Many political scientists and foreign policymakers view war as the continuation of politics: When diplomacy fails, some states simply decide to use force.
While democracies don't hurry to go to war with other democracies, they are just as fast to go to war against non-democracies as any other form of government.
Since the early 1900s, America has been more prone to war than most other democracies.
She has been accused of "empire building", not to gain land, but to tap into the natural resources of other nations.
This, too, has been influenced by politics.
Some political beliefs favor war more than others.
WHEN OUR POLITICIANS DISCOVERED THAT, BY SIDING WITH THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX TO FUND THE GREAT WAR MACHINE, THEY COULD GET PAID TO DO SO, GET FINANCIAL REWARDS THAT WOULD UP THEIR CHANCES OF WINNING ELECTIONS, THEY HOPPED ABOARD THAT TRAIN AND SHOVED THE THROTTLE WIDE OPEN.
IT'S BEEN A RUNAWAY TRAIN EVER SINCE.
POLITICS: DESTROYING AMERICA....FROM WITHIN
IT BEGINS ON THE INSIDE AND GNAWS ITS WAY OUT.
"The two-party system is destroying America.
Democrats and Republicans are in a death match and the American people are caught in the middle.
The bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans has largely ground government to a halt.
[ IT HAS ALSO AFFECTED OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD GLOBAL INTERVENTION, UNDECLARED WAR, FUELED THE 'MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX' AS WE WILL SOON SEE.]
Partisans on both sides are so angry they can barely speak with the other, much less work together. The most extreme are convinced that members of the other party are treasonous and purposefully harming the nation.
This isn’t just a perception.
A recent Pew Research survey found that 36 percent of Republicans thought that liberal policies are “a threat to the nation’s well-being.” 27 percent of Democrats feel the same way about conservatives.
The more destructive problem is the way this skews the discussion of the issues facing the nation.
The [two parties] don’t just think they have better ideas or their opponents are misguided, EACH honestly believe that the other side is more interested in partisan gain than the well-being of the nation.
Many of the more extreme partisans simply refuse to work with the other side.
The result is that the two parties have the nation’s capital, and many state capitals, in a death grip.
Over the last thirty years the nation has grown more partisan and Congress has become less effective.
80 percent of Americans currently disapprove of Congress. ZERO PERCENT ARE BUSY FIRING THE BASTARDS.
THE AMERICAN VOTERS TEND TO VOTE FOR THE SAME CROOKS AND LIARS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
Each side is more extreme, and each bases their political agenda on demonizing the other side. Each side engages in political machinations, which include partisan gerrymandering and manipulating the rules of Congress to get their way, stymie their opponents, or deny them office completely. "
THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE TWO PARTIES SPILLS OVER INTO INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS.
The military-industrial complex in a country typically attempts to marshal political support for continued or increased military spending by the national government.
The term military-industrial complex was first used by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961.
Before and during the Second World War, American industries had successfully converted to defense production as the crisis demanded, but out of the war, what Eisenhower called a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions emerged.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist, Eisenhower cautioned.
He warned that the federal government’s collaboration with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, though necessary, was vulnerable to abuse of power.
Ike then counseled American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the military-industrial complex. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Ike also recommended restraint in consumer habits, particularly with regard to the environment.
"'As we peer into society’s future, we–you and I, and our government–must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.'"
TODAY, WHICH POLITICAL PARTY HAS MOST OFTEN ALIGNED WITH THIS MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?
WHICH PARTY HAS BECOME THE MORE WILLING SUPPORTER OF THIS WAR MACHINE?
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS FROM "THE DOGS OF WAR" GO TO THE "HAWKS" OF CAPITOL HILL.
"Because large corporations like Lockheed Martin can funnel millions into political campaigns, veterans and soldiers (and their families) create a massive voting block, and national defense is an easy slogan, America has seen its defense budget needlessly and uncontrollably burgeon, NO MATTER WHICH PARTY WAS IN CONTROL.
