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Guns and Hotdogs
How the U.S. Military Promotes Its Weapons Arsenal to the Public
Photography by Nina Berman
America’s wars take place far away — Kabul is 6,700 miles from New York or, traveling in the other direction, 7,400 miles from San Francisco. They also involve fewer and fewer Americans — the Army now has about 475,000 active-duty soldiers, the lowest number since World War II.
This leaves the Pentagon free to promote itself to a country that largely has no idea what war actually entails. In addition to standard TV advertising and flyovers at the Super Bowl, the U.S. military spends tens of millions of dollars each year on live events that function half as recruitment pitches and half as visceral plugs for its spectacular high-tech weaponry.
Photojournalist Nina Berman has spent 10 years traveling to Fleet Weeks and air shows to document the peculiar collision between the Pentagon’s idealized self-image and the people who pay for it but have little comprehension of what they’re truly buying.
U.S. Marines arrive on a light armored vehicle in New York City’s Times Square during Fleet Week in 2015. In the background is an ad for Shandong, China, where U.S. Marines landed at the end of World War II to intervene on the side of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in China’s civil war.
Civilians handle a pistol with a silencer during Fleet Week at Orchard Beach in the Bronx in 2007. Some of the young men had just signed up to join the Marines and potentially go to Iraq.
A U.S. Marine applies camouflage paint to a young woman’s face at an event at Orchard Beach in the Bronx in 2007.
A girl and boy dress up as Marines during Fleet Week at Orchard Beach in the Bronx in 2007. The boy is holding an M4 carbine, which is replacing the M16 as the Marine Corps standard rifle.
A weapons display at a U.S. Marines event in East Meadow, New York, in 2015.
A young boy “shoots” a machine gun from a Vietnam-era helicopter at the New York Air Show in 2015. There are no certain statistics for the number of Vietnamese casualties during the war, but at least 1 million died, and potentially 2 million or more. A 1991 survey found that Americans estimated that about 100,000 Vietnamese had been killed.
A U.S. Marine helicopter prepares to land for a raid demonstration during Fleet Week at Orchard Beach in New York in 2007.
Parents and children run toward a V-22 Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane, during Fleet Week in New Rochelle, New York, in 2015. Seven of the aircraft have been destroyed in crashes, and there have been 36 fatalities.
A Geico ad in front of a C-17 Globemaster transport plane at the New York Air Show in Newburgh, New York, in 2015. This particular plane was hit by a ground-to-air missile while taking off from Baghdad Airport in December 2003; one engine was destroyed, but the plane returned and landed safely.
The annual Thunder Over the Boardwalk event in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 2007. This year’s event will be sponsored by, among others, Bank of America, Chevrolet, Comcast, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.
A B-2 stealth bomber at Atlantic City’s Thunder Over the Boardwalk event in New Jersey in 2007. Each B-2 costs approximately $1 billion; analysts now believe it is a “virtual certainty” that Atlantic City will be forced to declare bankruptcy.
Activities in Glenwood Island Park in New Rochelle, New York, during Fleet Week in 2015. The young woman’s sash reads “Miss Hudson Valley Teen.”
The Air Force Thunderbirds fly F-16s over a Hudson River pier during Air Force Week in New York in 2012. The Thunderbirds are named after a mythological creature from Algonquin and Ojibwe Native American culture. (The Statue of Liberty is a miniature that was on display at a souvenir store on the pier.)
The gift shop by the Battleship New Jersey in Camden, New Jersey, in 2015. The now-famous “We Can Do It!” poster was created by Westinghouse, and during World War II, it was seen only by workers in several company factories; it became nationally known after being rediscovered during the 1980s.
About 50,000 people attended the parade in Raleigh, North Carolina, during the April 2008 Salute to Our Troops event. It is said to be the biggest military appreciation event in the city’s history.
Nina Berman is the author of Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq and Homeland and is a member of the NOOR photo collective.
The USA supplies the weapons to any terrorist nation. Look at all the crap they left in Iraq the ISIS just scooped. When we sell arms to terrorist nations like Saudi Arabia, Israel, or any of these middle east countries, the USA government and military should both be on trial for terrorism.
