Larry On Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Before Midterms. Germany And Diesel...

Larry continues to review one very important book ( I need to read it too) on US defense "industry" and comes to the conclusion:

Politics and defense spending are intertwined in ways that most people do not appreciate. I gained some insight into the corruption of this process thanks to my neighbor (when I lived in one of the Washington, DC suburbs). My former neighbor is 15 years younger than me and owns the largest defense lobbying firm in Washington, DC. His job entailed signing up major and minor manufacturers of weapons and military equipment. They paid him hefty monthly fees. In turn, my neighbor–let’s call him “Mr. D”–would wine and dine key members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. He was the man the legislators wanted to see because he could host “dinners” that raised money that was poured in turn to the bank accounts of those members of Congress. Buying influence in Washington is a multi-million dollar business that generates billions for the Defense Industry and has inflicted misery, suffering and death on millions of foreigners. I am afraid that tomorrow’s election in the United States will not alter the defense incest that dominates Washington, DC. The corrupt system will have to be broken by an outside force. What worries me is that the United States, in a moment of hubris, will find itself in a war with Russia or China and will discover the hard way that the expensive weapon systems will fail or be destroyed quickly on the battlefield. Like an alcoholic at the end of his ropes, the system must hit bottom and admit the addiction. Only then is reform possible.  

I agree completely. I also do not think midterms will change much in this respect, but as always--the logic of the events and circumstances sometimes is even stronger than corruption and greed. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Or (I stole it from comments from PJW's excellent video), as they say: My father has been a life long Republican until he died. Then he voted Democrat.(c) LOL)). Watch PJW's superb video and, if anyone ever doubted that PJW was not a neocon--he never was--his position on SMO and Russia completely dispels any speculation on this issue--I continue to watch him with pleasure all the time and I totally get the place he is coming from. Part of my roots is in this place too. 

In related news, Russian Duma has a bill ready for the first reading in which it is forbidden to show German porn in Russia, because it creates unrealistic expectations from young Russians on the speed with which plumbers arrive to customers' homes. This is absolutely impossible in real life and this perception creates absolutely unreasonable expectations from young customers. But jokes aside, Andrei Raevsky posted a superb series by Thorsten J. Pattenberg in which he with a stylish literary finess  demolishes the myth of Germany's "mighty" industry, especially in the modern geopolitical (Chinese) context and a complete degeneration of Germany's current ersatz "culture". He notes:

Germany depends on China’s industries A LOT. China might be the only nation that unconditionally keeps up with the German poop and still deals with the neonazis after Berlin started WW III with Russia this summer. If the Middle Kingdom was Middle Earth [an Anglo-Saxon fantasy world], then the Germans would be the Balin dwarves toiling under the mountains. It would be good for cave king Stoltz to discuss steel legions, rare earth mining, and bolt-throwers. But maybe the German mines ran dry and empty, so the Stoltz people crawled back to the surface with this new business plan of… morally harassing orcses, wizards, and little Chinese girls alike. Germany is a beaten, crushed, debilitated US-occupied nation. It should not exist in this form. But the victorious Western allies did not release these poor wretched people. Instead, they decided to chain them to the BRD regime [Federal Republic of Deutschland] and tell lies about how great it is to change from a glorious 1000-year-old Reich into a homo anal-fixated Iew-worshiping seepage. Watch any US movie and the villains are probably Germans. Also, watch gay porn, German’s best.

Read the whole piece--it is bitter and brilliant. But since we all know Russians are again meddling in US elections, here is another wowser form those evil Rooskies. Trying to figure out Four Reasons Why The U.S. Is Grappling With A Diesel Shortage, they "suddenly" discovered:

But the primary reason is the cutoff of Russian imports. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day (BPD) of petroleum and petroleum products. Most of those imports were finished products and refinery inputs that boosted distillate supplies in the U.S. The loss of those Russian imports have caused problems for refineries as they struggle to fill holes in their product slates. Refineries do have a small amount of flexibility in shifting gasoline production to diesel production. But it’s a relatively small amount (e.g., ~5% in a refinery I once worked in). That also means that if refiners do shift production, that also potentially creates shortages in the gasoline market. Some relief is on the way, as some diesel imports are on the way from Europe to the East Coast. But, the distillate market won’t likely return to normal before next summer at the earliest.

