TheMillerCircle.org

Almost completely unknown to the public, and seemingly outside of the purview of the mainstream media, the Pentagon has continued lockstep in its march and preparation for " the long war." Stimulated by the events of 9/11, the Pentagon, under Donald Rumsfeld, pursued the policy that America’s response to those events would be purely a military response, as outlined by the neocons and as befitting a great military empire. Fortress America continues to advance. The Pentagon continues its preparation for a confrontation with Iran and we have a president who does not think any more authority from Congress is needed to launch military actions. He is further emboldened by a Congress that refuses to challenge him on the budget, as he continues to talk about a declining budget deficit, created by not including the costs of the Iraq war in the calculation. As president, at least for Republican presidents, you are given so much freedom for your actions that accountability is not a serious issue and not something that anyone in the White House seems to worry about. Apparently those that once did are now gone.

But here is one development that you may not know anything about: before leaving office, in the Spring of 2006, Rumsfeld approved three additional plans to fight "the long war." In one of these, the "Special Operations Command" has dispatched teams of Special Forces to at least twenty embassies in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Their mission is to engage in covert warfare. These teams are operating completely outside of the embassy authority and are free to apply force and carry out actions without any oversight from anyone. Senior ambassadors and other government officials do not know what they do and these units have no reporting relationship to anyone other than the Pentagon and the president. This organization is now composed of 53,000 men and operates on a budget (2007) of $8 billion, or about 1/4 of what we spend on medical research each year. No congressional oversight governs the expenditures of these units and the public will never know what they are doing. These lawless groups now replace the CIA and, because of their military training, they are limited in their view of strategies and more or less committed to pursue the military option only. Is this another, new iteration of the ugly American? What atrocities will these groups commit since they will have no oversight and probably no public knowledge will ever surface about their actions, unless the governments in whose countries these actions take place report the atrocities themselves and then of course, we have the famous American act of denial. Don’t we have an unconstitutional government? I learned about the additional "long war" preparations through William Polk’s excellent new book "Violent Politics," (p202), a must read for anyone who wants to understand terrorism and its root causes.

My fear about these additional outlandish actions is that if Hilary or Obama get elected, even with a more Democratic congress, they will not have the political will to reverse the mad march of militarism. Returning our government to one of civilian control and huge reductions in our military posture, requires first and foremost a public understanding of how far down that road we have gone and right now, there is no educational vehicle available to the public to learn about the true state of our country. Not everyone listens to Bill Moyers, or reads Chalmers Johnson or Tom Englehardt or William Polk or Howard Zinn. Those are the places you have to go to truly learn about the present state of our country. The main danger I fear is this: we have so weakened our country through our militarism, by tearing down the very things that made us strong, like education and research, that everyone outside of America knows this and if we begin to see more aggressive posturing from other countries like China or Russia, we will in turn double our military efforts and no president, no congress will be able to resist further escalating our military capability. We are still developing new nuclear devices and still pursuing the weaponization of space. Who will stop us if we don’t stop ourselves? And, how do we stop ourselves if we don’t know what we are doing? Americans are the most naive of all about America.