I think this can be summed up as “war porn”. That is what I saw especially from US media with the “shock and awe” in Iraq, all that was missing were the pom-poms.
Certainly Eisenhower’s warning fell on deaf ears…
The pictures of those kids holding guns are SOOOOO CUTE.
I mean, what is more endearing than seeing a little boy testing an M-4 carbine or pretending to fire a machine gun from a helicopter gunship like in Apocalypse Now. These kids will be America’s future military heroes, as they turn wedding party members … I mean terrorist insurgents into a fine bloodmist in some godforsaken Third World backwater.
If these heartwarming patriotic pictures don’t make you feel Proud to be an Amurican, you must be a terrorist sympathizer or an anti-American Evil Doer. :-(
God Bless America forever and ever and ever!!!!!!!!!!
I see your point, and say who the fuck cares, it’s not like they’re loaded, and it’s not like an inanimate object can turn someone into a killer.
BTW, USA is not the only place where this happens…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMI4gbSOSVI
Every country in the entire frigging world should be doing what we do!
By God, with America showing the way, we can lead the world towards more gun-fondling by kids.
After all, God uniquely chose the USA as a Shining City on a Hill for all of humanity to emulate.
We need to globalize the Second Amendment to the rest of the world–compel its adoption by other nations at gun point, if necessary.
The writ of the holy precious American Constitution is GLOBAL in reach and enforcement.
Our Constitution is like the Bible–only with guns instead of Baby Jesus in it.
Murrica
Sick society. Say no more.
The USA! USA! USA! is entirely corporate, so it’s not a stretch that they go from pushing candy bars at kids on Saturday morning cartoons to pushing guns later. Send ’em to Sunday School, learn the Disnelad view of America.
Bah! DISNEYLAND…
We have had enough of displaying of our minor toys. It is now time to show the ISIS our nukes. They are killing people all over the world on a daily basis.
We have to drop one nuke on Mosul and one of Raqqa to make sure Abu Bakr Baghdadi and his whole gang of killers go meet their creator before they can shout their Allahu Akbars.
ALLAHU AKBAR!!!
(oops. Did I shout something already?)
Beleaguered, besieged, and besotted. Are we not children of Old Testaments?
It is truly disturbing and offensive to me to see grade school age children dressed and outfitted like adult soldiers, in the proximity of actual soldiers doing “PR” or “recruiting” work. It should be illegal to propagandize children in the “glory” or “tools” of war in any nation, much less the United States of America.
Then again I think it should be illegal for the US military to have an “advertising” budget in the 10s or 100s of millions of dollars, much less be legally able to use our taxpayer subsidized military equipment meant for one purpose and one purpose only–war–be used to do “flyovers” of sporting events, or air shows or whatever. I think it’s sick, disgusting and weird in the extreme in the exact same way I think Third Reich military “parades”, or Communist Russia military parades, or Saddam Hussein’s face depicted all over Iraq was disturbing and weird.
Then again I think, as an American, that fetishizing the flag, or using it to festoon clothing, or having it flying in the bed of your truck or on your motorcycle is some weird shit too. It speaks to a very unhealthy perception of “nationalism” or “patriotism”. I mean if people really gave a shit about “patriotism” rather than faux flag waving patriotism they’d study for legal comprehension, and fly, a copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights every 4th of July rather blowing off fireworks and prostrating themselves before the flag.
Our whole fetishism of the US military and our flag really really strikes me as weird. Of course that is not to discount that the American flag means many different things to different people. So while I’d never suggest such displays should be prohibited, it just doesn’t make it any less weird from my perspective or at least my understanding of what “patriotism” is or should be.
Since 1776, the U.S. has been “at war” 93-% of the time.