Indeed, Russian perfidy knows no bounds. To convince the US to cut off Russian imports--what a plan, what a plan...

Daniel Larison And The Idea He Reviews...

Are wrong, dangerously wrong. In discussing the piece by Samuel Moyn and Stephen Wertheim, Larison arrives to an astonishingly shallow conclusion:

War becomes normalized when it is taken for granted that the U.S. is always acting morally even when it engages in aggression and tramples on international law. Instead of seeing resorting to force as the rare exception, it becomes the default response. Peace becomes almost unthinkable because we have become so accustomed to living without it. We haven’t lived in peacetime in more than 18 years, and there are now generations of Americans that cannot remember a time when the U.S. did not have troops fighting in a number of foreign countries. If Americans no longer aspire to peace, it is partly because we have chosen to define the war of the last two decades in such a way that we can no longer define what an America at peace would look like.

This is one of few minor reasons but it is not the main one no matter how much judicial or moral spin one puts on it. America fights wars because she always fights them there and relatively on cheap. Period. I will, if I may quote myself: 

While speaking to the US military at Fort Bragg after the official conclusion of US operations in Iraq in 2011, in what can only be described as an acute case of myopia and ignorance, President Obama doubled down on a his dubious “finest fighting force in history” claim, assuring all that “we know too well the heavy cost of that war.” Here was the problem: America doesn’t. With the exception of those who fought and died or were wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan and their immediate families, America, as it was with every American foreign war, never knew the real costs. Even as bodies of American GIs started to arrive in coffins into the US from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans continued, as if nothing really happened, to go to work, buy lattes at espresso stands, sell and buy cars, go on vacations, travel around the world and pay their mortgages. Normal life went on as if nothing of significance happened.

That, together with the war being highly profitable for corporations involved, are the main reasons for the United States fighting those wars--they have very low immediate (long terms is a completely different story) costs. I can declare here whatever I want while exercising in futility of calling on International Law and ethics "taking front stage" in considerations when starting a war, but until the body count is in relatively low thousands over protracted period of time, and there is no draft and body-bags arrive to a very few well-guarded locations, things will continue like that. This situation is also a part of America's cancerous affliction of exceptionalism because wars are fought THERE, on TV, not HERE, as it was on 9/11. In real war, such nine-elevens would be multiplied many times and that is how one of very few mechanisms for preventing war looks like. Well, this and a complete depletion of the resources which we observe today--in the long term it finally caught up with America. We don't want a real war in US proper, but ongoing (it will get much worse as time goes by) crisis may provide some additional options for some cleaning of the act. We will see soon, I hope, if that is the case. 

So, while intent of Larison is noble, truth is--he, and authors of the article still reside in an exceptionalist bubble--only pain, only conditioning by suffering are strong enough stimuli to completely change America's clock work wound for war. This, in the end, may require a dramatic change of the elites--present ones are utterly corrupt, incompetent and, in the end, do not know what real war is. In this sense, it is very important that some sort of soul-searching and initial political mobilization is happening. 

Under Trump, who applies “maximum pressure” to all foes foreign and domestic, American militarism is more perilous than ever. It is also more undeniable. That is one reason the current moment is surprisingly hopeful. The call to end “endless war” continues to rise on the flanks of both parties, even as it is flouted by leaders of each. More and more Americans insist that, whatever interests are served by endless war, their own are not. More than twice as many Americans prefer to lower than raise military spending, according to a 2019 Eurasia Group Foundation survey. Veterans support Trump’s pledge to bring Middle East wars to a close: A majority of vets deem the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria not to have been worth fighting. The Afghanistan Papers ought to strengthen the consensus. Americans deserve a president who will act accordingly.   

These are those long-term effects and costs which we may be witnessing now and while I reserve my opinion about Trump, let us hope that, in the end, it will be the voice of a majority of Americans who may put a stop to all this madness, not a catastrophic military adventure which will make all America's wars to date combined look like a stroll in the park. I, certainly, hope so.