PsychoSy
06-14-04, 05:04 AM
I said it once and I'll say it again: the modern U.S. Army is the official armed wing of The GOP ... :p
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2004/06/09/news/01lead.txt
Former JAG calls for Fort McCoy's commander's removal
A civilian Army lawyer is calling on the Pentagon to remove Fort McCoy's garrison commander for improper involvement in President Bush's La Crosse campaign rally. Col. Danny Nobles "needs to be removed from command immediately," said attorney Al Novotne, Fort McCoy's ethics counselor. "He's free to resign or retire and get involved in politics, but not while having troops under his command."
Col. Nobles's offense? Attending the Bush rally in uniform! :nono:
Novotne said appearing at a campaign event in uniform is "strictly prohibited" by the Army. "When I was a JAG officer, I had a client who went to jail for that," he said.
It would be easy to write this off as the partisan excesses of a single officer - y'know ... on the same level as General Jerry "holy war" Boykin's practice of speaking to conservative fundamentalist congregations while in uniform -- but there is a difference and not just because Col. Nobles boarded the Republican mothership rather than one of its religious auxiliary craft.
The difference in this case? The commander also brought a few hundred of his troops with him ... :eek:
The Veterans of Foreign Wars District 11 "sponsored" the trip and provided white T-shirts emblazoned with an American flag to 500 soldiers, according to the Wisconsin VFW News. The back of the shirts said, "I am an American soldier." At Copeland Park, the troops were observed walking and running in formation. Novotne said soldiers have told him they were under the direction of senior non-commissioned officers and were not free to go off on their own.
The defense offered by the GOP's local functionaries is that the soldiers asked to attend the rally "so they could show their support for their commander-in-chief before getting shipped out to fight the war on terrorism." And, of course, they were also given those t-shirts to wear. So at least they weren't in uniform.
So how could anyone -- except maybe some pinko terrorist lover -- complain about something so innocuous? ;)
Well I wouldn't - if not for the fact that we already have several thousand years of history to draw examples of what happens when the armed forces of a powerful state dabble in politics - or, worse still, allow themselves to be transformed into the personal shocktroops of a political leader or party. It doesn't necessarily happen all at once, or as the result of a traditional military coup d'état. The story of the German army's entry into politics after World War I - first as a source of weapons and freelance talent for right-wing militias (the so-called "Freikorps") then as an actor in the parliamentary conspiracies that brought the Nazis to power, and finally as a key player in the "Night of the Long Knives," which consolidated Hitler's personal rule - may not be directly relevant to contemporary America, but its a powerful lesson in how gradualism can obscure some truly revolutionary institutional changes. The actors involved don't even need to have a long-run plan. Using the Wisconsin case as an example, it's easy to see how matters might progress, absent external constraints.
Once the precedent has been established that Army soldiers on active duty may be "invited" to party campaign rallies in unit formation and under the discipline of their commanding officers, it's easy to imagine some creative GOP hack developing a standard t-shirt (let's say with a red, white and blue color design) for those troops to wear. If the t-shirt design catches on, then some other party hack might well develop a proprietary patriotic logo - something distinctly identifiable as a Republican Party symbol - to go on those t-shirts. (With their "I am an American soldier" slogan, the LaCrosse GOP is almost there already!) Having the troops all wear arm bands with the new party logo on them would also look kind of cool ... But standing around in the sun waiting for the leader to appear can be hot work, so it wouldn't be too surprising if some local GOP chapters started giving the soldiers baseball caps with that patriotic party logo on the front. And since you now have all these splendid young hunks standing around in their snazzy party outfits and -- since their drill sergeants are also on hand -- why not do something fun to entertain the crowd ............ like having the troops parade in formation past the leader on his podium.
What would be the harm in that? :angel:
And if the troops are going to parade, why not have them salute? Of course, using the standard military salute might be a little obvious. So why not create a new party salute - like, say, banging a clenched fist on the heart, or -- better yet -- extending a stiffened right arm, fingers pointed towards the leader in a gesture of obedience and respect. Imagine the effect it would have on the crowd - all those handsome young heros, marching in perfect lockstep, showing their loyalty to their commander in chief ... and if he were to give the party salute back, expressing his dedication to the sacred cause of defending the homeland ... *swoons* ...