Such expensive equipment for destroying smaller, weaker countries and shattering their societies.
http://www.ivaw.org
06/23/16 America’s One-Party Government
Today’s United States is a more realistic version of the type of society that George Orwell fictionally described in his allegorical novel 1984.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2016/06/23/america-s-one-party-government#more43550
Jul 29, 2013 The Origins of the American Public Education System Horace Mann & the Prussian Model of Obedience
In the 1830’s, American Lawmaker Horace Mann visited Prussia and researched its education methodology. He was infatuated with the emperor’s method of eliminating free thought from his subjects and designed an education system for Massachusetts directly based on these concepts. The movement then quickly spread nationally.
https://youtu.be/HZp7eVJNJuw
I watched this video . . .it’s a good point, but then how do you explain the people who came up with this system . . it’s a sort of chicken and egg thing isn’t it? I don’t think the people who made this video have a very good grasp of german history. To be honest, neither do I, but I would bet that the “militarization” of the education system came about out of necessity to inoculate the population against external threats.
I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam ( 31 May 1967 – 31 May 1968 ). Though a non-combatant at a base hospital, “in the rear with the gear,” I saw the human face of war on the wounded grunts, wounded civilians and even on one rare a wounded VC guerrilla. So from my perspective, they were all victims of that tragic and unnecessary war. My cynical definition of a civilian is a fellow citizen who believes that he or she will live forever. But unfortunately, I was introduced in my youth to the third act that all human beings must confront eventually in their passage through their lives, namely, their death. There’s an old Roman adage I remember from high school: “Death makes all men equal.” But most civilians actually believe they are going to live forever, and death looms so far over the horizon in their parochial lives that it is of no real concern to them. “Denial is more than a river in Egypt,” as participants say in the rooms of the recovery movement. And I’ve had nightmares about being burned with napalm well into my early fifties. Nobody deserves napalm. Nobody. Finally, no longer in denial, I went to the local VA clinic and got into therapy for my mild case of PTSD and did about two years of intensive individual and group therapy. It saved my life – literally. In September, 2010, the VA awarded me a modest disability for my exposure to Agent Orange. My specific type of heart disease was linked to this toxic herbicide. The Vietnam War, and specifically the fall of then-named Saigon on April 30, 1975, marked the decline of our country from a representative democracy into a military empire that we all see today in the Global War on Terror ( GWOT ). America crossed its Rubicon in the Mekong Delta. And nothing much has changed in the intervening decades except we live in the Age of the Internet and with the revolution in robotic technology, we now have President Obama’s various drone wars. He meets each Tuesday with his advisers and they discuss who they will kill . It’s just a high-tech, updated version of the infamous Phoenix Program ( 1964 – 1972 ) in our postmodern, Orwellian world. The Phoenix Program was run by the CIA. Agents supervised the targeted assassinations of cadres in the VC underground fighting against us by using specially trained death squads, mostly soldiers in the South Vietnamese Army, but also American special forces. Looking back on my tour of duty in Vietnam, it all seems now in the autumn of my years to gave been a bad dream. Taking a shower, I feel blessed that all my appendages are attached to my torso, especially the family jewels, if you get my drift. And according to former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in the classic documentary, “The Fog of War,” three and a half million Vietnamese died in the war. Also, around three million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent Orange of which around 150,000 children were born with crippling and hideous birth defects since the toxin is transmitted from the mother to the fetus during pregnancy. Some Vietnam veterans in a recovery program sponsored by a local church went back to Vietnam. The Vietnamese have special “Agent Orange” villages for this children. The children in these villages make little trinkets from wire and glass for the tourists as a remembrance in their pilgrimage to the scene of the crime. The children use yellow glass in the trinkets to represent the Agent Orange they were exposed to. It’s obvious we committed war crimes on a massive scale against the Vietnamese people. And we continue to commit war crimes on a massive scale in the GWOT against innocent Muslim civilians who are called “collateral damage.” another Orwellian oxymoron, that has entered the language from the debacle in Vietnam. How do I feel today on our Independence Day? I feel blessed to be alive. But despite all the therapy I went through, when I think about the Vietnamese people, I have moments of fleeting but profound shame for what we did to the Vietnamese people. Sure, I was a medic, a non-combatant. But I was also an insignificant cog in the vast and well-oiled machinery of war. I served in a criminal war. I did a great disservice to myself and to my country. And if I could get into a time machine and travel back to the hippy dippy sixties, I would have probably avoided my military service as many of my fellow male baby boomers did. So I have no animus against those who “dodged the draft” or those who were active in the ant-war protest movement. But what’s so ironic is that many of those same baby boomers supported sending other citizens’ sons and daughters off to war after the 9/11 attacks as if they were cheering on the high school football team as they were getting on buses for an way game on the schedule. And now the GWOT clearly rivals the Vietnam War as a major foreign policy debacle. Talk about irony to the nth degree.