Congressmen funnel funds to the mega-corporations that build and replenish the machinery of war, and, in return, those huge companies give back to their friends on Capitol Hill EACH NEW ELECTION YEAR.
IT'S BEEN A MUTUAL LOVE FEST FOR HALF A CENTURY OR MORE.
Senate Republicans, for instance had no qualms appropriating $380 million for the widely lambasted MEADS (Medium Extended Air Defense System).
Even though the Congressional Budget Office recommended Congress “terminate” MEADS, Richard Shelby (R - Ala) expressed support for the program, calling it “the right thing to do.”
The program office is located in his home state.
Since Republicans are happy to reign in any spending other than military spending, they have a vice grip on the military voting block.
The military saps up 20 percent of the federal budget, at nearly $711 billion (the closest competitor, China spends a relatively meager $143 billion).
[NOTE: THIS $711 BILLION DOES NOT REFLECT THE VARIOUS "SLUSH FUNDS", AS WE ARE NOT PRIVY TO THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IN THOSE FUNDS....NATIONAL SECURITY FORBIDS IT.]
Every billion spent on defense is a billion away from the school system, from public goods, from highways and environmental programs.
And while the United States is number one in defense spending (spending more than every other country combined) it lags behind Europe and China on infrastructure spending.
But the greatest cost exposes the greatest hypocrisy of the Republican Party: while the party laments the budget deficit to justify tax cuts on the wealthy or cuts to Medicaid, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and school lunch programs, it refuses to accept that defense spending is partially responsible for the massive deficits.
Two-thirds of all discretionary spending goes to defense ($851 billion for defense and $410 billion for non-defense in 2013).
Admiral Michael Mullen recently said that the national debt is the greatest threat to national security.
The defense budget has grown at an unprecedented level in the past 13 years, the greatest and most prolonged build-up of the past half century.
AMERICA IS CONSTANTLY PREPARING FOR WAR. "A massive defense buildup - like the one during the Reagan administration - is a dangerous proposal.
It is dangerous not just because it would enlarge US imperial power and add to an already bloated defense budget, but because it would allow Republicans to further pursue austerity measures.
Republicans have done this for 70 years.
Since World War II, Republicans have relied on the American defense budget to divert federal funds away from social welfare in support of a military-industrial complex that is ever-growing.
When The United States' military power failed to defeat guerilla forces in Southeast Asia, the defense budget was slashed, forcing contractors into an existential crisis.
But the crisis was temporary. Richard Nixon allowed the defense industry to avert criticism at home by exporting weapons abroad. Global arms sales surged after 1968. Weapons sales only escalated from this point, contributing to blowback against US foreign policy in the developing world.
Companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin have raked in large profits in arms deals, selling aircraft to the Saudis to wage war in Yemen and to the United Arab Emirates to bomb Syria.
And even when military contractors faced insolvency in the 1970s, Republicans in Congress bailed them out.
Faced with bankruptcy due to financial mismanagement and internal corruption in 1971, the federal government (CONGRESS) guaranteed Lockheed's loans totaling over $250 million, sparing the company from ruin.
Military contractors fared even better with Ronald Reagan. Reagan's policy of "peace through strength" meant vast gains for white-collar technocrats in the military-industrial complex.
The Reagan buildup, particularly programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), was a boon to white, highly-educated scientists and researchers, who by the 1980s profited most from defense.
Expanding the Cold War abroad thus meant growing economic inequality at home during the Reagan years, when incomes began to separate the most.
During the presidency of George W. Bush, the defense budget doubled.
Bush also sent Cold War weaponry to police departments in suburban America to fight crime and the "war on drugs," militarizing poor communities in the process.
Moreover, the defense industry continues to profit from global conflagrations while laying off its domestic industrial workforce, marginalizing unions, closing factories and leaving many communities jobless.
Republican supporters of increased defense spending depict the United States' global military as necessary to the national security of the United States.
CREATING AND MAINTAINING THE LUCRATIVE "CLASS WAR"
The largest benefactors of the military-industrial complex continue to be wealthy suburbs in the South and West that also heavily lean Republican.