Hahah, let's see them dirty liberal Democrats try to compete with that!! ;) :D
Before my crucifixion begins, lemme finish -- if you've ever read the folktale about "stone soup," then you already know where I'm going with this. The bottom line is ... once a step has been taken, the next may seem logical, even inevitable. Which is why the U.S. military traditionally has been extremely touchy about displays of overt partisanship like the ones we're seeing these days - usually, although not always, in middle management ranks: the colonels, majors and captains who embody the "corporate culture" of the professional officer corps. I realize this is not, by far, the most dangerous trend at work inside the military-industrial complex right now. The "privatization" of war: the growing role of defense contractors not just as setlers and camp followers, but as a new type of corporate combat force (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/05/ma_365_01.html) - beyond both military and civilian forms of accountability - probably holds that rank. By transferring the means of military production from the Pentagon to corporate hands, the administration isn't just trying to replace an "Enronized" military culture with the original model, it's undermining one of the core characteristics of sovereignty - the state's monopoly on organized violence. And that's a much bigger deal, and a much bigger threat to democratic institutions, than the creation of a new t-shirted "Republican Guard."
But the increasingly partisan complexion of the U.S. officer corps was one of the prime causes of the fictional "American military coup of 2012" described in this celebrated 1992 article (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/parameters/1992/dunlap.htm) in the U.S Army War College journal Parameters, which has been getting fresh attention lately ...
Little thought was given the long-term consequences of limiting the pool from which our military leadership was drawn. The result was a much more uniformly oriented military elite whose outlook was progressively conservative.
Of course, in our polarized electorate, conservative now means Republican - even more so than when the article was written. And the Republican Party has become enthralled by a kind of GOP cult of a leader rooted in the theology of Christian fundamentalism but with militaristic overtones. It's easy to see these trends converging -- an increasingly partisan officer corps, an authoritarian conservative movement that longs for a divinely inspired hero, a private army of corporate contractors answerable only to their Pentagon taskmasters. Add an endless undefined war against a mysterious unseen enemy, then shake!! :)
Chalmers Johnson, the ex-CIA analyst turned anti-imperialist, recently described (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0610-09.htm) the imperial archipelago these trends have already created outside the U.S. homeland:
According to the Pentagon's annual inventory of real estate - its so-called Base Structure Report - we have over 725 military bases in some 132 countries around the world. This vast network of American bases constitutes a new form of empire - an empire of military enclaves rather than of colonies as in older forms of imperialism.
Johnson also describes the social environment being created inside these hermetically sealed enclaves - which, perversely, increasingly resemble the "military cities" (http://www.cerc.unimelb.edu.au/bulletin/99dec.htm) of the old Soviet Union and its client states (http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs/issues/egypt/egypt.htm):
For their occupants, these bases are not necessarily unpleasant places to live and work. Military service today, which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to the duties of a soldier during World War II or the Korean or Vietnamese wars. Most chores like laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), guard duty, and cleaning latrines have been subcontracted to private military companies. About $30 billion, fully one-third of the funds appropriated for the war in Iraq, are going into private American hands for exactly such services.
The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns in the Bible Belt rather than neighborhoods in the big population centers of the United States ... Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, self-contained world serviced by its own airline - the Air Mobility Command - that links our outposts from Greenland to Australia.
The result - or a byproduct - of these containments is the creation of a separate military subculture, one which has less and less in common with the secular, culturally libertarian side of U.S. society - i.e. "blue state" America. It also tends to shield (http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/26/rush_limbaugh/index.html) service people, especially long-service career professionals, from dissenting opinions and non-conservative, non-authoritarian values. Which no doubt is why some of our Middle Eastern clients states are spending billions to create (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/gulf/sa-service.htm) their own military enclaves ...
The [Saudi] government spent huge sums of money ... in order to increase the attractiveness of military careers ... {including] excellent family housing for married officers and NCOs ... modern barracks for unmarried personnel {and} ... also offered excellent schools, hospitals, convenient shopping centers, and recreational facilities.
The growth of a separate military subculture - with its own institutions, values and loyalties, and a generally poor opinion of civilian institutions, values and loyalties - certainly isn't anything new, not even for the United States. The main historical differences between the U.S. armed forces and, say, the army of Guatemala, are that the pre-World War II American military was much smaller, relative to size of the country and its economic resources, and, of course, had a more deeply ingrained respect for civilian authority. But of those two differences the first - relative size - may have been the more important. And has Chalmers Johnson rightly notes, it's no longer a difference at all. Just the opposite in fact: The U.S. military establishment now lays claim to resources that most empires - much less Latin American banana republics - could only dream about.
