REMEMBERING WAR AND PREPARING FOR MORE

Our Maine Veterans for Peace chapter walked today in the annual Veterans Day parade in downtown Portland. Last year they tried to keep us out of the parade and it caused quite a stir in the local paper. Watching the clowns, uni-cycle riders, Girl & Boy Scouts, and other assorted entries in the parade made me wonder how the right-wing veterans groups that organize the event can justify their presence while wanting us out.

Year after year we have about the largest contingent of veterans in the parade. Quite a few folks applaud as we walk by. I saw about 6-8 older guys today turn their backs on us as we passed them by on the street. In one instance it was two guys with "Vietnam Vets" hats on - I'm sure they want to be proud of their time in that war and we remind them that "their war", just like the current one, was illegal and immoral.

Veterans for Peace in the Boston area held a great action when they were denied the right to participate in that parade and 18 were arrested. See the moving video here: http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=-YnwXHBxD9s

On another matter, today the Washington Post ran a story called Pakistan Nuclear Security Questioned. This is a very important article because they seemed to be floating a trial balloon when they mentioned in the article, "Protection for Pakistan's nuclear weapons is considered equal to that of most Western nuclear powers. But U.S. officials worry that their limited knowledge about the locations and conditions in which the weapons are stored gives them few good options for a direct intervention to prevent the weapons from falling into unauthorized hands."

The last few words really got my attention, "direct intervention to prevent the weapons from falling into unauthorized hands."

I've been toying with a wild theory the last few days. What if Bush-Cheney had told Musharraf to crack down on democracy advocates knowing that chaos would ensue? (Many people in Pakistan are now calling their "leader" Busharraf because they say he is under the control of the U.S. administration.) Then after martial law is declared, and the society erupts as it now has, we start seeing articles like the one today in the Post saying that the nukes in Pakistan are in danger of falling into terrorist hands. So what does that leave us to do?

Could it be that the Bush administration intends to widen the chaos beyond Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran and Pakistan? Take a look at the map and see how this all lays out.

I know what your first question is: Ok, Bruce, how would the U.S. be able to put enough troops on the ground to control all of this?

The guy that was Donald Rumsfeld's "strategy guy" has an answer to your question. Thomas Barnett, the futurist, and former instructor at the Naval War College has been laying out the answer for some time now. In a recent article called How our military evolves in this long war he says, "In my 2004 book, The Pentagon's New Map, I argued that our military would inevitably split into a Leviathan-like combat force and a 'system administrator' [sysadmin] force optimized for everything else: postwar stabilization and reconstruction, nation-building, crisis response, and counter-insurgency."

" Eventually, all these sysadmin activities will require a bureaucratic center of gravity. In my 2005 book, Blueprint for Action, I proposed a new agency to complement our departments of 'war' (Defense) and 'peace' (State). I wasn't the first and won't be the last to issue that call. Indeed, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani proposes creating such an independent agency -- serious political progress in its own right."

"Every year I address the student body at National Defense University's Industrial College of the Armed Forces, briefing the strategic concepts from my books. Well, this year the students are engaging in a 'senior leadership capstone exercise' in which they'll brainstorm how to go about creating a new Department of Global Development that aims to win both the prewar and postwar in this long war against radical extremism."

"That gets me to my last sign of progress: the emergence of industry players associated with the sysadmin's rising profile. Last year Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense corporation, acquired Pacific Architects & Engineers, a long-time contractor to the U.S. State Department. PA&E is essentially State's version of Kellogg Brown & Root, the Pentagon's premier contractor for overseas base construction and support services."

"Lockheed's purchase was a shot across the bow of the entire defense industry, signaling its historic decision to focus more on serving the U.S. military's ballooning postwar portfolio. Within a generation, I predict Lockheed will evolve from being primarily a U.S. defense firm to operating as a global security contractor -- less Leviathan and far more sysadmin."

Can you imagine the Pentagon invading and taking over country after country (Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, etc) and then turning it over to the State Department who then contracts with Lockheed Martin to literally "run" these countries - sysadmin - to the benefit of the oil and weapons corporations? Welcome to the New World Order.

You take a countries resources by force.....you then hire Lock-Mart to run the show and pay them from the oil profits. Lock-Mart makes money off the weapons used to destroy the country and then they make money "rebuilding" and "running" the country for the global corporate elite.

Far fetched?

Hang on for the ride folks. Only time will tell.

As the Indians used to say though, put your ears to the railroad tracks and hear the train coming.