The Pentagon vs. the U.S.: How Americans Have Become Targets of Their Own Military

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

By Scott Ritter
Truthdig
Posted May 7, 2008


http://www.alternet.org/story/84604/?page=1


---snip---

Congress, especially the House of Representatives, was never conceived of as separate and distinct from the people, but rather as one with the people, directly derived from their collective will via the electoral process. Unfortunately today, few Americans identify with Congress. An "us versus them" mentality pervades. This mentality creates the crack in the moral and social contract which exists regarding a citizenry and its military. Congress is responsible for maintaining the military. Congress is the branch of government mandated with the responsibility for declaring war. When the bond is strained between the people and Congress, the bond between citizen and soldier is broken. Congress, left to its own devices, will begin to view the military not as an extension of its constituents, but rather as a commodity to be traded and used in a highly politicized fashion.

This is the reality we find ourselves in today (and indeed which has existed for some time). The 2006 midterm elections highlight this reality, where a strong anti-war sentiment upon the part of the voters resulted in a Democratic majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Having assumed the mantle of legislative power, however, those who were elected on the coattails of anti-war sentiment were able to shun their anti-war constituents. They did so by taking full advantage of the reality that the anti-war movement was in fact not a movement at all, but rather a concept pushed forward by a disparate mass without much political viability.

Where anti-war sentiment did in fact cross over from the ranks of the progressive left and into the mainstream of American society, it was quickly quashed through the dishonest logic that if one truly supported the troops (as most red-blooded Americans swear they do), then one must by extension support the mission. This flawed connectivity empowered Congress to sidestep the issue of withdrawing American forces from Iraq, and enabled it to continue rubber-stamping funding for a war which long ago lost any connection, perceived or otherwise, to the general security of the American people. . . .

[Selatius]

1. The Founding Fathers were weary of standing armies for a reason.

They didn't want the army itself becoming a political football, to fund the military simply for the military's sake instead of real necessity. Today, it is a political football because nobody is willing to be called a coward or a traitor for insisting that we spend too much on war and not enough on the welfare of the people.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Thanks for this

K&R

[dmr]

3. No truer words spoken K&R