TED and the disconnect between American Intelligentsia and the WAR

The time has come to recognize America is in crises. The Crises is not a financial one. It is not a political one. It is not a moral one. It is not a health crisis. America’s crises is one of a total disconnect between those who are fortunate enough to live in a constant 72 degree environment; attend well endowed schools; make their way through to higher education; take well paid positions in corporate America or government; have access to first class health care; and otherwise lead financially secure lives, and the masses, the other 70% of the nation who lives from poverty to working / middle class. These are the folks who make up our enlisted military, manufacturing work force, retail front liners, service sector personnel, maintenance / trades persons and transportation folks. They are the backbone of our nation and they increasingly live totally different lives with a totally different set of rules from the 30% who have access to those things that make what is commonly referred to as a First World lifestyle.

Our nation is at WAR. In fact we are in TWO WARS!! American’s intelligentsia / privileged classes are NOT at WAR. They are NOT connected in any way to the wars we are fighting other than through their pocketbook indirectly via their government’s expenditures. They know / knew the wars we are now in were / are knee jerk reactions to a lucky strike by some determined folks who came up with a plot to cause a brief mayhem in the US. None of these people truly believe in either one of the pointless wars we are now engaged in. The intelligentsia did not vote for G. W. Bush. They did not support his wars. There might have been a few moments after September 11, 2001 where all people in America, regardless of socioeconomic background felt a solidarity, like they were all on the same bus together for a moment and no way to get off. Very soon after this brief moment, the intelligentsia desired in intellectual approach to resolving what were obviously major grievances by other human beings on the planet to US policies around the world. They thought perhaps the point was made by these radical terrorists and we should wake up and learn about what we were / are doing to cause such a radical display of hatred.

Then there was the response of the government they did not vote for. A division of Americans (and the world for that matter) purposefully orchestrated in simplistic, pathetically rudimentary terms, “You are with us or you are against us.” Why should the intelligentsia fight the idiots who were making decisions at the time? Why should they bother stopping a couple of insane wars? Their way of protesting was to not participate. Focus on education. Keep oneself in the privileged class. That guarantees you don’t have to be a part of the WAR, the DEATH, the DESTRUCTION. They could live their lives with clear conscience, learning and becoming part of the “machine”, the same “machine” that IS what the destruction of the World Trade Centers were all about, but turned a blind eye. They stopped short of finding out why the attack happened and forcing some kind of global reconciliation. That was not accepted thinking so why should they pursue it? Why should they push back against the “machine” be it the “war machine” the “corporate machine” the “think tank machine” the “PR machine”? What was / is there to gain?

So here we are. I am frustrated daily by this reality. I attended a dinner party recently in Texas where folks there were all involved in the emerging “social media” phenomena that has been sweeping the Internet for some time now. They had written books, developed on line marketing strategies, built businesses around Internet 2.0 and otherwise managed to make a living out of various business or technology skills. It was great fun being around such folks for an evening until it hits me as I sit amongst them that they don’t have a care in the world about what is going on half way around the world in a couple underdeveloped countries full of sand or rocks where people live in mud huts in mountains. Why should they? They have no “skin in the game” so to speak. After a while I just get nauseas. America is falling further and further behind on just about every technology available to man except that geared toward destruction and here I am sitting around a bunch of people who really think they got their shit together cause they can scrape out a few dollars form the economy and build nice houses. They are clueless. Most of America is clueless. Strange thing is, the rest of the world is not so clueless. They are just fine with having a bunch of idiots form some other country fighting wars they see no point to other than as a training ground for their own militaries. In a way, that is really all these wars are. Neither nation had / has any technology to create war. Neither nation had / has any productive means to employ technology necessary to create war. Neither nation even has the wherewithal to govern themselves let alone create the massive organizations necessary to wage war.

