Skip to main content
Continuous War

As the problems of resource depletion, instability, and social collapse begin to bite within the west, the Pentagon has published its 2008 modernization strategy. It calls for a fiscal and national commitment to war for the next four decades. The Irish Times--with Le Monde and the FT, one of the best newspapers in the world--has a clear analysis here.

I also note the safe return of Irish soldiers from peacekeeping in Chad. The Irish Army has been at the forefront of peacekeeping efforts for decades, and its soldiers are a credit to the Irish. Well done to you, should these words fall under your eye.

Have western states, decent places like the Federal Republic of Germany or places that can save themselves still, like America, got what it takes to see the obvious antidote and vaccine to the illness of continuous war?

Reinstitute the draft. Citizens now play video game wars with the social extremes of their society and immigrant-aspirant soldiers. That makes them less than immigrants. They have no stake. The people hired to kill go where they are told and cannot question it.

Draft their civilian masters and their children and see how long this continuous warmaking lasts.

The image at the top of this blog is of a real Irish Dail Deputy. As my Grandad said, all the handsome ones like us were forced to leave.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Congressional Healthcare Bill in America I spent a good deal of this morning and yesterday reading over the proposed American healthcare bill (or at least, a compound version; there appear to be five doing the rounds). I don't want to blog on the details of it immediately. It's also a bill, which may well stall in the Senate or be overtaken by events, and which could yet be critically amended. It is the product of Congress, not the administration per se, and the lawyers have not yet got at it. I had some instant worries about it though. In no particular order, I'll list them; Firstly, it can't allow individuals to choose their doctor and treatment in the long run; instead, it will practically formalise the role of doctors as salaried employees of large medical groups. Sarah Palin is onto something with the idea that this will then allow essentially ideological or non-medical outlooks on, say, euthanasia, abortion, transgender issues, or non-emergency treatments of c...
William Orpen There are four major Christian traditions, which are of course Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian and Coptic. Some sects and cults also exist, like the Moonies or Anglicanism. Yet in some bizarre way this weekend, protestant contributions to something other than the seizure of churches have been making their way into my consciousness. I suppose that the first indication of this trend was a reflection in an old copy of Gibbon that he actually became cultured because of Calvinism. Packed off to Switzerland because he went Catholic at an otherwise boring Oxford, Gibbon fell in love with Suzanne Cuchod, and with Greek because of instruction from a Calvinist mentor. It's an odd thing--I keep coming across indications of Calvinists who could have fun, though they doubtless thought that they would pay for it later, and whose political intelligence was second to none. Althusius springs to mind, for instance. But then what am I thinking, I thought to myself? I've sat on balconi...
Damon Buffini I'm not quite sure what to make of this story. Damon Buffini, a multi-millionaire in the City, and a very accomplished man, seems to have heard staff he regarded as lazy and ungrateful at the upper levels of management complaining about restaurants. He subsequently forced them all to eat two-day old Big Macs whilst reminding them of how lucky they are. It's nice to know that Saturn--in the form of a sort of globalisation guevara--could force his children to eat rather than devouring them, as in Goya's painting. How broken do people have to be not to walk out, though? I guess from his point of view, if they had any spine they'd be in business on their own. The whole thing is horribly fascinating.