C Is for Chickenhawk

 

B is for Bolton, John, jonesing for war with Iran.

U is for You who will do the fighting and bear the cost of Mr. Bolton’s war.

T is for Telling lies to get a war for the chickenhawks.

T is for Taking no responsibility for lives and property destroyed and lost in war.

H is for Hastening the destruction that feeds the war machine.

O is for Oil, which other countries have for the taking.

L is for Lining the pockets of arms dealers and military contractors.

E is for Excuses chickenhawks give for not personally fighting when it was their turn.


John R. Bolton official photo
John Bolton, National Security Advisor and warmonger. Official White House photo.

Topolino rocon verona08
Italian agricultural horse trained to pull a sled. Photo by Annalisa Parisi. This picture has something in common with the first picture in this post.


— Vita

“The Call Up”, from The Clash’s 1980 album Sandinista!

 

Boondoggles ad Infinitum

 

The current presidential administration trotted out their front man for ostensibly serious projects on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence, to make the case for entangling the country in a boondoggle called “Space Force”. At first glance, this seems like a waste of national resources in an attempt to appease one special interest, defense contractors. Deeper scrutiny, however, uncovers Space Force as a waste of national resources on behalf of boosting the reelection campaign coffers of the current administration as well titillating the chickenhawks amongst their donors. The presidential administration is monetizing the creation of this unnecessary new branch of the military as if it were a television show.

Ed Kemmer Lyn Osborn Space Patrol 1954
A September 1954 promotional photo from the television series Space Patrol. Ed Kemmer as Commander Buzz Corry works the controls of the space ship while Lyn Osborn as Cadet Happy Osborn looks on.

This latest development in the kleptocracy that is the current administration should not be surprising to those who have kept their cynicism up to date. The Space Force hubbub will also serve usefully as a distraction for the next week or two from real problems closing in on the administration, such as the investigation of Independent Counsel Robert Mueller into criminal mischief by the administration’s personnel and, before it, it’s campaign staff. More indictments are coming, and probably a subpoena for Orange Julius himself, who will no doubt waste millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money fighting to avoid being dragged into court by asserting he is above the law. Meanwhile, in the fantasy land of Space Force, the gravy will be flowing for all the billionaire and millionaire defense contractor executives who profess libertarian ideals while feeding greedily at the government trough filled by their benefactors, Commander Buzz Corry and Cadet Happy Osborn, aka Orange Julius and the Duncy White Knight.
— Techly

Grabbing fistfuls of candy bars will be mere kids’ stuff in the new Space Force marketing.

 

Walk the Walk

 


In Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 movie Full Metal Jacket, two marines engage in an ironic “John Wayne” face-off. Wayne’s chickenhawkish stances were well-known and widely held in contempt by combat veterans from World War II to Vietnam. Warning: foul language.

 

America’s wars continue with no end in sight, from one presidential administration to the next. One proposal to curtail the corporate oligarchy’s military adventurism is to bring back the military draft or to institute Universal National Service, the idea being that if a greater percentage of the population has a personal stake in foreign policy then they will be more likely to make their preferences known to their leaders, and people with a personal stake are less likely to want more war. The oligarchy knows this, too, as it’s a lesson they learned from an aroused public during the Vietnam War and are unlikely to want repeated if the public reawakens.

 

Since the draft ended in 1973, the per capita percentage of the population serving in the military has steadily declined, while the number of American military interventions overseas has drastically increased. Linking the two trends could be coincidental, but it’s worth considering that in the 40 years from 1933 to 1973, in most of which there was a draft, the US sent the military abroad on 27 occasions, and in the 40 years from 1974 to 2014 the US sent the military on 175 different foreign interventions. Has the world really become 6.5 times more dangerous since 1973? Or is it that the US has taken on in earnest the burden and profits of empire and the role of world policeman, putting out small fires everywhere, many times at the behest of corporate interests?

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

― Marine Major General (Retired) Smedley Butler, writing in the
Socialist newspaper Common Sense in 1935.

 


The 1994 Robert Zemeckis movie Forrest Gump is an excellent portrayal of the diversity of experience awaiting Vietnam era draftees, though of course most of them did not want to be there. Warning: foul language.
The majority of Americans catch the news about these numerous foreign conflicts as they go about their daily business, and because they don’t know anyone in the military and didn’t serve themselves, the news pretty much goes in one ear and out the other. Who can get agitated or even interested about what’s happening in Kosovo or Libya or Yemen or the Horn of Africa, wherever that is? Afghanistan and Iraq, oh yeah, are those still dragging on? Are we going into Syria now, too? And so these busy Americans go on with their lives, paying their taxes and going shopping, surprised to learn that when the US deploys Predator drones to these foreign hot spots, the controllers of the deadly drones sit in air-conditioned trailers halfway around the world in Nevada or Germany. It’s the New Age, alright, a deadly video game.

 

Or so we might choose to believe. As technocratic and bloodless as the military brass and the politicians may try to make modern war seem in order to make it more palatable for the general public, it will always nevertheless be a nasty mess both physically and morally. They don’t want to show that part, though; they learned that lesson from Vietnam as well. Rah-rah Hollywood movies are not the answer to getting Americans to come to terms with their current situation in world politics. Far from it. There are far too many chickenhawks making movies in Hollywood and making policy in Washington to serve anything but the basest emotions of too many Americans, the “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” among them, who are stirred to cheer movies glorifying war and the macho posturing of Supreme Leader. As long as they reflexively say “Thank you for your service” to a service member or veteran when they encounter one, they’re covered. Aren’t they?
― Ed.

An early scene in Full Metal Jacket depicts Marine boot camp in a less lighthearted vein than the boot camp of Forrest Gump. Some of that can be attributed to the differences between the Marines and the Army, and some to the aims of the two films. Nonetheless, some of the drill sergeant’s insults will ring bells in the dark sense of humor shared by many veterans, an emotion Kubrick effectively turns inside out at the end of the scene. Warning: foul language, of course.