This explains why Republicans advocate wealth-creation through war while promoting tax cuts and deregulation for the rich.
The existence of the military economy has allowed the Right to sell the military as a remedy for joblessness, even while supporting austerity policies that enlarge the gap between the rich and poor.
It is therefore not enough to reject Republicans' demands for a bigger military budget. An economic alternative to war capitalism must be provided - one that provides full employment.
Doing so will offer Americans independence from a structure that has not served the broader interests of the poor OR working-class; or, the country as a whole."
OUR CONGRESSMEN ARE HORSE-TRADERS AND PORK DELIVERERS.
"Eisenhower, in a presentation to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953, contemplated a world permanently perched on the brink of war—“humanity hanging from a cross of iron”— and he appealed to Americans to assess the consequences likely to ensue.
Largely overlooked by most commentators was a second theme that Eisenhower had woven into his text.
The essence of this theme was simplicity itself: spending on arms and armies is inherently undesirable.
Even when seemingly necessary, it constitutes a misappropriation of scarce resources. By diverting social capital from productive to destructive purposes, war and the preparation for war deplete, rather than enhance, a nation’s strength.
And while assertions of military necessity might camouflage the costs entailed, they can never negate them altogether.
“Every gun that is made,” Eisenhower told his listeners, “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Any nation that pours its treasure into the purchase of armaments is spending more than mere money. “It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
To emphasize the point, Eisenhower offered specifics:
"The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities…
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."
Yet in Cold War Washington, Eisenhower’s was a voice crying in the wilderness. As much as they liked Ike, Americans had no intention of choosing between guns and butter: they wanted both.
Military Keynesianism—the belief that the production of guns could underwrite an endless supply of butter—was enjoying its heyday.
At the time, the idea that militarizing U.S. policy might yield economic benefits outweighing the costs seemed eminently plausible.
The authors of the National Security Council report “NSC-68,” the 1950 blueprint for U.S. rearmament, had made this point explicitly: boosting Pentagon spending would “increase the gross national product by more than the amount being absorbed for additional military and foreign assistance purposes.”
Building up the nation’s defenses could serve as a sort of permanent economic stimulus program, putting people to work and money in their pockets.
So Americans disregarded Ike’s brooding about a “cross of iron” and a trade-off between guns and butter.
The 1950s brought new bombers and new schools, fleets of warships and tracts of freshly built homes spilling into the suburbs.
Eisenhower and his fellow Republicans were more than happy to pocket the credit for this win-win outcome.
Yet the president, if not his party, also sensed that beneath the appearance of Ozzie-and-Harriet prosperity, momentous and not altogether welcome changes were taking place.
The postwar boom in which the American middle class took such satisfaction was reconfiguring, redistributing, and redefining American power.
In 1952, when Ike was elected, our nuclear stockpile numbered some 1,000 warheads. By the time he passed the reins to John F. Kennedy in 1961, it consisted of more than 24,000 warheads, and it rapidly ascended later that decade to a peak of 31,000.
As commander in chief, Ike exercised only nominal control over this development, which was driven by an unstated alliance of interested parties: generals, defense officials, military contractors, and members of Congress.
During the Eisenhower years, military outlays served as a seemingly inexhaustible engine of economic well-being.
Keeping the Soviets at bay required the design and acquisition of a vast array of guns and missiles, bombers and warships, tanks and fighter planes.
Ensuring that U.S. forces stayed in fighting trim entailed the construction of bases, barracks, depots, and training facilities.
Research labs received funding. Businesses large and small won contracts. Organized labor got jobs.
And politicians who delivered all these goodies to their constituents hauled in endorsements, campaign contributions, and votes.
For its beneficiaries, girding for war was a gift, and one they expected would never stop giving.
IKE KNEW BETTER.But, to sustain the illusion he was fully in command, Ike remained publicly silent about what went on behind the scenes.
Only on the eve of his departure from office did he inform the nation as to what Washington’s new obsession with national security had wrought.
In his speech of 1961, as in 1953, his central theme was theft.
