Tuesday, September 26, 2006

The `America' Crib Sheet



Liz at BlondeSense writes, `Diplomacy Doesn't Pay':
I rented "Why We Fight" and watched it yesterday. It was a pretty good dot connecting movie for me. I am obsessed with the cold war and life in the 1950's so I thought it would be a good movie to see. We grew up afraid of the enemy. It was always in the background.


The movie was inspired by Eisenhower's warning of the Military Industrial Complex in his farewell speech of 1961. It turns out that even Eisenhower didn't even know all that was going on behind the scenes. There is another force at work (surprise surprise). Fear mongering and war mongering go together and it's really not because the US wants to spread freedom, it's because it makes certain people rich and powerful.

After WWII when the rest of the world was rebuilding from ashes, the US remained the only country unwrecked by the war, yet the fear mongers realized just how much money could be made from continuous military interventions, the "defense" industry grew, millions of people were employed in defense all across the country, the propaganda movies were made and the American people were scared into submission without a clue as to why this was going on. People were working and they didn't ask questions.

The movie asserts that so much goes on behind the scenes that the American people are left out of the loop. When 9/11 happened, we wanted to know why. No one ever told us why and no one will. The powers that be deliberately disconnected foreign policy from the American people. We were just told since WWII, that there was an enemy and the enemy must be stopped. Troops were sent all over the globe to keep "peace".

Gore Vidal calls us the United States of Amnesia because we've forgotten how many times the US intervened unilaterally throughout history. When they put up the world map, it all became clear. Our priorities are set by corporate interests in world domination and it has nothing to do with political parties. Independent contractors are doing what soldiers used to do (thanks to the KBR) and corporations that depend on wars are finding new ways to make money aside from creating weapons. It all became clear to me why we bombed the hell out of Iraq and destroyed their infrastructure.

Why are we in this mess now? In 1992, Dick Cheney gave Kellogg Brown and Root the job to write proposals in order to privatize the services industry. This was after he and Wolfowitz decided a year earlier that the US should be the only world power. They had it all planned out in advance and on 9/11/01 it was all implemented. US corporations could get rich in other countries. And that's what it's all about.

There's a lot more about the movie here with many clips from the movie. Do check it out.

To supplement that I recommend this.

Then set up camp at Robert Parry's website, Consortium News, and don't leave until you've read everything there, and (bought his book).

However, in the spirit of full disclosure, be careful what you wish for (be certain that you want the knowledge, to learn what the hell is going on). Because you will lose all of your cherished illusions about what America is really about, and, you can never go home again.

No comments: