MA$TER$ OF WAR

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November 28, 2017 by Ron Madson

 

“A NATION THAT CONTINUES YEAR AFTER YEAR TO SPEND MORE MONEY ON MILITARY DEFENSE THAN ON  PROGRAMS OF SOCIAL UPLIFT IS APPROACHING SPIRITUAL DEATH…” Martin Luther King

The GOP/Trump tax cuts/budget is predictable:  Massive tax cuts for the top one percent and corporations who already found ways to pay very little to no taxes.  And how do they intend to make up this loss in revenue?   Rip tens of billions of dollars out of domestic programs, cause 13 million to lose their health insurance, and have at least half of middle class taxes increase.

But there is one budget item that you will never hear being cut/reduced—Military Industrial Complex.  In fact Trump and his sycophants have already committed to continue to INCREASE “defense” spending to fulfill one of his many boasts (can’t call them promises because that implies some semblance of integrity) calling for the “largest increase in national defense in American History.”

We spend more each year than the next eleven major nations on this planet in the creation of instruments of death and the personnel to deliver it to the doorstep of nearly of every nation:

 

4.79 TRILLION AND GROWING/ 250 MILLION A DAY!

Our nation has spent an estimated 4.79 TRILLION during the last 16 years invading Iraq/Afghanistan and daily bombing several middle eastern countries ripping apart limbs and life from children, woman and men on their own soil.    250 million per day we spend in perpetual war.  Let that sink in–an average of 250 million every single day since 2001. And what do we get in return for this colossal investment? Over 7,000 military deaths and nearing a million injuries most of which are permanent, millions of innocent civilians killed, tens of millions of refugees, destabilization of entire countries leading to rise of ISIS and other terror groups and ever accelerating terrorist acts.  This is our return on our investment! We created this unending nightmare.  It is deliberate ignorance and/or collective self deceit to believe that their retaliatory acts of terrorism occur  because they  “hate us for our freedom.”  No they hate us because we kill their children.

Consider what we could do with the 4.79 trillion and 250 million a day we currently use to destroy and create generational hatred?  We could use it to perpetually fund health care for every person in our nation, eliminate poverty, provide free education at all levels, etc. etc. I think Jesus, who we pretend to follow, would prefer that to blowing up homes, villages, entire nations while terrorizing the world.

And THIS is why we can’t have nice things. War hawk conservatives parrot every damn year the same mantra —“We need to rebuild the military”—No we don’t.  We spend several times each year more than any other  country in the world in military expenditures.

A LEGACY OF DECEIT

Tens of thousands of our young men/women have lost their life or maimed these past sixteen years—- And for what? If you say they were/are fighting for our freedom then the deceit, manipulation and conditioning since our childhood has worked. From our first pledge of allegiance to government paid for patriotism at sporting events, to tribalistic war memorials, we are conditioned to support our government at time of war even if the war is based on deliberate lies—Gulf Tonkin/Pentagon Papers/WMDs.

(Senator Gravel reading into congressional record the Pentagon Papers 1971–he had immunity as a Senator to do so and bravely read every word)

THE WAR ALTARS BURY THE TRUTH

Our brainwashing is so thorough that when the Masters of War’s hidden agendas are revealed  (Pentagon Papers or the obvious absence of WMDs) what do the Masters of War do? They deflect us from their war crimes by telling us that if we protest or expose their crimes that we are disrespecting the courage/virtue of our dead and suffering soldiers who themselves are once again made victims to their damnable infernal lies. So these Masters of War create war memorials not to honor the dead but to bury the truth. With each stone symbolic of a precious life placed on our war altars, the truth is increasingly buried as we conceal what is for any tribe/nation an unbearable truth when there is no honorable purpose in their wars.

 

 

To awaken to the reality that our best and bravest, who had the best intentions, died in vain is too hard to face—and so what do we do? We lie to ourselves, create and demand patriotic demonstrations and when faced with the demands for more sacrifice we offer up more of our precious sons and daughters to the altars of Moloch rather than embrace the reality that those we have already sacrificed to the military industrial complex died in vain.

These wars feeding the monstrous military industrial complex every single damn day should be the most significant issue to address for the temporal and spiritual health of our nation. This has got to end or it will end us.

The weekly drone bombing started by the Bush Administration increased under Obama but now Trump has predictably intensified the daily/weekly bombing while eliminating/loosening previous requirements for target verifications that were in place to try to  reduce civilian casualties because, as Trump warned us—“We need to kill their family members also.”  He calls this “winning”–I call it large scale terrorism/murder because wearing uniforms and wrapping ourselves in a flag makes it no less so— for there is no flag large enough to cover our national sins as we spend far more every single day building and using instruments of death than on healing the world.