The truth of most of what you say is undeniable. Yet I’m sure that by being a medic you saved the lives of good people, maybe even some of the people who ultimately ended the war and for a time kept the country out of a new one. There’s no need for you to be ashamed of that.
Also, in all fairness, most people in the military believed Agent Orange was safe. People tested it in the U.S. and Canada and Australia, sprayed it around like it was harmless. And to be completely fair… dioxin *was* the most toxic chemical ever discovered, which means that there was no precedent for such a tiny component of the mixture doing so much harm. Oh, I’m not saying it wasn’t criminally culpable to do so little testing on something you plan to expose so many people to, or to commit an ecocide in the first place, and it is worse given what a few people seemed to know and ignore about the toxin before the facts came out at the end. But the worst things were not the fault of the ordinary members of the military, and perhaps not even of some of the people at the top, and not the fault of the country as a whole. Remember, we almost destroyed the agriculture of the whole planet, even our ability to survive outside, with some damn aerosol spray cans. Chemistry turned out to have nastier surprises than people knew.
You’re an outstanding, shame-free patriot, Wnt, always looking at that bright side of butchery. I find example for the kids.
We should be reading books written by people like yourself. Now more relevant than ever.
If you are currently in the military, “get out now”. You sign away your life to fight for Political Power (for your bosses). When you are in the military, you are anti-freedom., anti-human. You are being paid by THEFT. Yes, taxation is THEFT. Remember back in the day when Politicians wanted war. What did they tell the “idiot masses” to make them fight?
The Communist are going to come and destroy us, they hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for being Americans. That whole propaganda bullsh*t ended, so now the Government carries out 9/11 false flag attack just to create another enemy. This was solely for 2 reasons. Pass the Patriot Act so they can spy on all Americans with no due process. In reality, the government SUSPENDED THE CONSTITUTION. This is illegal. Our criminal government not following its own laws. And the other is to give Americans propaganda so they want to go to the Middle East to destabilize the whole reason. Because of this and innocent killing, destroying elected governments, the government created Blow Back. Of course these people we have been attacking for no reason hate us. But now, what is our government doing? They are flying these refugees in by the hundreds of thousands. They want to mix all societies, religions, and races because they know this will not work. Mix all these people together in America, and America no longer stays America.
And what of the thousands of animal lives lost in slaughter houses due to the idiotic tradition of grilling their mutilated carcasses for a few bites of “pleasure”? And what of the thousands more frightened half to death by exploding fireworks? They are also victims worth recognizing.
Oh, yeah. Just the same as the destruction of civilizations and the murder of thousands of people. Right. What have you been smoking?
He said ‘And what’ and not ‘But what’, followed up later with ‘also’. Regardless of what Bob thinks, there is no comparison in his statements of ‘importance’.
The truth about the horrors created by humans includes both of
what “bob” wrote and your response. There is no separation between
the horrors which repeatedly come out of “civilizations.”
If you think humans are superior to other animals, you are willfully ignoring
the hypocrisy, arrogance, and the fact that most of what now passes
for “civilization” is an overflow of crutches which humans are willing to
use to hide the fact that they are the most devious and delusional
predators on this planet.
Extremely disturbing. The fetishization of war is beyond despicable. The worst part is, people happily and ignorantly taking part in the unnecessary displays of force and nationalism – who cares as long as there’s a good “selfie” to be had!
“America’s wars take place far away…”
Can’t give that a pass.
A violent Zersetzung War of extra judicial torture and murder is going on in the writer’s and domestic audience’s neighborhoods too, and like most of his readers he doesn’t want to know anything about it.
