[lbo-talk] The long war [was Re: Fwd: Moyers interviews Andrew Bacevich]

[Chuck Grimes]

"And it is a war in which one-half of one percent of the American people
bear the burden. And the other 99.5 percent basically go on about their
daily life, as if the war did not exist."

No. We all bear the burden. The money that could go into rebuilding 
infrastructure, health care, education....etc. is going into this war. 
The first step forward for a peace movement is to talk about the costs 
of this war to everyone.

Joanna

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I agree. The quote comes from Bacevitch, not CGE. I am pretty sure CGE
agrees with you. I want to point some other parts of what an anti-war
movement must do.

I was trying to tease out some of the structural and social costs, which
amount to the corruption of the military, the state and the society.
It's not as easy to show this side as it is a pie chart with combined
military and war spending, v. peace and social spending. 

As much as I dislike the military, it's not going to disappear. So part
of the anti-war function is to keep the military clean, just and lawful
(within), under control and limited in its scope of action. All of these
are goals or ideals for a representative government with a military.
These ideals have been badly damaged, eroded or disappeared.

I think that damage and corruption is directly related to the military
theories of counterinsurgency and their use as the center of its
strategic planning and development. What is going on is the
militarization of civilian political institutions and simultaneously the
politicalization of military institutions. The means arise from  the
idea of turning a soldier into a policeman in a realm of action where
there are no courts, laws, public accounting or oversight.  

The above was also part of the anti-war movement of the past coming
mostly from the legal wing who dealt with desertion and the military
justice system. Some of those people carried on to a new generation.
These are mostly off the radar people, lawyers dealing with military
prisoner issues today. 

Military counterinsurgency actions scooped up thousands of civilians and
put them in a military prison system. So now we are arguing how to
dispose of them. They should never have been in military custody in the
first place. The whole ideology of counterinsurgency is the culprit. It
will continue to produce civilian causalities and prisoners who can't be
adjudicated in properly constituted civilian courts because the facts of
their capture illustrate the vastly mistaken and flawed ideology of
counterinsurgency.   

CG