the military and the fallen state

"...we're living in the warp of oligarchical capitalistic culture" Robert Duncan writes in the late 1940's, a statement included in "The H.D. Book," (U. of California Press, 2010.)

Watching the end of the PBS "Newshour" Friday evening as the tv silently scrolls through the U.S. dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, one cannot feel how much and how little has changed.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, but it is: Article II of the Constitution was meant "as a safeguard against any would-be Caesar", proscribing civilian control of the military by appointing the President as Commander-in Chief and keeping the military out of policy making, as noted in the fine piece by Jonathan Stevenson, a professor of strategic studies at the U.S Naval War College, in the May, 2011 issue of Harper's Magazine, "Owned by the Army."

There's little doubt that we're not following the right course of action, as outlined by our generals.

In announcing the vague timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan--as vague or vaguer than the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq--President Obama assured the nation that 33,000 would be pulled out by autumn, 2012, while news reports of Obama's decision said that the administration would give "flexibility" to the military with the "drawdown."

It's endless war now.

George Kennan, architect of much of what came to be U.S. foreign policy as it was rising to its post World War II heights, wrote: "I have the habit of seeing two opposing sides of a question, both of them wrong, and then overstating myself, so that I appear to be inconsistent."