This time, however, rather than homes or schools, Ike suggested the thieves might walk off with democracy itself.
The Cold War, he emphasized, had transformed the country’s approach to defending itself. In the past, “American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.”
But this reliance on improvisation no longer sufficed.
The rivalry with the Soviet Union had “compelled” the United States “to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.”
As a consequence, “we annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.”
The “economic, political, even spiritual” reach of this conglomeration was immense, Eisenhower explained, extending to “every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.”
With corporate officials routinely claiming the Pentagon’s top posts, and former military officers hiring themselves out to defense contractors, fundamental values were at risk.
“In the councils of government,” Eisenhower continued, "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."
Eisenhower then advanced a striking solution: ultimate responsibility for democracy’s defense, he insisted, necessarily rested with the people themselves.
Rather than according Washington deference, American citizens needed to exercise strict oversight.
Counting on the national-security state to police itself—on members of Congress to set aside parochial concerns, corporate chieftains to put patriotism above profit, and military leaders to hew to the ethic of their profession—wouldn’t do the trick.
NO ONE TOOK HEED TO HIS WARNING.
THE REIGN OF "CAMELOT" HAD BEGUN, JFK HAD WON THE ELECTION.
So Ike departed, but military metaphysics survived intact and found particular favor in the upper echelons of the next administration.
On the campaign trail, Kennedy had promised higher defense spending, enhanced nuclear capabilities, and a reinvigorated confrontation with Communism.
Once in office, he proved as good as his word.
Today, 50+ years later, an aura of never-ending crisis still prevails—and with it, military metaphysics.
The national-security state continues to grow in size, scope, and influence.
In Ike’s day, for example, the CIA dominated the field of intelligence.
Today, experts refer casually to an “intelligence community,” consisting of some 17 agencies.
The cumulative size and payroll of this apparatus grew by leaps and bounds in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
Last July, The Washington Post reported that it had “become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”
Since that report appeared, U.S. officials have parted the veil of secrecy enough to reveal that intelligence spending exceeds $80 billion per year, substantially more than the budget of either the Department of State ($49 billion) or the Department of Homeland Security ($43 billion).
Even more astonishing, annual U.S. military outlays now approximate those of all other nations, friends as well as foes, combined.
C. Wright Mills came closer to the mark about the power of the military-industrial complex than Ike did when he wrote of “a coalition of generals in the roles of corporation executives, of politicians masquerading as admirals, of corporation executives acting like politicians.”
Throw in the former members of Congress who lobby their successors on behalf of defense contractors, and the serving members who vote in favor of any defense appropriations that send money to their districts, and one begins to get a sense of the true topography.
With what result?
Not peace, and not prosperity.
Instead, American soldiers traipse wearily from one conflict to the next while the nation as a whole suffers from acute economic distress.
What has gone amiss?
Certain enterprises flourish, notably private security firms such as DynCorp, MPRI, and, of course, the notorious Blackwater (now known as Xe).
At MPRI, they like to say “We’ve got more generals per square foot here than in the Pentagon.”
But even if those generals are doing fine, the grandchildren of Ozzie and Harriet, coping with 9.8 percent unemployment and contemplating the implications of trillion-dollar deficits, see little benefit from our exorbitant Pentagon outlays.
To train, equip, and maintain one American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan for just one year costs a cool million dollars.
Yet Ike would hardly be surprised.
He would reserve his surprise—and his disappointment—for the American people.
A half century after he summoned us to shoulder the responsibilities of citizenship, we still refuse to do so.
In Washington, military metaphysics remains sacrosanct.
No wonder we continue to get our pockets picked."
"Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities.
BEING IN THE INNER CIRCLE PAY$
$~ Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, during his 2008 re-election campaign, received $209,000 in individual and political action committee contributions from defense industry sources, including $10,000 from Lockheed.
$~ Congressman Buck McKeon, a California Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, accepted $228,200 from defense industry sources between 2013 and 2014, including another $10,000 from Lockheed. It’s unclear just what McKeon will do with this money since he is not running for his seat this election.
