MILITARISM

REF: Unnatural Acts by Chris Floyd. www.Countepunch.com 3/8/10

The effects of war are vast, unforeseeable, long-lasting -- and uncontrollable.

Victory in war is no victory or solution for the corruption, deterioration of morals and

concentration of power in the elite remain long adter the defeat of the enemy.

"Indeed, victory in battle often leads a society to enshrine war's most pernicious attributes: violence is ennobled, and becomes entrenched as an ever-ready instrument of national policy. Militarism is exalted, the way of peace dishonored: cries of Appeasers! Cowards! Traitors! greet every approach that fails to brandish the threat of extreme violence, that fails to 'keep all options on the table.'

The apparent 'lesson' of victory – that there can be no right without armed might to win and safeguard it – quickly degenerates into the belief that armed might is right.[emphasis added] Military power becomes equated with moral worth, and the ability to wreak savage, unimaginable destruction through armed violence -- via thoughtless obedience to the orders of "superiors" – becomes a cherished attribute of society.

Thus our American militarists exult in the advanced hardware that allows 'soldiers' to slaughter people from thousands of miles away, with missiles, bombs and bullets fired from lurking, unreachable drones high in the sky. (A recent study shows that even by the most conservative reckoning of who is or isn't a "militant," at least one third of the hundreds killed in the Bush-Obama drone campaigns on the "Af-Pak" front are clearly civilians.) The drone "warriors" -- often living in complete safety and comfort -- see nothing but a bloodless image on a screen; they face no physical threat at all. This is assassination, not combat; it reeks of cowardice, and dehumanizes everyone it touches, the victims and the button-pushers alike. Yet our militarists -- most of whom, of course, have somehow never found the time to fight the wars they cheer for -- wax orgasmic about this craven weaponry. In the transvaluation of values that militarism produces, cowardice becomes a martial virtue."

All of the above is the spiritual side of war and militarism. To describe the absolute horror of the destruction of lives and property would require endless pages of expressed mayhem. Be assured that America has so far escaped the pain of a war fought on it's shores, but the Bell tolls for thee.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN