Our Military Activities - Now You See Them, Now You Don’t

By TRB

Having a corrupt government is interesting, makes you feel as though maybe you were born in the wrong country, or perhaps the country went wrong somewhere along the way.

Having a corrupt banking system is interesting, makes you want to wrap up your earnings in sealed plastic bags and hide them in the attic. Turning them over to the unethical U.S. commercial banking system can seem like you are lending some cash to a gangster.

Having a corrupt health care system is interesting. To know the insurance companies are using your treatment, even your visits to your doctor, to steal money from the government is not a good feeling, especially when you take into account that your health services might be cut back because your insurance company is stealing too much.

Having a corrupt defense system, knowing that your government spends more than the next 18 nations combined on Defense and that Obama will spend $400 billion on Defense in the next few years is interesting. It makes you wonder if you live in a nation that is trying to take over the rest of the world.

Having a corrupt energy system where estimates are that two-thirds of your carbon-based energy goes right out your doors and windows, giving you the highest inefficacy rating in the world, is interesting. It makes you wonder why the petroleum interests are still the strongest of any political lobby. And boy do they make a lot of money. Exxon Mobil made $10.7 billion in profit just last year. Shell made $6.5 billion. BP, polluter of the Gulf, continued its profitable ways with $5.5 billion.

So why is it costing you so much at the pump? Obviously the oil companies are doing nicely for themselves.

It is costing you more only because Wall Street is betting on oil futures and anyone can bet, not just people who actually use large quantities of it and might have a reason to become involved in this kind of activity. Anyone, even I can bet on oil and my bets, depending on how high I am willing to predict a barrel will cost next year, could make the price of your gasoline six dollars a gallon before too long.

Having a corrupt telecommunications industry is interesting. Listening to all their propaganda can be a drag. But you have to take a good look at the source. I personally don't believe that the people who would do well selling cars off a showroom floor should instead be selling us lies as news. There is something that is distinctly not fair about it. Perhaps it is because some people actually believe them. Or maybe it is because their "news" is generic. It is all the same. It is just a small walk from one side of the room to the other to get from the Left to the Right.

Having an invisible military, now that is interesting. We don't have it yet. It takes a while to make your military disappear. Well, not so much disappear as become invisible.

It is not as difficult a task as it may seem. Barack Obama is attempting to make the military invisible in a very interesting way. He announced yesterday that he was planning to take his CIA Director Leon Penetta and make him Secretary of Defense. Then he was going to take General David Petraeus, leader of all our wars wherever they may be, and make him Director of the CIA.

George Bush II was the first president to make a move like this, sending Gen Hayden to direct the CIA. The Democrats went nuts. Nancy Pelosi seemed like she would have a stroke. And the Democrats were perfectly correct to see such a move as stupid and possibly even dangerous. You see, the CIA is there to gather intelligence for the Defense Department and the President so they can decide military policy and things like whether to go to war or not.

Should a man who has spent a good part of his life in the military as a general officer, fighting an illegal war in Iraq and a just-plain-stupid war in Afghanistan be our CIA director? Of course not. But it is all irrelevant to residents of the U.S. anyway because soon we will have an invisible military. You can not be disgusted by what you can not see.

Leon Penetta, former chief of staff and budget director under Clinton and former Governor of New Mexico will give up his seat at the CIA and head for the Pentagon. Now this could be a good thing. He was a member of the last U.S. Congress to actually pass a balanced budget, and he is known as someone who counts pennies in his spare time. In fact it is believed that Penetta might bring the soldiers out of Iraq on a speedier schedule. And there's even talk of getting troops out of Afghanistan sooner

The real war is in Pakistan. It is true, this invisible military thing can become quite complicated. Look at Libya. Now, you sit and you ponder and you ask yourself, what is that? It looks something like an old Marx Brothers movie except they are using live ammo.

Sources tell me Penetta is expected to draw down the troop presence around the world. What is Petraeus likely to do at the CIA? This is where it becomes a little complicated. What ever you think of the CIA, it is a paramilitary organization. Back during WWII, when it was called the OSS it was a paramilitary organization. It is about to become a lot less para and a lot more military.

Expect to see wars run out of the CIA in the future. Their chief weapon will be one with which Petraeus is very familiar, the remote control drone. Sure they don't always hit the right target. They will occasionally attack a funeral, a wedding a day-care center. But you probably won't hear about it.

That is the ultimate goal of the invisible military. To disguise from you what your tax dollars are really doing.

Expect to see (although you probably won't actually see it) the drone war against unnamed U.S. foes in Pakistan intensify. And you can expect the use of drones in other parts of the world as well.

If the U.S. has learned one thing from these back-to-back incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan it is that they are budget busters and they continue to cost a fortune long after they are over because the soldiers and Marines wounded in these non-existential wars continue to need medical care the rest of their natural lives, Plus the U.S. civilian can see that it has all gone very wrong.

A drone, on the other hand. No one even sees it coming. It will be in the lead of what will become in the near future, America's invisible military.