$~ Top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee was James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. He received $373,700 in contributions from defense industry between 2009 and 2014, including $30,000 from Lockheed.
$~ Then-top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, ranking minority member Adam Smith of Washington, took in $274,200 from defense industry sources between 2012 and 2014 for his 2014 re-election, including $20,000 from Lockheed.-------
$~ The new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—Arizona senator John McCain, a Republican—took $246,300 from the defense industry, $32,500 of that from Lockheed.
$~ The new ranking minority member is Rhode Island senator Jack Reed, a Democrat who accepted $419,500 from the defense industry, including $40,000 from Lockheed.
$~ The
new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Mac
Thornberry of Texas, benefited from $415,400 in defense industry
donations—$20,000 of that from Lockheed.
Just as Ashton Carter traded in his high-level Defense Department positions for entry into a number of defense-interested firms, so do innumerable other former Pentagon officials, senior military officers and members of Congress and their staffs.
The behavior is rampant among senior generals and admirals.
In a seminal article in 2010, the Boston Globe found that 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star generals went to work for defense related firms—and one year, 34 out of 39 did.
The issue is not
that all these beneficiaries of the revolving door receive obscenely
large compensation to enhance their already generous government
pensions, it’s that the prospect of future pay can and does alter their
decision-making while in government.
Much,
but not all, of this behavior is perfectly legal.
That the laws governing post-government service are so full of loopholes is not an accident.
In fact, it’s the effect of the strong preferences of the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Industry-serving behavior has become THIS pervasive and repugnant today.
IT'S NO LONGER "JUST" THE MILITARY AND INDUSTRY ALIGNED TOGETHER....NOW OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS HAVE JOINED THAT 'COMPLEX'.
T'S A THREESOME...THREE FOR WAR, THREE FOR UNENDING, NEEDLESS AND IN MANY CASES WIN-LESS WARS, UNDECLARED, UNNECESSARY, DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED STRICTLY AS A MONEY-MAKING SCHEME OF THOSE WHO VALUE PROFITS OVER THE LIVES OF OUR MILITARY, MILITARY LIVES WHOM ALL THREE PLAYERS ARE WILLING TO SACRIFICE TO FATTEN THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS AND INCREASE THEIR POWER.
PERHAPS WE CAN DETERMINE FROM ALL OF THE ABOVE JUST WHICH PARTY NOT ONLY IS MOST ALIGNED WITH THE OLD MILITARY-INDUSTRIALISTS, BUT HOW THAT HAS AFFECTED EVERYTHING, EVERY BILL, EVERY LAW, THAT COMES OFF THE SENATE AND HOUSE FLOORS.
LIKE PLANETS REVOLVING AROUND A SUN, CONGRESS REVOLVES AROUND THE MEGA-CORPORATIONS WHICH THRIVE BEST IN TIMES OF CONFLICT ABROAD.
WHAT FOLLOWS SHOULD SHOW EVEN THE MOST SKEPTICAL WHERE THE LOYALTIES LIE BY PARTY.
IT IS A LOT OF STATISTICS, AND, MANY WILL SKIP IT, BUT THERE ARE SOME "GEMS" OF INSIGHT FOR THOSE WILLING TO SEE FACTS.
In 2015, Pew research found that ...That the laws governing post-government service are so full of loopholes is not an accident.
In fact, it’s the effect of the strong preferences of the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Industry-serving behavior has become THIS pervasive and repugnant today.
IT'S NO LONGER "JUST" THE MILITARY AND INDUSTRY ALIGNED TOGETHER....NOW OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS HAVE JOINED THAT 'COMPLEX'.
T'S A THREESOME...THREE FOR WAR, THREE FOR UNENDING, NEEDLESS AND IN MANY CASES WIN-LESS WARS, UNDECLARED, UNNECESSARY, DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED STRICTLY AS A MONEY-MAKING SCHEME OF THOSE WHO VALUE PROFITS OVER THE LIVES OF OUR MILITARY, MILITARY LIVES WHOM ALL THREE PLAYERS ARE WILLING TO SACRIFICE TO FATTEN THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS AND INCREASE THEIR POWER.