In a less ideologically divided country - like the America of the middle Cold War years - a huge military establishment may face less pressure to play an overtly partisan role. And even a heavily mobilized society may not necessarily be a militaristic one, especially if its officers must rely on an army of drafted citizen soldiers. But when a country divides along cultural as well as ideological lines, it's no surprise an institution as important and powerful as the U.S. career military finds it impossible to stay on the political fence. Ironically, the loser in these kinds of situations is usually the military itself - which is basically what the author of "The American Military Coup of 2012" was trying to warn about. Few military establishments have placed themselves at the disposal of a specific political party or leader and emerged without enormous damage - or, as in the Wehrmacht's case, total destruction. The American professional military, which sided so openly with the Republicans in the 2000 elections, may be about to get a lesson of its own.
But the old loyalty - to the constitution of a sovereign republic - may also be untenable in the new world order of multinational globalization and military privatization. As in most corporate takeovers, military middle management doesn't seem to have much choice - it can switch loyalties to the new boss (always the bureaucratic default position) or it can quit and go try to earn a living somewhere else. However, if you toss in something like a stop-loss order, then the current crop of officers soon may find themselves not be able to quit even if they wanted to.
They could, of course, throw their personal political support - and the prestige that comes with it - behind the opposition, in hopes it might at least preserve the constitutional status quo. But this is psychologically hard - not to mention economically dubious. The bread hasn't been buttered on that side of the partisan fence for a very long time. While some in the military may put loyalty to the republic of United State above loyalty to the Republican political horse (the Judge Advocate General's Corps appears to be fighting a particularly fierce rear guard action at the moment), I think for many the tide is already running too strongly the other way. These things always look a lot better going in than coming out. Like I said at the beginning, it's an incremental process - one of fits and starts, albeit with occasional leaps forward, as in the 2000 election. How long it will take and how it will end up are never clear. There's no master plan - at least, I don't think there is. But while I don't know exactly where the imperial tide is taking the U.S. military, and the United States, I don't think it's going to be any kind of place I would want to go ...
... or produce any kind of regime I would want my children to have to live under. (aaa)
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2004/06/09/news/01lead.txt
Former JAG calls for Fort McCoy's commander's removal
A civilian Army lawyer is calling on the Pentagon to remove Fort McCoy's garrison commander for improper involvement in President Bush's La Crosse campaign rally. Col. Danny Nobles "needs to be removed from command immediately," said attorney Al Novotne, Fort McCoy's ethics counselor. "He's free to resign or retire and get involved in politics, but not while having troops under his command."
Col. Nobles's offense? Attending the Bush rally in uniform! :nono:
Novotne said appearing at a campaign event in uniform is "strictly prohibited" by the Army. "When I was a JAG officer, I had a client who went to jail for that," he said.
It would be easy to write this off as the partisan excesses of a single officer - y'know ... on the same level as General Jerry "holy war" Boykin's practice of speaking to conservative fundamentalist congregations while in uniform -- but there is a difference and not just because Col. Nobles boarded the Republican mothership rather than one of its religious auxiliary craft.
The difference in this case? The commander also brought a few hundred of his troops with him ... :eek:
The Veterans of Foreign Wars District 11 "sponsored" the trip and provided white T-shirts emblazoned with an American flag to 500 soldiers, according to the Wisconsin VFW News. The back of the shirts said, "I am an American soldier." At Copeland Park, the troops were observed walking and running in formation. Novotne said soldiers have told him they were under the direction of senior non-commissioned officers and were not free to go off on their own.
The defense offered by the GOP's local functionaries is that the soldiers asked to attend the rally "so they could show their support for their commander-in-chief before getting shipped out to fight the war on terrorism." And, of course, they were also given those t-shirts to wear. So at least they weren't in uniform.
