And not just peace, but our ignoring all the weapons that we sell to war-torn countries -- America is the world's largest arms exporter by a wide margin.
Real conservatives ought to be appalled, as Ron Paul is appalled, at America's empire of hundreds of military bases around the globe. As Engelhardt points out (again):
"This wasn't always the case. The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns, and mercenary corporations -- as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it -- with genuine horror."
July 7, 2010 | AlterNet
The following is an excerpt from The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's by Tom Engelhardt (Haymarket, 2010).
No comments:
Post a Comment