PERHAPS WE CAN DETERMINE FROM ALL OF THE ABOVE JUST WHICH PARTY NOT ONLY IS MOST ALIGNED WITH THE OLD MILITARY-INDUSTRIALISTS, BUT HOW THAT HAS AFFECTED EVERYTHING, EVERY BILL, EVERY LAW, THAT COMES OFF THE SENATE AND HOUSE FLOORS.
LIKE PLANETS REVOLVING AROUND A SUN, CONGRESS REVOLVES AROUND THE MEGA-CORPORATIONS WHICH THRIVE BEST IN TIMES OF CONFLICT ABROAD.
WHAT FOLLOWS SHOULD SHOW EVEN THE MOST SKEPTICAL WHERE THE LOYALTIES LIE BY PARTY.
IT IS A LOT OF STATISTICS, AND, MANY WILL SKIP IT, BUT THERE ARE SOME "GEMS" OF INSIGHT FOR THOSE WILLING TO SEE FACTS.
ON THE SUBJECT OF GLOBAL DOMINANCE...
Despite the public’s ambivalence about U.S. global involvement, a majority of Americans (55%) support policies maintaining America’s status as the only military superpower.
Only about a third (36%) say it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S.
As in the past, there are partisan differences in opinions about whether the U.S. should try to maintain its status as the world’s sole superpower.
Two-thirds of Republicans (67%) say U.S. policies should be aimed at keeping the U.S. as the sole superpower, compared with about half of Democrats (50%) and independents (52%).
About twice as many Republicans (23%) as Democrats and independents (12% each) say the U.S. should be the single world leader.
Twice as many Republicans (42%) see international 'terrorism' as more concerning than the economy (21%).
They fear terrorist attacks more than a collapsed financial system.
In just one year, 2014-2015, the Republican focus had switched to ISIS and more Republicans than ever expressed the urgency to put "boots-on-the-ground" in areas of the Middle east against ISIS.
66% of Republicans wanted to see U.S. ground forces in both Syria and Iraq.
Fully 72% of Republicans say that using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat global terrorism.
Notably, more than nine-in-ten Republicans (93%) cite ISIS as a major threat
Among Democrats, just 27% favor the use of overwhelming military force, while 66% say relying too much on military force creates hatred that leads to more terrorism.
Most Republicans (74%) say their bigger concern is the U.S. will not go far enough in stopping Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria
IMMIGRATION? REPUBLICANS DON'T WANT IMMIGRANTS, THANKS.
Republicans, overall, are far more opposed to immigrants entering the U.S. than their Democrat counterparts.
On the subject of America allowing refugees from Middle Eastern war-torn nations, two-thirds (67%) of Republicans said they disapproved of the plan; a nearly identical share of Democrats (69%) approved of it.
More than eight-in-ten GOP voters who support Trump (85%) say the refugees are a major threat to the U.S.
Republicans have often complained of the "Brown Tide" of both legal and illegal immigrants
entering the U.S. from south of the American border.
Republicans in Congress have long opposed any and all immigration reform, voting against Presidents from their own parties who attempted to reform immigration, or who wanted to give amnesty to illegals who have lived in America for years.
INCREASE 'DEFENSE SPENDING'
The majority of Republicans are more for defense spending than for spending to feed the poor, spending to help returning veterans, or spending to create a better educational system. or spending to clean up and improve their environment.
In essence, they'd rather feel "protected" than make things better for the poor, disabled, elderly, children or veterans, or make improvements n education, environment or infrastructure.
Since being whipped into a frenzy of fear by the attacks on 9/11, Republicans, more than any other group polled, see "Homeland Security" as necessary to their protection, even though it means less privacy and greater government control over their rights and freedom.
For Republicans those mythical "weapons of mass destruction" are still out there, somewhere, threatening our nation.
Fully 61% of Republicans favor higher defense spending, up 24 percentage points from 2013.
AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY? WHAT'S THAT?