So how could anyone -- except maybe some pinko terrorist lover -- complain about something so innocuous? ;)
Well I wouldn't - if not for the fact that we already have several thousand years of history to draw examples of what happens when the armed forces of a powerful state dabble in politics - or, worse still, allow themselves to be transformed into the personal shocktroops of a political leader or party. It doesn't necessarily happen all at once, or as the result of a traditional military coup d'état. The story of the German army's entry into politics after World War I - first as a source of weapons and freelance talent for right-wing militias (the so-called "Freikorps") then as an actor in the parliamentary conspiracies that brought the Nazis to power, and finally as a key player in the "Night of the Long Knives," which consolidated Hitler's personal rule - may not be directly relevant to contemporary America, but its a powerful lesson in how gradualism can obscure some truly revolutionary institutional changes. The actors involved don't even need to have a long-run plan. Using the Wisconsin case as an example, it's easy to see how matters might progress, absent external constraints.
Once the precedent has been established that Army soldiers on active duty may be "invited" to party campaign rallies in unit formation and under the discipline of their commanding officers, it's easy to imagine some creative GOP hack developing a standard t-shirt (let's say with a red, white and blue color design) for those troops to wear. If the t-shirt design catches on, then some other party hack might well develop a proprietary patriotic logo - something distinctly identifiable as a Republican Party symbol - to go on those t-shirts. (With their "I am an American soldier" slogan, the LaCrosse GOP is almost there already!) Having the troops all wear arm bands with the new party logo on them would also look kind of cool ... But standing around in the sun waiting for the leader to appear can be hot work, so it wouldn't be too surprising if some local GOP chapters started giving the soldiers baseball caps with that patriotic party logo on the front. And since you now have all these splendid young hunks standing around in their snazzy party outfits and -- since their drill sergeants are also on hand -- why not do something fun to entertain the crowd ............ like having the troops parade in formation past the leader on his podium.
What would be the harm in that? :angel:
And if the troops are going to parade, why not have them salute? Of course, using the standard military salute might be a little obvious. So why not create a new party salute - like, say, banging a clenched fist on the heart, or -- better yet -- extending a stiffened right arm, fingers pointed towards the leader in a gesture of obedience and respect. Imagine the effect it would have on the crowd - all those handsome young heros, marching in perfect lockstep, showing their loyalty to their commander in chief ... and if he were to give the party salute back, expressing his dedication to the sacred cause of defending the homeland ... *swoons* ...
Hahah, let's see them dirty liberal Democrats try to compete with that!! ;) :D
Before my crucifixion begins, lemme finish -- if you've ever read the folktale about "stone soup," then you already know where I'm going with this. The bottom line is ... once a step has been taken, the next may seem logical, even inevitable. Which is why the U.S. military traditionally has been extremely touchy about displays of overt partisanship like the ones we're seeing these days - usually, although not always, in middle management ranks: the colonels, majors and captains who embody the "corporate culture" of the professional officer corps. I realize this is not, by far, the most dangerous trend at work inside the military-industrial complex right now. The "privatization" of war: the growing role of defense contractors not just as setlers and camp followers, but as a new type of corporate combat force (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/05/ma_365_01.html) - beyond both military and civilian forms of accountability - probably holds that rank. By transferring the means of military production from the Pentagon to corporate hands, the administration isn't just trying to replace an "Enronized" military culture with the original model, it's undermining one of the core characteristics of sovereignty - the state's monopoly on organized violence. And that's a much bigger deal, and a much bigger threat to democratic institutions, than the creation of a new t-shirted "Republican Guard."
But the increasingly partisan complexion of the U.S. officer corps was one of the prime causes of the fictional "American military coup of 2012" described in this celebrated 1992 article (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/parameters/1992/dunlap.htm) in the U.S Army War College journal Parameters, which has been getting fresh attention lately ...
Little thought was given the long-term consequences of limiting the pool from which our military leadership was drawn. The result was a much more uniformly oriented military elite whose outlook was progressively conservative.
Of course, in our polarized electorate, conservative now means Republican - even more so than when the article was written. And the Republican Party has become enthralled by a kind of GOP cult of a leader rooted in the theology of Christian fundamentalism but with militaristic overtones. It's easy to see these trends converging -- an increasingly partisan officer corps, an authoritarian conservative movement that longs for a divinely inspired hero, a private army of corporate contractors answerable only to their Pentagon taskmasters. Add an endless undefined war against a mysterious unseen enemy, then shake!! :)
Chalmers Johnson, the ex-CIA analyst turned anti-imperialist, recently described (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0610-09.htm) the imperial archipelago these trends have already created outside the U.S. homeland:
According to the Pentagon's annual inventory of real estate - its so-called Base Structure Report - we have over 725 military bases in some 132 countries around the world. This vast network of American bases constitutes a new form of empire - an empire of military enclaves rather than of colonies as in older forms of imperialism.