I read this in a news bulletin recently:

…Afghanistan, killing seven Americans, the agency (CIA) has carried out 11 drone missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal-area militant strongholds in the most intensive drone warfare program to date. The Times said the reports did not mention many, if any, civilian casualties in the campaign, which reportedly have killed about 90 people suspected of being militants. The newspaper said the strikes included a Jan. 6 bombing on a North Waziristan mud fortress that killed 17 people and a South Waziristan assault that killed at least 20 people.

Note the words “mud fortress”. Yes, the idiot Americans are waging “war” against people who live in “mud fortresses” in 2010!

From edinformatics.com: The MQ-1 Predator is a system, not just an aircraft. The fully operational system consists of four air vehicles (with sensors), a ground control station (GCS), a Predator primary satellite link communication suite and personnel. The Predator's infrared camera with digitally enhanced zoom has the capability of identifying the heat signature of a human body from an altitude of 3 km (10,000 feet); they carry 2 Hellfire or 2 Stinger Missiles.

As of late 2007, producing one Hellfire cost about $68,000 each, the Predator itself costs somewhere around $5-8 Million each and with ground support, computer guidance gear, satellite and other necessary infrastructure a mission with one of these armed drones is quite and undertaking. So, it is always good to know we are spending all of these resources and technology to destroy “mud fortresses”.

So why do I digress from my original point to these mundane details about drone attacks? Because this IS where the story lies. Because America’s intelligentsia has removed itself from all involvement in our crazy two “wars” this kind of thought process is being lost. Had anyone really thought about the pure insanity of expending over $1.5 Trillion in highly advanced military and personal resources to wage war against people who live in “mud fortresses” perhaps we would remove ourselves from such madness.

There is another very troubling issue at hand with respect to the last 8+ years of pointless wars. That is nobody is trying in any concise way to explain exactly what the hell we are trying to “accomplish” with these wars. There is no defined objective. I would argue the main reason is these are NOT wars at all. They are military exercises designed to train our next generation of military fighters in various terrain using the latest weaponry. In addition, we had the opportunity to rid ourselves of stockpiles of older munitions that would have required quite expensive and painstaking disassembly to make room for the latest generations of weapons. The fact that people who live in “mud fortresses” have been so effective in creating real opposition has been our biggest headache and in our insane, pointless, destructive, inhumane, genocidal “wars” against these unindustrialized people we have managed to “create” an entire generation of hardened, battle worn, determined men who would like nothing more than see the US implode under it’s own weight and they are all to willing to push it along.

So back to the question, what are we trying to accomplish with these wars? Intelligentsia really does not give a hoot. As long as they are able to go about their trendy little lives, creating fun little “social entrepreneurial” businesses and build their little houses they are just fine with leaving the “point” of these multi-trillion dollar wars to the idiots who wage them. But I care. I lived the first 2/3 of my life with the “cold war” a daily feature of the news. I remember being indoctrinated with the propaganda of the Great Big Evil Empire determined to “bury” the West. That big lie was pushed down my throat for 20 years AFTER there was any real threat to any western nation from what we know now was the most dysfunctional, technologically backward, impoverished, and down right intoxicated “empire” that ever existed. They only “existed” because an entire ecosystem had evolved around the need for their existence. Any threat to the West was extinguished from the day they built a wall to hold their own citizens in. The failure to see this reality by the general populace at the time was something history must ask itself even more than how humanity managed to allow a supposedly advanced society managed to eliminate over 6 million human beings of a particular religious / ethnic group. To think or have thought that an “empire” that had to wall it’s own citizens in would somehow become a threat to anyone outside of those walls is / was a mystery only capable of being propagated by use of all the resources of mass media and miss-education possible at the time.

