The propaganda of blaming the wrong people for failure works in the US; citizens were persuaded to blame the wrong people for “loosing the war” in Vietnam. Some willingly took “action” based on misleading misinformation and threw rotten eggs and dog crap at the returning soldiers. That’s something many would rather forget, but it’s something the country has forgotten at her own peril.
This blame game of propaganda still works today. It’s the “welfare bums” and old people sucking down Social Security and Medicare dollars causing the so called huge deficit, perpetual war spending doesn’t even come into question.
The Washington Spectator reports that the military budget already “gobbles up over half of federal discretionary spending.” Journalist James Risen reported that the US has spent $4 trillion on war thus far. We’re no safer now than when we first started this “war on terror”. It’s a lot of spending with poor results. Sound familiar?
From the Nation magazine-“ The drumbeat for war has already spiraled into calls for increased military spending that will lift all boats; hawkish members of Congress are using the IS war as an occasion to push for cancellation of the entire Pentagon sequester, which would increase funding to defense contractors across the board.” And, “Ramping up American’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 conflict. But those goals do unquestionably benefit one player in this saga; America’s defense industry.”
Senator Lindsey Graham is banging the drum for war with his shrill prediction that we’re all gonna die if we don’t defeat ISIS now and wants to send 10,000 ground troops immediately. Only one percent of this country serves in the military, where are the ground troops coming from? Presently, twenty-two veterans out of this one percent commit suicide each day. This should be telling us there’s something very wrong with America’s perpetual wars; but since it doesn’t receive as much corporate media attention as the “ruinous debt” this tragic warning sign is ignored.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Question everything” and that includes budgets for wars with scant or absent details. How do we know all that defense money is being spent wisely? What protections are in place to guard against corruption and inherent human greed that occurs during wars “when no one is looking”? The Pentagon Papers should have taught us to question what we’re being told about war. No one questions it though, the lessons of Vietnam have been unlearned.
Lack of knowledge didn’t stop citizens from blaming the wrong people for failure in Vietnam and it doesn’t stop the country from blaming the wrong people for financial debt. This country has spent four trillion on war and twelve trillion on banks that were “too bit to fail”. That’s sixteen trillion just to war and Wall Street. Does the country believe it? No, but we don’t mind spending those trillions on the revered few, after all, the banks drive “job creation” and the war mongers “keep us safe”. Jobs and safety sounds promising, but the corporate owned media is wrong about causes of government debt and the not so promising ability of war to bring us peace.
Patrick Henry said, “I know of no way judging the future but by the past.” Blaming the wrong people doesn’t work, history proves it.
