PeteFree.comAccording to the Washington Post, the US military and Industrial Complex have been lying — is that news?
© 2019 Peter Free
10 December 2019
Background to today's blurb about complacence
The American Conservative's Daniel Larison synopsized the "do tell" news this way:
An extensive investigation by The Washington Post into a trove of confidential documents has found that the government has been deliberately misleading the public about the war in Afghanistan with dishonest claims of progress senior officials knew to be untrue.
The revelations in the report show that our political and military leadership has been constantly violating the public’s trust for the sake of perpetuating a futile war.
These documents have come to light now only because the Post sued to force SIGAR [— the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction —] to release them.
The ill-advised pursuit of “nation-building” also led to a spending spree that achieved little except to fuel monumental corruption that our government then chose to tolerate.
The report confirms what many of us have known for some time. The war in Afghanistan cannot be won.
Our political and military leaders have been lying to us about the progress of the war practically since it began, and those lies have kept the U.S. needlessly at war for more than 18 years.
© 2019 Daniel Larison, The Lies That Keep America At War, American Conservative (09 December 2019) (excerpts)
None of this is new, obviously
But that has not stopped howls of suddenly expressed outrage.
Like this one, for instance:
How do you convince young people to join an institution whose leadership — civilian as well as military — is prepared to sacrifice them for a lost cause, and then lie, and lie, and lie about it?
How do you convince mothers and fathers to send their sons and daughters with confidence to that military?
How do you convince taxpayers to support throwing more money into the sh*thole that is the Pentagon’s budget?
[J]ust what kind of order do we have in America anyway?
Why do I owe it my loyalty?
What does it mean to be a patriot when you cannot trust the nation’s leaders and institutions?
These are the kinds of questions that, depending on how they are answered, can lead to the unraveling, and even the overthrow, of a regime.
It has been said that the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was a prime mover in the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet system.
We are not the Soviet Union — but I wouldn’t be so quick to take comfort in that, if I were a political or military leader.
© 2019 Rod Dreher, Our Lying Military, Our Lying Government, American Conservative (09 December 2019)
A rising up, Mr. Dreher?
Don't make me laugh. Americans are sheep. Notably gullible ones,
This complacence-oriented trait is exactly why our militaristic system of propagandizing and pillaging extortion has worked so well.
Another example of questionably timed anger
Barbara Boland wrote that:
[N]o one has been held accountable for the vast U.S. taxpayer dollars—not to mention, blood, sweat, and tears—wasted on a vast exercise for a purpose that even the principle players seem unable to identify.
These papers show a clear attempt to mislead and deceive the American people about the extent of the administrative and bureaucratic waste and incompetence that was occurring.
© 2019 Barbara Boland, 5 Infuriating Takeaways From The ‘Afghanistan Papers’, American Conservative (10 December 2019) (excerpts)
Since when has any Adam Henry in American power ever been held genuinely accountable for anything?
Seems a little late to be waling about government and military duplicity now.
Extortionate military pillaging has been going on, in plain sight, for many decades.
One would think that the influential people howling now, should have been yelling long ago.
The moral? — Who are the Military Industrial Complex's enablers?
Y'all in the press.
And anyone else who uncuriously believes the rah-rah paranoia that the Establishment feeds us.