This shift underscores the deep partisan and ideological divisions in attitudes about U.S. foreign policy – differences that extend to how to deal with terrorism, the nature of global threats, views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how deeply involved the United States should be in the world.
These are among the main findings of 'America’s Place in the World', a survey of foreign policy attitudes conducted periodically by Pew Research Center.
Trump’s primary campaign supporters stand out for their negative assessments of U.S. involvement in the global economy.
Fully 65% of Republican registered voters who prefer Trump for the Republican presidential nomination say U.S. involvement in the global economy is a bad thing.
Although many Americans believe the U.S. has become less powerful than it was in the past , the predominant view among the entire general public is that the United States is the world’s leading economic and military power.
72% say the U.S. is the leading MILITARY power, while 12% say it is China and 10% Russia.
The share saying the U.S. is the top military power has grown from 64% in 2013.
Again, these attitudes also are divided along partisan lines:
Republicans (67%) remain more likely than independents (48%) or Democrats (26%) to say that the U.S. has become less powerful and important.
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE? IT'S A MYTH ACCORDING TO MOST REPUBLICANS
There are partisan differences over a number of global concerns, but the widest gap, by far, is over the threat to the United States from global climate change.
Nearly eight-in-ten Democrats (77%) view global climate change as a major threat to the U.S., compared with just 26% of Republicans.
Among Republicans, climate change is the lowest of the eight threats included in the survey.
This means more will favor, both now and in the future, America's "intervention" in foreign nations whose natural resources such as oil, natural gas, coal, etc, all fossil fuels, plus resources for powering nuclear facilities and America's nuclear arsenal, like sources of uranium, can be tapped into.
Large majorities of Republican voters, regardless of their primary preference, say their bigger concern is that anti-terror policies have not gone far enough to protect the country.
Among Sanders supporters, 51% say their bigger concern is that U.S. policies have gone too far in restricting civil liberties, while 33% say they have not gone far enough in protecting the U.S. Opinion among Clinton supporters is reversed (51% not gone far enough, 35% too far).
The number of Americans who say the U.S.
should “mind its own business internationally” – which in 2013 surpassed
50% for the time in a half-century (52%) – has declined to 43% in the current survey.
However, just 37% say the U.S. “should HELP other countries deal with their problems,” while a majority (57%) say the nation should “deal with its own problems and let other countries deal with their problems the best they can.
ON FOREIGN AID TO 'DEVELOPING NATIONS'....FORGET ABOUT IT.
Nearly eight-in-ten Trump supporters oppose increasing foreign aid to developing nations (78%); two-thirds are against importing more goods from these nations (67%); and about six-in ten disapprove of increasing U.S. companies’ investment abroad (63%).
On the Democratic side, there are no significant differences between the views of Clinton and Sanders supporters on these issues.
BEATING THE DRUMS OF WAR. WHO BANGS LOUDEST?
“Those who are … beating the drums of war should explain clearly to the American people what they think the costs and benefits would be.”
“The notion that the way to solve every one of these problems is to deploy our military — that hasn’t been true in the past and it won’t be true now. …
Sometimes, it’s necessary, but we don’t do it casually. … We think it through. We don’t play politics with it.”
~Barack Obama, March, 2012, denouncing Republican “bluster” about war with Iran.
"Perhaps the president was referring to Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney’s pledge to a cheering throng to “station multiple carriers and warships at Iran’s door” and deny Tehran even “the capacity to make a bomb.”
Perhaps Obama had in mind John McCain’s call for U.S. air strikes on Syria, an act of war rejected even by GOP Speaker John Boehner as “premature,” since the “situation in Syria is pretty complicated.”
Have the Republican uber-hawks learned nothing from the war for which they beat the drums 10 years ago?
Then they told us Saddam Hussein was implicated in 9/11, that he had chemical weapons, that if we didn’t invade his country we could expect anthrax attacks by Iraqi crop-dusters up and down our East Coast.
[THEY ALL FAILED TO MENTION THAT "HIS COUNTRY" WAS SAUDI ARABIA, WHERE THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE 9/11 HIJACKERS CALLED HOME.]
