Historic, if true and holds. 60s live?. History is a boomerang.
alice wellintown
alicewellintown at gmail.com
Wed Sep 11 18:02:56 CDT 2013
The good news is that the US is now less dependent on the oil from the
region of the globe where the crazy wars are.
So, the Pivot that Obama has started, away from the region of woe, is good
news too. The defense industry will make money, selling weapons to the
region anyway. The demand for Patriots and othe defensive missile systems
can't be met fast enough. We can expect this to be the case for a while.
But there is much more money in peace.
And so, the US is not the only people to reject, not embrace war, the world
has embraced peace, not war.
Right?
Or do I live in wonderland?
On Wednesday, September 11, 2013, alice wellintown wrote:
> No. This is not true. Even if you were you to make this argument about the
> military industrial complex, that includes the government, specifically the
> congress that spends the money and the president who too often uses the
> products, the military, the university and research and development
> business--the little men of science, and the industry and manufacturing of
> weapons, the defense industry, The argument fails on several points, not
> the least is that embracing war to enrich a few industries makes poor the
> nation. The wealth of nations is not built on war, but is deminished with
> it. Nor is it built on favoring an industry, be it defense or any other
> industrial business at the expense of the others. While the industrialists,
> or any other business group, might, as Smith warned, form a cartel,
> or corrupt the government, by lobbying for tariffs, wars, etc., these are
> not money makers, but for a few, and short term, and will be countered by
> other interests. While we, that is, the US, is certainly driven by money,
> we are also driven, as you noted, by a general distrust of wars as means to
> improve the wealth of the nation, and with good reason. War doesn't
> increase the wealth of nations. Just look at what the recent crazy wars
> have doe to he standard of living in the US. It is not about enriching he
> defense industry. That would be stupid. It would go against the primary
> force in the economy, self interest.
>
> We've not embraced war. But we have engaged in quite a number since we
> industrialized. There is correlation but not causation. The MIC is
> one cause of our engagement. But it is not the primary cause. The economy,
> mostly a domestic service economy, gets little from war. But, for some time
> now, oil has been essential to our economy. Oil, not defense industry, has
> been the primary cause of our engagement in these crazy wars.
>
> On Wednesday, September 11, 2013, Bekah wrote:
>
>> Our Civil War was so bad we never wanted to go to war again - ever - with
>> anyone. We lost more men in that war ( 625,000 both sides) than in all
>> the wars from the Revolution to Korea (or possibly later.)
>>
>> We stayed out of WWI until Russia removed herself (fought for 18 months
>> out of 4 years). We stayed out of WWII until we were bombed (fought for 4
>> years out of 6) . And when we finally got around to going to war what we
>> really did in both cases was mopped up - Russia had done a lot of the hard
>> stuff. The French, Russian, English and German casualties (both wars)
>> put our losses to shame. Until WWI it was thought that war was a serious
>> detriment to trade - the Civil War had stopped US expansion. - therefore
>> bad for business. We were always pro-business. Then what with the
>> industrialization of war (rather than raw # of troops being the deciding
>> factor) it was discovered that a few businesses / industries made money in
>> times of war. We embraced the business of war when it became profitable
>> for the industrialists.
>>
>> Bek
>>
>>
>> On Sep 10, 2013, at 9:36 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > we embrace it because we havent experienced it. never invaded, under
>> occupation, under siege, etc.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Al Jazeera America (@ajam)
>> >> 9/10/13, 5:31 PM
>> >> Commentary: Americans usually embrace war. Their rejection of
>> President Obama's Syria plan is historic alj.am/17UwvC2
>> >>
>> >> Download the official Twitter app here
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Sent from my iPad
>> >
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130911/704f0218/attachment.html>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list