General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Fuck. [View all]brush
(53,778 posts)But this president is the first president to acknowledge a need to get off a permanent war footing. I don't know about you but that remark made me sit up in my chair last night. That's signaling a MAJOR, MAJOR policy rethinking for a country that has been involved in coups, occupations, wars and assassinations CONTINUOUSLY since we sent gunboats to back ex-pat American planters in their overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in the 1890s.
You have to know that weaning America off war is like turning an oceanliner. It's a long, slow process with a lot of corporate forces and their bought-and-paid-for-legislators trying to jerk the wheel towards their war of choice. And the president is not a king who can say, "okay, we're stopping operations in Asia, Europe, and Africa tomorrow.
He's been in office for 5 years now and knows the lay of the land pretty well and it took him until now to talk about getting off the "permanent war footing", a remarkable and courageous statement, IMO, from an American president.
And a far cry I'd be willing to bet from the secret briefings a newbie president most likely gets when he takes office attended by major corporate and bank heads, generals and admirals and other defense department honchos wherein he learns that his purview is mostly the domestic policy arena were he can joust with the repugs but as far as major changes to our imperialist, predator-nation-interventionism for the corporate reaping of other countries natural resources, it's hands off. And I wouldn't be surprised that mentions of what happened to JFK aren't thrown in.
That's why I say his statement about getting off a permanent war footing was remarkable and courageous, that from an American president, knowing what the office stands for head of empire at least nominally the head but not really.