WAR IS PEACE- "Are we living in a society where war has officially become peace?"

[Orwellian_Ghost]

War Society, Collapse and the University: an interview with Robert Jensen
by Calvin Sloan

The following interview was conducted for the KVRX UT student radio show "The Pursuit of Injustice." The podcast can be streamed or downloaded here: (http://www.divshare.com/download/9029846-04a)

...

CS: So here we are in 2009, as of October 7th we’ve entered the 9th year of the war in Afghanistan and we’ve similarly occupied Iraq since 2003, yet when you look around it’s hard to notice that we’re running on a war economy. It’s become so normalized, and from a student's perspective it’s interesting to note that the majority of undergraduates across the country have spent all of their high school and college careers with our nation at war.

And my question is, how do you think history will judge this perpetual war?

Do you believe we’ve entered into Orwell’s 1984 realm, are we living in a society where war has officially become peace?

RJ: I don’t think we have to wait for history to judge it, I think we can assess it today and it’s pretty straight forward. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was illegal. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was a cover for other interests, and that’s all doubly true with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The whole project is sort of corrupt beyond description in that sense. Yet, the propaganda industries, not just the propaganda emanating from the government, but the propaganda industries, advertising, entertainment, journalism, are all perpetuating this crazed interpretation of the War on Terror, because they all have an interest in doing that. They are all ideologically connected to the same project.



And yes, it’s Orwellian in that sense, it’s corrupt, it’s immoral, it’s illegal, it’s all these things that we’re talking about, and we don’t have to wait for history thirty years from now to make that judgment. What we have to do is recognize it, and not only try to organize against it – I’ve been part of the anti-war movement, varying levels of activity over time – but I think what we should be doing is not just opposing this war but recognizing that the disease from which this war springs is more deeply set in the culture than ever before.

...

http://www.energybulletin.net/50523

[Orwellian_Ghost]

1. What do you make of a world in which the U.S. has robot assassins in the skies over its war zones

What kind of a world do we inhabit when, with an official unemployment rate of 9.7% and an underemployment rate of 16.8%, the American taxpayer is financing the building of a three-story, exceedingly permanent-looking $17 million troop barracks at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan? This, in turn, is part of a taxpayer-funded $220 million upgrade of the base that includes new "water treatment plants, headquarters buildings, fuel farms, and power generating plants." And what about the U.S. air base built at Balad, north of Baghdad, that now has 15 bus routes, two fire stations, two water treatment plants, two sewage treatment plants, two power plants, a water bottling plant, and the requisite set of fast-food outlets, PXes, and so on, as well as air traffic levels sometimes compared to those at Chicago's O'Hare International?

What kind of American world are we living in when a plan to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq involves the removal of more than 1.5 million pieces of equipment? Or in which the possibility of withdrawal leads the Pentagon to issue nearly billion-dollar contracts (new ones!) to increase the number of private security contractors in that country?

What do you make of a world in which the U.S. has robot assassins in the skies over its war zones, 24/7, and the "pilots" who control them from thousands of miles away are ready on a moment's notice to launch missiles -- "Hellfire" missiles at that -- into Pashtun peasant villages in the wild, mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan? What does it mean when American pilots can be at war "in" Afghanistan, 9 to 5, by remote control, while their bodies remain at a base outside Las Vegas and then can head home past a sign that warns them to drive carefully because this is "the most dangerous part of your day"?

What does it mean when, for our security and future safety, the Pentagon funds the wildest ideas imaginable for developing high-tech weapons systems, many of which sound as if they came straight out of the pages of sci-fi novels? Take, for example, Boeing's advanced coordinated system of hand-held drones, robots, sensors, and other battlefield surveillance equipment slated for seven Army brigades within the next two years at a cost of $2 billion and for the full Army by 2025; or the Next Generation Bomber, an advanced "platform" slated for 2018; or a truly futuristic bomber, "a suborbital semi-spacecraft able to move at hypersonic speed along the edge of the atmosphere," for 2035? What does it mean about our world when those people in our government peering deepest into a blue-skies future are planning ways to send armed "platforms" up into those skies and kill more than a quarter century from now?

...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175115/war_is_peace

[Lagomorph]

4. Situation Normal All Fucked Up

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/conflictmap/conflictmap.html

[bertman]

5. SNAFU is exactly right, Lagomorph. What do I think of all those things listed in tomdispatch?

I think we have been completely taken over by the War Machine and have been desensitized to any awareness of what we, as a nation, are doing around the world.

That's what I think.

[G_j]

8. you are an enlightened person

you must have been paying attention.

[Lagomorph]

13. Between the police cameras, armed helicopters, UAVs and wiretapping...

here in the US, it looks like business as usual to your average American. What's to be shocked about?

:sarcasm:

You only sight foreign examples where culture shock is more pronounced. There is a lot more of the same going down here in the US.

[msongs]

2. sheesh can't a CIC pursue his wars in peace n be left alone? nt

[flyarm]

3. I splattered my coffee all over the keyboard on that one!!

and i agree with the OP post!

Sad but true!

[bertman]

6. Excellent post, Orwellian_Ghost. RECOMMEND HIGHLY.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

10. Thanks Bertman

From article:

Alright, well that’s all part of an era in which capitalism lead us to believe we could have unlimited growth. Well that’s now becoming more and more crazy. It’s a crazy claim. And there is something striking about a crazy claim that is considered to be the conventional wisdom. This is the kind of thing we should be worried about. It’s not just that we’re having a debate about capitalism, there’s no debate for the most part in the mainstream. It’s taken to be the only way to organize an economy, yet it is a system of organizing an economy that is literally crazy. Well, if that doesn’t scare people, then I don’t know what will.

[bertman]

11. I think they were referring to "unlimited growth of the salary packages of the CEO's".

;)

You're right that they appear to forget that our planet is a finite resource and can only take so much abuse.

[Life Long Dem]

7. War is peace.

Professors shake their heads over cultural cleansing.

[bridgit]

9. Disagreed: war is still war

[Orwellian_Ghost]

12. Bumpage

[inna]

14. kick