MB Civic

Go read the whole article
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/31/2886/

History teaches that imperialism can be terribly expensive. Empires require huge military forces to impose agendas designed by the economic elite. Yet, over time the military cost of maintaining an overextended empire can exceed the value of resources acquired. The brutality used to enforce injustice also creates determined enemies and alienates allies. The “old Europe” refused to join “Operation Iraqi Freedom” having lived through the rise and fall of many destructive empires. The British dumped Blair rather than return to their old imperial ways that eventually became a burden. Slavery is another economic system that eventually became dysfunctional and unacceptable…

The epicenter of this global nightmare is the expanding military industrial complex Eisenhower prophesized would subvert our democracy through “the disastrous rise of misplaced power” by the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.” The original draft of this 1961 speech contained the term “military industrial congressional complex,” but he chose to not offend Congress with his farewell speech.

Today, the military establishment, arms industry, and Congress act in their mutual self-interest with little public accountability. Campaign donations and lobbyists have turned “lawmakers” into obedient defense industry lap-dogs while the White House promotes corporate wars and sells them to the public. Both military and “intelligence” operations have become increasingly “privatized” along with unprecedented executive secrecy and abuse of power by the incompetent. Public debt for private profit is the game played by an imperial White House and our complicit Congress of invertebrates. Checks and balances and the separation of powers have diminished while militarism is gaining ground. Our constitutional republic has been hijacked and not by Muslims.

As a decorated combat hero, General Smedley Butler said at the end of his career, “War is a racket. It always has been. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” He adds, “Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few, the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.” He concluded, “We must take the profit out of war.”