time of preparation for the next war. It is an endless cycle that humans have suffered for at least fifteen thousand years. First we must be perfectly clear about what is required. We must accept and organize our lives according to ethics principles. This “shape-change” may sound formidable and indeed, for some people it may be so, but it is really quite simple. We who seek peace in our time must intervene and break the vicious cycle.

  • MixailJul
    Reply

    Месяц назад я искала новую душевую
    кабину в дом. Долго искали что-нибудь красивое, чтобы понравилось семье
    и подходило по дизайну ванной комноты. Обошли не один магазин, но ничего орегинального не нашлось.
    Случайно нашли сайт, где разные идеи для дома и квартир http://mokroemesto.ru
    Интересные статьи идей по интерьеру, дизайну и ремонту.

  • imminnada
    Reply

    Продажа квартиры, центр, Киев

    Квартира 70 кв.м. в стиле модерн. Кухня-столовая, гостиная, 2 спальни, джакузи, итальянская мебель.Панорамный вид на Ботанический сад и Батыеву гору, лицеи, рестораны, удобная транспортная развязка, респешн, офисный центр, паркинг, охрана. 3 минуты до Крещатика.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMdynXy43C8&feature=player_embedded#at=21

    Обращатся по телефону:
    38 050 840 43 78
    +1 305 781 0779

  • jerrysamon
    Reply

    LifeCell Wrinkle Cream is a product that will give you results quite similar to Botox injections or cosmetic surgery.

  • sommerhus købes på fyn
    Reply

    I comment when I especially enjoy a post on a site or I have something to contribute to the conversation.
    Usually it’s caused by the passion displayed in the article I looked at. And after this post How Much is Enough? Peace Action Board Member Larry Wittner on Pentagon largesse « Peace Action Blog. I was actually excited enough to drop a leave a responsea response 😛 I do have 2 questions for you if it’s allright.

    Is it just me or do some of these remarks look like they are left by brain dead visitors?
    😛 And, if you are posting on other social sites,
    I would like to keep up with you. Could you make a list the
    complete urls of all your communal pages like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or
    twitter feed?

  • fritidshus Sjælland
    Reply

    I enjoy what you guys tend to be up too. This kind of clever work and exposure!

    Keep up the fantastic works guys I’ve included you guys to my own blogroll.

Leave a Comment

Start typing and press Enter to search