Mostly Peaceful Bombing

An update on "No new wars"...

“Politics is the entertainment arm of the military industrial complex.”

~ Frank Zappa, RIP

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Copenhagen Airport, Denmark...

Count them with us, dear reader...

Afghanistan... Iraq... Pakistan... Yemen... Somalia... Syria... Libya...

... and now, to the long and growing list of blood-soaked countries the Land of the Free has bombed this millennium, can be added... Iran.

We could almost hear the squeals of devilish delight coming from the respective dens of the Clintons... the Bidens... the Bushes... the Obamas... the Cheneys... and the whole murderous roster of chicken hawk war criminals, all down the line.

On Saturday, the man who promised on the campaign trail, “Under Trump, we will have no new wars,” gave the signal, as America’s Commander in Chief, to unleash more than a dozen GBU-57 series Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) bombs – and a firestorm of more than two dozen Tomahawk Cruise missiles – on a country that is ~6,000 miles away and, according to his own intelligence agencies, presented no clear or imminent danger to The Homeland.

The New Newspeak

The antiwar campaigner did not seek approval from Congress, though he was thoughtful enough to give them notice ahead of Operation Midnight Hammer, as required by the War Powers Resolution of 1973. (Under this law, a president can launch military action without prior congressional approval during emergencies, but must notify Congress within 48 hours and limit combat to 60–90 days unless Congress grants authorization.)

It is not a “war,” you see... but simply a “military action” conducted in a foreign country. Right... and if you watch the movie Jaws backwards, it’s not a horrifying tale about a giant ocean predator tearing people limb from limb, but a heartwarming story of a gentle sea giant giving arms and legs to disabled people.

As for what “emergency” beset the United States of America and its citizens, none was declared... nor even whispered. Iran has no missiles capable of reaching the eastern seaboard... or even western Europe. (Its longest-range missile, the Khorramshahr-4, would fall from the sky, like flailing Icarus, barely half way across the Mediterranean...)

Of course, the point here is not that the law constrains the government... but that the government authors such laws that it may do whatever it so pleases... including harassing its own people at home and terrorizing others abroad.

As to how long such wars “military operations” might last, we recall George Orwell’s prophetic words: “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”

War, To Be Continued...

Take a look at the aforementioned “country kill list.” Afghanistan, as a nation of 40 million goat herders with a per capita GDP of a measly $415, posed zero threat to the indomitable United States of America. This year alone, the Pentagon will spend 58 times more on weaponry and machines of death than the entire national output of Afghanistan combined.

The proximate cause of that ill-fated invasion, back in 2001, was that Afghanistan was “harboring” the 9/11 hijackers. Never mind that those suicidal maniacs were mostly born under the House of Saud (15 were from Saudi, 2 from the UAE and one each from Lebanon and Egypt). That did not stop the most powerful military the world has ever seen from waging the longest and costliest war in its ~250 year history blowing the place to smithereens, only to at long last deliver the country from the dreaded Taliban to... the Taliban.

Plus tens of billions of dollars worth of shiny new military kit left behind for them to kickstart their next campaign or fence to other tinpot dictators around the region. But even that’s chump change, comparatively...

According to the Cost of War Project (conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense and Brown University), that sandy misadventure – in the aptly-named Graveyard of Empires, no less – cost the penniless Home of the Brave $800 billion in direct military expenses... $500 billion in long term veteran’s care... $145 billion in reconstruction and “aid”... $300 billion in “other DoD spending”... not to mention a whopping $500 billion to $1 trillion in “interest on war borrowing.”

Oh yes... and the lives of 2,400 US military personnel, 3,800 US contractors, 66,000 Afghan security forces, and 70,000 innocent Afghan civilians, who suffered first the misfortune of being born into such a forsaken dump, and secondly the infelicity of prematurely dying there, too.

How, exactly, this helped Jennifer, the hairdresser working her way through college in Jefferson, TX... or Bill in Milwaukee, who was about to open his air conditioning business when he got the call up, and never came home... or the Joneses, whose son enlisted as a way to pay for his college degree, and whose grave they now visit on weekends... is all lost in the fog of war.

As for Saddam Hussein’s phantom “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” the Dodgy Dossier, the WikiLeaked Iraq War Logs and all the rest, these are mere footnotes on a shameful past that few Americans signed on for and fewer still care to repeat.

But that is neither here nor there. What matters, evidently, is that the Big Five defense contractors get paid on time and that the outbreak of peace is averted at all costs.

Blood Money

Which brings us back to the latest round of “mostly peaceful bombings.” This weekend’s strikes marked the first time ever the MOPs were deployed during combat. For reference, they cost between $10 and $20 million a pop. The Tomahawks, at a mere $1.5 to $2 million each, are a comparative steal.

And those hefty B-2 bombers, the only fighter jets capable of carrying the massive bunker busters, they go for about $2 billion each, give or take. At the beginning of the century, you could buy a single share of their manufacturer, Northrop Grumman Corp, for $25. Today, with the aforementioned wars having kept the order books plenty full for the past 25 years, one share is worth $485... a Faustian gain of 1,840%, if you can stomach it.

Mr. Orwell, again:

“In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

After a quarter of a century of virtually uninterrupted death and destruction, wrought across countries most voters can’t find on maps, America’s mighty Military Industrial Complex has a new reason to keep its order books filled.

As for what comes next, whether this is the beginning of the end... or the end of the beginning, the world waits.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman