Subject: William Astore, great review and analysis: "7
Reasons Why America’s Wars Aren’t Ending Anytime Soon: How
never-ending war became—and will stay—the new normal," The
Nation, February 2, 2015 OR (instant
pdf download via ge.tt (LINK), copyright exception,
educational and non-profit)
You may recall William Astore as another great American soldier, retired an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel as of 2005 after 20 years in the Air Force. He has been and obviously still is, a great analyst. As a career soldier, he obviously had and took opportunities to make himself aware of some things that many of us have not experienced and/or about which we know little or nothing. And he also remembers when America was a different place and what it was like.
"7 Reasons Why America’s Wars Aren’t Ending Anytime Soon: How never-ending war became—and will stay—the new normal," The Nation, February 2, 2015 OR (instant pdf download via ge.tt (LINK), copyright exception, educational and non-profit)
--first published February 1, 2015 at TomDispatch.com, a project of the Nation Institute.
Contrast:
The last lines in William Astore's piece are:
Tom Engelhardt became an activist during the war in Vietnam, starting with turning in his draft card and writing articles about that to tell the world why he had done it. He was a public hero of a different time. It is not clear to me whether Tom Engelhardt was expressing personal hopelessness today with his question quoted above or whether he was putting words into the mouths of some other people. Either way, I would point out that the answer is not necessarily obvious.
And by the way, one article I just saw today and plan to write more about is "As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes," by Alec Hogg in Davos, The Guardian, January 23, 2015. Huh! Well actually, now that I think of it, you might remember my mentioning a few years ago articles on New Zealand possibly being a good destination for those who might desire to move and could qualify and manage it financially. I wonder what the climate change models say for New Zealand. I don't think climate change was a well-known factor in those previous articles.
Larry
You may recall William Astore as another great American soldier, retired an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel as of 2005 after 20 years in the Air Force. He has been and obviously still is, a great analyst. As a career soldier, he obviously had and took opportunities to make himself aware of some things that many of us have not experienced and/or about which we know little or nothing. And he also remembers when America was a different place and what it was like.
"7 Reasons Why America’s Wars Aren’t Ending Anytime Soon: How never-ending war became—and will stay—the new normal," The Nation, February 2, 2015 OR (instant pdf download via ge.tt (LINK), copyright exception, educational and non-profit)
--first published February 1, 2015 at TomDispatch.com, a project of the Nation Institute.
Contrast:
The last lines in William Astore's piece are:
"How do we inoculate our children against such a permanent state of war and the war state itself? I have one simple suggestion: just stop it. All of it. Stop making war a never-ending part of our lives and stop celebrating it, too. War should be the realm of the extreme, of the abnormal. It should be the death of normalcy, not the dreary norm.The last lines in a different piece by Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch are:
"It’s never too soon, America, to enlist in that good fight!"
"....What’s missing is any sense of connection to the government, any sense that it’s “ours” or that we the people matter. In its place -- and you can thank successive administrations for this -- is the deepest sort of pessimism and cynicism about a national security state and war-making machine beyond our control. And why protest what you can’t change?""Tomgram: Engelhardt, I.F. Stone and the Urge to Serve," by Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, February 3, 2015.
Tom Engelhardt became an activist during the war in Vietnam, starting with turning in his draft card and writing articles about that to tell the world why he had done it. He was a public hero of a different time. It is not clear to me whether Tom Engelhardt was expressing personal hopelessness today with his question quoted above or whether he was putting words into the mouths of some other people. Either way, I would point out that the answer is not necessarily obvious.
And by the way, one article I just saw today and plan to write more about is "As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes," by Alec Hogg in Davos, The Guardian, January 23, 2015. Huh! Well actually, now that I think of it, you might remember my mentioning a few years ago articles on New Zealand possibly being a good destination for those who might desire to move and could qualify and manage it financially. I wonder what the climate change models say for New Zealand. I don't think climate change was a well-known factor in those previous articles.
Larry
