Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has said of the upcoming Concert for Valor:
“The post-9/11 years have brought us the longest period of sustained warfare in our nation’s history. The less than one percent of Americans who volunteered to serve during this time have afforded the rest of us remarkable freedoms — but that freedom comes with a responsibility to understand their sacrifice, to honor them, and to appreciate the skills and experience they offer when they return home.”
It was crafty of Schultz to redirect that famed 1% label from the ultra rich, represented by CEOs like him, onto our “heroes.” At the concert, I hope Schultz has a chance to get more specific about those “remarkable freedoms.” Will he mention that the U.S. has the highest per capita prison population on the planet? Does he include among those remarkable freedoms the guarantee that dogs, Tasers, tear gas, and riot police will be sent after you if you stay out past dark protesting the killing of an unarmed Black teenager by a representative of this country’s increasingly militarized police? Will the freedom to be too big to fail and so to have the right to melt down the economy and walk away without going to prison — as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, did – be mentioned? Do these remarkable freedoms include having every American phone call and email recorded and stored away by the NSA?
– From the post: “Stop Thanking Me for My Service” – Former U.S. Army Ranger Blasts American Foreign Policy and The Corporate State
The U.S. presidential campaign in 2016 thus far has exhibited a dramatic and much needed public rejection of the status quo, aka “the establishment.” While a majority of the commentary has been justifiably focused on anger about the economy and how a smaller and smaller group of “insiders” have systematically accumulated more and more wealth via parasitic rent-seeking behavior, there’s another very important repudiation occurring. A total rejection of neocon, interventionist foreign policy.
Longtime readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg will be under no illusions about the fact that the Obama administration has represented a perfect continuation of the George W. Bush foreign policy doctrine, albeit with a more sleek marketing approach to placate the conscience of willfully ignorant fake liberals. Well the blowback from this one party foreign policy approach has arrived, with its evidence appearing in the form of military support of both Trump and Sanders.
As reported by the Military Times:
In an exclusive survey of American military personnel, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders emerged as active-duty service members’ top choices to become the next commander in chief.
The Republican front runner Trump was the most popular candidate in a subscriber poll that closed Sunday, with 27 percent saying they would back the business mogul if the election were held tomorrow. Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, was a close second at 22 percent.
The data also suggest that military personnel have not been dissuaded by political rivals who contend Trump and Sanders have weak foreign policy credentials and don’t have recognized experts as national security advisers.
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has made national security issues one of the centerpieces of his campaign, was nearly last in the Military Times survey, with only about 9 percent of candidates favoring him.
Now here’s a graphic of the totals:
The first thing that catches your eye is that the two biggest establishment neocons when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio, have virtually zero support. While Trump sits in the top spot, this isn’t totally surprising given his campaign rhetoric advocating for both a military buildup as well as a more circumspect approach when it comes to interventionism. That said, what is downright shocking is how Bernie Sanders occupies a close second to Trump while absolutely crushing Hillary Clinton. Since the U.S. military is not known for being a bunch of socialist hippies, there’s something extremely significant going on here, and that something is a rejection of neocon interventionist foreign policy by the U.S. military.
The U.S. establishment can either fade away quietly or it can be tossed away kicking and screaming, but go it will. From all ends of the political spectrum, the American public has had enough and is beginning to forcefully reject the corrupt and criminal status quo. It can’t happen soon enough.
For some examples of foreign policy disasters during the neocon Obama administration, see:
Further Details Emerge on the Epic U.S. Foreign Policy Disaster that is Syria
More Foreign Policy Incompetence – U.S. Humanitarian Aid is Going Directly to ISIS
Afghan President Hamid Karzai Slams U.S. Foreign Policy in Farewell Speech
America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq
“We Came, We Saw, He Died” – Revisiting the Incredible Disaster That Is Libya
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Its our own fault for just doing what we are told by the US govt and the military who carry out those orders. When the soldiers working the concentration camps at Auschwitz were asked why they murdered those people they said they were just following orders. I am prior service and I did take potassium bromide going into Iraq because I was following orders. I have neurological deficits now because I was just following orders.
It’s hard to break the conditioning and to shrug off the thrall of so many government lies. It’s profoundly disturbing to most people to accept that they are but pawns to those who rule them – to realize that their thoughts and actions and beliefs are manipulated for purposes not of their own interests. So it’s understandably, certainly. It’s hard to ascribe fault to those who think they are doing right and who believe in the lies they are told by those whom they feel they should trust. For instance, just ever so slightly broach the subject of the lies told to justify the Zionist conquest of Palestine, and most people are thoroughly knee-jerk an “OMG, shut up NAZI!!!!!” rather than accept that they’ve been lied to. Seriously, 70 years after the fact and there are laws in most Western countries against simply voicing any kind of doubt about the official narrative. You would think that alone would be a red flag to most people, but it seems people just can’t handle the idea of being lied to so brazenly that they actually prefer to live believing the lie no matter what. It’s astounding.