[lbo-talk] Hersh on Bush & Iran

[Carl Remick]

>From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
>
> > What? So much backbending to 'understand'. Understand what?
> > The military is a way out of poverty? So is burglary and drug
> > dealing.
>
>To understand that this is a part of the human condition whether we like it
>or not.  That there are people, many people, in almost every society who
>like that way of life, who like inflicting pain or killing, who like to
>function in S-M relationships characterizing the military.   Some may call
>it mental disorder, other - false consciousness, still other may chastise 
>it
>with their blame games - but these reactions are mere expressions of
>impotence vis a vis this phenomenon.  Yes, some of us are sadistic assholes
>and enjoy every bit of it, or better yet - there is a sadistic asshole in
>virtually everyone of us, waiting for the right set of circumstances to 
>come
>out.  The first step to understand it is to stop moral reproaching and
>blame games - that are nothing but meaningless babbling giving us a false
>sense of security in the face of what we do not understand and what
>threatens us.

The source of meaningless babbling here seems to be your own keyboard.  Your 
"Lord of the Flies" defense -- i.e., that "there is a sadistic asshole in 
virtually everyone of us" -- begs the question that the military as an 
institution is specifically designed to release that inner sadist.  The 
military's entire purpose is to reinforce, intensify and legitimize 
humankind's most pathological impulses and to expend hundreds of billions of 
dollars on advanced weaponry to amplify those impulses' destructiveness.

Everything about the military, its practices and ethos, is debased and 
retrograde.  The left should waste no time trying to "understand" the 
military.  It should focus instead on leveraging the immense discredit the 
US military has brought on itself through out-and-out Nazi tactics in Iraq.  
The military as an institution reeked for years and years after Vietnam.  
The left should seek to revive the obloquy the military was trapped in back 
then -- to again make the professional military so loathsome in the public 
eye that members of the armed forces cannot wear their uniforms off-base (as 
I recall happened during Vietnam) without fear of incessant ridicule.

Carl