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IPFS News Link • Military Industrial Complex

The Shifting Strategies of Empire

• David Swanson, OPedNews

President Obama this week declared the war on Iraq to be an honorable success that has given us a brighter future. Are you fired up? Ready to go?

Eric Holder this month explained that it's legal for a president to kill anyone anywhere, or to imprison them, or to spy on them. I started to get upset about this, but then I remembered that Holder is a Democrat. That made me feel much better.

Leon Panetta told Congress this month that a president can launch a war without Congress and without the United Nations and without any legal restrictions, that a NATO decision to go to war makes a war legal, that a decision by an ad hoc coalition to go to war makes a war legal, and that in fact there's no way for a war launched by a U.S. president not to be legal. At first this sounded like a dangerous doctrine, until I remembered that the president is not a Republican, and no Republican is going to be president for at least several months. So, there's nothing to worry about.

Hillary Clinton this week said that we couldn't end the war on Afghanistan without first protecting women's rights. Already we've set up a government that endorses wife-beating. Perhaps when it mandates invasive ultrasounds we'll be able to leave with honor.

In the past three years, largely in the absence of a peace movement, we've seen military spending rise. We've seen drone wars burst onto the scene in a major way. We've seen murder become the new torture. We've seen wars launched without even bothering to lie to Congress, and in fact with the intentional avoidance of any Congressional authorization. We've seen Special Forces active in over 100 countries. We've seen a massive escalation of the war on Afghanistan. We've seen bases imposed on more countries. We've seen an intense effort to surround China, and the people of Okinawa be damned, the people of Jeju Island be damned. We're sending the Marines into Australia. We're ruining Vicenza, Italy. We're weaponizing space.

 

www.universityofreason.com/a/29887/KWADzukm