Those who asked for proof Saddam was a mortal threat were dismissed by Condi Rice: “There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
The price of our heeding that bluster? Some 4,500 American dead, 35,000 wounded, $1 trillion sunk, 100,000 Iraqi dead, half a million widows and orphans.
The fruits of our victory?
A Shia-dominated Iraq descending into sectarian and civil war.
The GOP’s political reward for marching us up to Baghdad?
Loss of both houses of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, when the antiwar Obama crushed the war hawk McCain."
ROUGHLY HALF OF AMERICA JUST HASN'T LEARNED FROM OUR RECENT PAST.
We are STILL in debt for the George H.W. Bush "Desert Storm" undeclared war of the 1990s
We are STILL paying for George W. Bush's hunt for WMDs in Iraq,
While Pakistan harbored Bin Laden for YEARS, Bush, Jr. sent our troops into Iraq, Afghanistan and some of our troops are still there.
We've spent TRILLIONS on a futile, undeclared war on nations that had NOTHING to do with 9/11, while watching Bush, Jr, kissing the mouths of monarchs of the nation which helped fund that attack and strolling them through the White House rose garden....Saudi Arabia supplies us "cheap" oil, after all... and we kiss more than lips to keep that supply going.
Today’s repulsive national security system is corroding the security, not to mention the liberty, of every American.
We search in vain for a leader of conscience in the White House, Congress or the Pentagon to repair our broken national defenses.
We search in vain for a leader of conscience in the White House, Congress or the Pentagon to repair our broken national defenses.
Sadly,
that search will remain entirely hopeless for as long as we permit our
military and political leaders to accept defense contractor compensation
or contributions.
The prospect of plush defense corporation jobs dangling over generals and civilian decision-makers throughout their careers—and the active flow of cash to politicians during and after their elected terms of office—suborn our democracy.
WHEN WILL THE NEXT THOUSAND OF OUR FINEST, OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS, BE SENT OFF TO ANOTHER UNDECLARED WAR?
DO WE CARE ENOUGH TO DEMAND AN END TO THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX?
IT APPEARS NOT.
JUST AS THE FEDERAL RESERVE PLACED US IN AN UNENDING CYCLE OF IRREDUCIBLE DEBT, SO OUR MEGA-CORPORATIONS' NEED FOR PROFIT HAS FOREVER ENTRAPPED US INTO SENDING THOSE WE LOVE OFF TO FOREIGN SOILS AGAIN AND AGAIN.
WE EITHER LEARN OR WE PERISH.
OBVIOUSLY, YET AGAIN, THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS CHOOSE TO PERISH... ALL IN THE NAME OF "PARTY LOYALTY", BR IT DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN.
THE TRUTH IS, BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME ...CORRUPT, SELF-SERVING, POWER-HUNGRY ASYLUMS FOR THE WEAK-MINDED WHO HAVE ACCEPTED THAT THEY MUST NEVER QUESTION ANYTHING THEIR PARTY DOES.
SELF-BLINDED, THOSE IN BOTH PARTIES ARE EASILY LED DOWN ANY PATH THEIR PARTY LEADERS TAKE THEM.
CHOOSING PARTY OVER NATION, NONE HAVE NOTICED THE DEATH OF AMERICA, JUST AS ALMOST NO ONE HAS NOTICED THE DEATHS OF THOSE WE HAVE SENT TO SERVE HER MONEY-HUNGRY CORPORATIONS AND POLITICIANS.
ON THIS MEMORIAL DAY, WE WOULD NOT BE WRONG TO SAY THAT AMERICANS HAVE NO REAL MEMORY OF THE SACRIFICES IT HAS TAKEN TO KEEP THE WAR MACHINE WELL-OILED....A MACHINE OILED BY THE BLOOD OF OUR FALLEN...AND THAT ALL WE HAVE TO SHOW FOR THAT IS SERVITUDE AND DEBT.
THAT IS NOT WHAT THEY DIED FOR.
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