Johnson also describes the social environment being created inside these hermetically sealed enclaves - which, perversely, increasingly resemble the "military cities" (http://www.cerc.unimelb.edu.au/bulletin/99dec.htm) of the old Soviet Union and its client states (http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs/issues/egypt/egypt.htm):
For their occupants, these bases are not necessarily unpleasant places to live and work. Military service today, which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to the duties of a soldier during World War II or the Korean or Vietnamese wars. Most chores like laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), guard duty, and cleaning latrines have been subcontracted to private military companies. About $30 billion, fully one-third of the funds appropriated for the war in Iraq, are going into private American hands for exactly such services.
The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns in the Bible Belt rather than neighborhoods in the big population centers of the United States ... Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, self-contained world serviced by its own airline - the Air Mobility Command - that links our outposts from Greenland to Australia.
The result - or a byproduct - of these containments is the creation of a separate military subculture, one which has less and less in common with the secular, culturally libertarian side of U.S. society - i.e. "blue state" America. It also tends to shield (http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/26/rush_limbaugh/index.html) service people, especially long-service career professionals, from dissenting opinions and non-conservative, non-authoritarian values. Which no doubt is why some of our Middle Eastern clients states are spending billions to create (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/gulf/sa-service.htm) their own military enclaves ...
The [Saudi] government spent huge sums of money ... in order to increase the attractiveness of military careers ... {including] excellent family housing for married officers and NCOs ... modern barracks for unmarried personnel {and} ... also offered excellent schools, hospitals, convenient shopping centers, and recreational facilities.
The growth of a separate military subculture - with its own institutions, values and loyalties, and a generally poor opinion of civilian institutions, values and loyalties - certainly isn't anything new, not even for the United States. The main historical differences between the U.S. armed forces and, say, the army of Guatemala, are that the pre-World War II American military was much smaller, relative to size of the country and its economic resources, and, of course, had a more deeply ingrained respect for civilian authority. But of those two differences the first - relative size - may have been the more important. And has Chalmers Johnson rightly notes, it's no longer a difference at all. Just the opposite in fact: The U.S. military establishment now lays claim to resources that most empires - much less Latin American banana republics - could only dream about.
In a less ideologically divided country - like the America of the middle Cold War years - a huge military establishment may face less pressure to play an overtly partisan role. And even a heavily mobilized society may not necessarily be a militaristic one, especially if its officers must rely on an army of drafted citizen soldiers. But when a country divides along cultural as well as ideological lines, it's no surprise an institution as important and powerful as the U.S. career military finds it impossible to stay on the political fence. Ironically, the loser in these kinds of situations is usually the military itself - which is basically what the author of "The American Military Coup of 2012" was trying to warn about. Few military establishments have placed themselves at the disposal of a specific political party or leader and emerged without enormous damage - or, as in the Wehrmacht's case, total destruction. The American professional military, which sided so openly with the Republicans in the 2000 elections, may be about to get a lesson of its own.
But the old loyalty - to the constitution of a sovereign republic - may also be untenable in the new world order of multinational globalization and military privatization. As in most corporate takeovers, military middle management doesn't seem to have much choice - it can switch loyalties to the new boss (always the bureaucratic default position) or it can quit and go try to earn a living somewhere else. However, if you toss in something like a stop-loss order, then the current crop of officers soon may find themselves not be able to quit even if they wanted to.
They could, of course, throw their personal political support - and the prestige that comes with it - behind the opposition, in hopes it might at least preserve the constitutional status quo. But this is psychologically hard - not to mention economically dubious. The bread hasn't been buttered on that side of the partisan fence for a very long time. While some in the military may put loyalty to the republic of United State above loyalty to the Republican political horse (the Judge Advocate General's Corps appears to be fighting a particularly fierce rear guard action at the moment), I think for many the tide is already running too strongly the other way. These things always look a lot better going in than coming out. Like I said at the beginning, it's an incremental process - one of fits and starts, albeit with occasional leaps forward, as in the 2000 election. How long it will take and how it will end up are never clear. There's no master plan - at least, I don't think there is. But while I don't know exactly where the imperial tide is taking the U.S. military, and the United States, I don't think it's going to be any kind of place I would want to go ...
... or produce any kind of regime I would want my children to have to live under. (aaa)