Pro-War Pundits funded by private military contractors

[LeftistLeslie]

http://www.thenation.com/article/181601/whos-paying-pro-war-pundits#

Who's Paying the Pro-War Pundits?
Talking heads like former General Jack Keane are all over the news media fanning fears of ISIS. Shouldn't the public know about their links to Pentagon contractors?
If you read enough news and watch enough cable television about the threat of the Islamic State, the radical Sunni Muslim militia group better known simply as ISIS, you will inevitably encounter a parade of retired generals demanding an increased US military presence in the region. They will say that our government should deploy, as retired General Anthony Zinni demanded, up to 10,000 American boots on the ground to battle ISIS. Or as in retired General Jack Keane's case, they will make more vague demands, such as for "offensive" air strikes and the deployment of more military advisers to the region.

But what you won't learn from media coverage of ISIS is that many of these former Pentagon officials have skin in the game as paid directors and advisers to some of the largest military contractors in the world. Ramping up America's military presence in Iraq and directly entering the war in Syria, along with greater military spending more broadly, is a debatable solution to a complex political and sectarian conflict. But those goals do unquestionably benefit one player in this saga: America's defense industry.

Keane is a great example of this phenomenon. His think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which he oversees along with neoconservative partisans Liz Cheney and William Kristol, has provided the data on ISIS used for multiple stories by The New York Times, the BBC and other leading outlets.

There is something very suspicious about the saber rattling going on lately and this is one of those things. There is nothing nice that can be said about ISIS and what they did to those two journalist is appalling. All of that said, we have already poured billions of dollars and thousands of lives into this region. We've killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, no one seems to count them as people. How much longer must this go on before we admit that this modern day imperialism is a fool's errand. We don't need to be in the middle east. This extremism that you see is a backlash against the constant abuses and aggression put on by Western governments.

Who appointed the United States to be the world police? What gives us the authority to dictate to other countries how they should run things? What gives us the authority to say our culture is superior and they need to westernize to be modern? It's a modern white man's burden that is a thin cover for our economic interests. How did our oil get under their sand? Oil is a finite non-renewable resource. If we need to drive around so badly, instead of spending nearly a trillion dollars on a war, lets spend it on independence from oil. Stop giving war hawks blood. Stop giving shady people money and being surprised when they turn on you.

If we're so worried about terrorism, a good start would be to stop engaging in terrorism. War is the terrorism of the rich and terrorism is the war of the poor. Stop dropping bombs on innocent people to kill a few not so innocent people who are mad about the previous time we dropped bombs. Stop giving no questions asked military aid to a colonial apartheid state that has created the world's worst stateless refugee problem, routinely bombs those refuges, keeps them in an outdoor prison after taking their homes, and stop being surprised when this makes people mad at you.

And for the love of the gods stop letting the unfettered, unfiltered, lies of war profiteers dictate our foreign policy

[LordKAT]

There is always a choice.  The number of innocent lives lost is far higher than 2, especially for the non American side.


A feud or war can go on indefinitely, long as one or the other has a grudge it will continue. Sometimes the best way to win a war is to refuse to fight it.

[Susan]

Our country should never go to war over religion. 

That being said the President swears an oath. "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." That's it...  There's nothing in there about fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.

Show me in how intervening in a local civil war in Iraq or Syria can be justified as protecting the Constitution, and I will be all for it. You can't do it, so don't even try.

The 2001 Authorization for use of Military Force is overly broad, and should have been repealed back at the end of 2001 when saner heads prevailed. Before we lost 4,487 American soldiers and another 32,223 wounded in Iraq. That's not even looking at the estimates of Iraqi Casultiies which run by various estimates between 150,000 and 1 million. That's not counting the 1,825 Americans dead and 19,889 wounded in Afghanistan. Something like $5,000,000,000,000 has already been spent and that's not considering the long term costs. No matter how you look at it, the price wasn't worth it!

This war is about two things; oil, and putting more tax payers money in the hands of the Military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in the 1950's. We ignore genocide in Darfur; but Iraq, Syria, and Iran all of which have significant oil reserves are right at the top of our foreign adventure agenda.

We need to step back and stay out of internal conflicts in other countries.  We need to stop fighting wars in other countries and take the money currently being spent on these foreign adventures, and an overly bloated military, and invest it here in our own country. We need to declare a war right here at home to rebuild our stagnant economy and our crumbling national infrastructure. Once we get our country rebuilt, then we can help other countries do so as well; making friends instead of people who hate our country, and all that it stands for.

[stephaniec]

5,000,000,000,000
that's a lot of food, healthcare and shelter

[skin]

Well first off, the anti-Muslim rhetoric is really disturbing. A quarter of Earth' population is Muslim, and a vast majority of them live outside of the Middle East.  Islam is the excuse for violence there, not the cause.  It wouldn't matter what religion they were.  The Bible has just as f'd up verses in it as the Quaran.  Taking the words of either book literally would make you a terrible human being.

As far as the isolationist point of view, thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis have been slaughtered already.  I certainly don't feel comfortable just letting that happen to fellow humans if there is a way to stop or at least slow it.  And the threat to the US is more pressing than you seem to think.  The speed at which they were able to grow and gather resources should be scary - they are in a stronger position than Al Qaeda was when they attacked America.  Letting them continue to grow could be asking for trouble in the future.  And they do pose a more immediate threat to our allies in Europe, particularly Britain and France

Admin Note: On the struck out text, I banned the person for doing so.  It is never acceptable to advocate for violence against anyone for any reason  ever, especially not on the basis of a right protected by the constitution. I don't care if you or the person you are targeting is a U.S. Citizen or not.   You will be perm banned. - Susan.

[LeftistLeslie]

Was there a post deleted? I missed it. Who was it? What did they say?

[Ms Grace]

Believe me, you don't wanna know.

[Susan]

Believe me, you don't wanna know.

you can send it to them via pm if you want. Use the quote function on each of the messages.

I figured out we have already spent 333,333,333.33 per member of al-quaida and not even made a dent. We could probably buy them all off much cheaper.