That “Cold War” ended two decades ago and what do we have to show for it? We are spending more now on our military than any time during the Cold War. We are being killed and killing more people than during any time of the Cold War outside of the Vietnam and Korean wars, neither of them which were “won”. Our “superior” economic system is in shambles. Our “superior” political models are completely incapacitated, impotent, dysfunctional and destructive to the rights of the citizens they have been sworn to uphold. Our entire physical infrastructure is in decay. We have ¼ of the manufacturing base we had during the Cold War. We have had a completely stagnant or declining standard of living for the past 3 decades, two of which were After the Cold War. And these are just our own issues. What happened to the hundred million or so people living in the “nations” of the Soviet Union that have gained their independence? The intelligentsia does not know, care, give a damn obviously. They never did. As I write this article, the first full, post Soviet Union generation is completing high school, entering the university or the workforce. They are full of hope and possibility while the economic system they were told was their salvation is in ruins. They are looking at massive unemployment, dysfunctional governments with no power to help their nations predicaments. They are looking at the West and saying, “I am here. I am what you fought for ½ a century for. I am the future of my nations possibilities. Here I am.” But nobody is listening. The number of people leaving those countries is staggering (see article below for example). They are failing nations. What did we do after we “won” the Cold War? Nothing. No “Marshal Plan”; No organized assistance to help them build solid government structures with individual, political and economic freedom; No strategy to help them retool their decadent manufacturing base so they could effectively sustain their economies. Western businesses went about their usual ways, steal what you can, buy or disassemble any potential competitive threat, lend until you create desperate poverty, create concentrated global dominance over their economy, exploit their labor, turn them into consumers of Mc Multi-national Oligopolistic chemically induced products.

Then find another “enemy” to justify the Military Industrial Welfare Complex to justify handing over trillions of dollars of the citizens current and future hard earned money to the wealthy, powerful, controlling, big brother corporations who are slowly but surely propagating the next fascist revolution in America. The intelligentsia be damned.

That article from the Express in the UK:

MOLDOVANS WILL WIN RIGHT TO LIVE IN BRITAIN

Moldovans at a rally in their capital, Chisinau.
Tuesday February 2,2010
By Nick Fagge (The Express, UK)
A NEW wave of immigration from Eastern Europe edged closer last night after Romania promised to fast-track a back-door route into Britain.
Tens of thousands of citizens from Moldova – Europe’s poorest country – will soon be granted rights to live and work in the UK and other EU states as part of a controversial Bucharest policy offering Romanian citizenship.
Romanian President Traian Basescu reaffirmed his earlier pledge to offer EU rights to Moldovans, due to historical links, during a state visit to the impoverished former Soviet state last week.
And he announced the creation of a new citizenship agency to fast track the one million applications the Romanian government has already received to go alongside a new nationality law granting citizenship in just five months.
He said: “The government will issue an emergency decree to set up a special Nationality Agency granting Romanian citizenship.”
Moldovans do not need a visa to live or work in Romania but prize a EU passport for the right to travel to richer states such as the UK to seek work.
However last night there was growing anger that Romania will release a new influx of migrant workers. Sir Andrew Green of Migration Watch UK described the Romanian policy as “outrageous”.
He said: “It’s high time the EU addressed the issue of who is entitled to an EU passport.
“At present it’s entirely in the hands of individual governments who can reach bizarre decisions, often for internal political reasons.
“The Romanians, Greeks, Spanish and Italians all seem to dish out passports to a wide range of people with historical, often tenuous, connections to their countries.”
UKIP Euro MP Nigel Farage said: “Any pretence that Britain can control its borders, or that immigration can be contained while we stay in the European Union is destroyed by this revelation.”
War Moldova was part of Romania until 1940 when it was annexed by the Soviet Union. It gained independence in 1991 and 80 per cent of the four million population is ethnic Romanian. However, Moldova is now Europe’s poorest country. Eighty per cent of the population struggles to survive on less than £1 a day (well really more like £15/day. I think the rooky that wrote this was using stats from Mongolia or Mozambique). And nine out of 10 young Moldovans plan to leave the country, according to a UN report.
Some 600,000 Moldovans already work abroad in Britain and other parts of Europe – legally and illegally. More than a million eastern Europeans came to the UK after Britain opened its doors to the so-called A8 countries – Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia – when they joined the EU in 2004.
Tens of thousands more came from Romania and Bulgaria after they became EU members in 2007.