It wasn’t until recently that when watching the ‘news’ I noticed how the police force is uncannily resembling the military displays of other countries, past and present. This country has used death and destruction, coercion, threats of force , to destroy sovereign countries time and again. I’m sick of it, really fucking sick of it. I lost a friend in the ‘Nam, in 1970, and we’re still at war 46 years later. When working I used to like July 4th, day off and all, but now it just makes me sad because I don’t see an end in sight. Maybe, just maybe, we could not give a war and then nobody would have to show up. But as long as psychopaths keep being elected as leaders there will be endless wars to keep the wheels of industry turning. Sorry.
I hear up to a third of the US economy comes from making and selling arms. If so, the sons of Abraham are hardly behaving as Jesus laid out.
My nephews grew up obsessing over every release of ‘Call of Duty’ video games, their father had an arsenal of weapons, (assault style and pistols) that the boys could go shooting with, they joined their high schools ROTC and ‘rifle team’ program as freshmen and learned to groom themselves as military people. And now they sit behind video monitors pushing buttons to end the lives of brown families who’s ethnicities they don’t know and couldn’t spell. I gaurantee they could not locate the countries they are bombing on a map or tell you a single thing about the culture or why we are assaulting them. And they believe they are waging a battle for the very lifeblood of each and every American’s freedom. They are nearly illiterate, speak a sort of pidgin english, still have an infantile obsession with video game action figures, think Pres Obama is likely a muslim that definitely is trying to take their guns, and I and the rest of the family are constantly badgered to show how ‘proud we are’ of these dimwits. I can only imagine how traumatizing those photos are to victims of US terror.
I love the advert the US Navy is running at the moment about “Keeping You Safe from Them” or somesuch nonsense. Hilarious!
It is like you Americans must spend trillions of your hard-earned tax dollars and give up social services invaluable to the wellbeing of your society, and enrich a partisan group of miliatirsts and big businessmen and their political dogsbodies that are then undermining the very fabric of your proud democracy all in the name of “stopping” a non-existent threat from overseas.
You spend more on weapons than the rest of the world combined and you have an elaborate system of alliances that overwhelms all threats at their most basic and unformed level. Who could seriously sail across either the Pacific or the Atlantic and conquer the US? NORTH FUCKING KOREA?
You are even waging a War against Terror – really just a War against Anyone Who Thinks The USA is a Fucking Imperialist Megalomaniac (count me in!) Add it all up and ALL OF YOUR TAX MONEY in some way gets diverted into propping up these people’s wellbeing and ambitions. HA HA!
I think you could probably stop spending even $1 per year on arms and your military and STILL not even register one single threat from overseas. Russia and China ARE NOT INTERESTED in invading your territory. Even from a Year-Zero standing start with you armed with clubs and tomahawks like the Red Man of yore but with modern know-how, taking the North American continent against the wishes of its citizenry IS NOT POSSIBLE.
And despite the trillions spent over the last few decades, Mexico has already invaded and Spanish is now your dominant language. How did that happen?
Your military is NOT INTERESTED IN WAGING WAR or DEFENDING YOUR BORDERS. It is interested in STEALING YOUR TAXES and BULLYING THE REST OF THE WORLD and INCITING PROXY WARS & GLOBAL TENSION & FEAR BENEFICIAL TO U.S. INTERESTS AND U.S. ARMS SALES. It has filled enough boots to genuinely and democratically influence voting patterns, keeping 5 million people meaninglessly employed in the business of hateful and violent imperialism and theft.
You love to point to your Founding Fathers as geniuses of pragmatic idealism and Promethian forethought, but whereas the rest of the world struggles ever onwards from the gutter towards a Greater Good, you have already peaked and are heading downwards determined to drag the rest of us, in you blind pride and greedy selfishness, backwards to your benefit.
So contrary to what Mary Shelley might have you thinking, when you create a Frankenstein’s Monster, do not worry about its feelings or rights to exist, chop it up and burn its corpse and never again make such an abomination that threatens the very wellbeing of the world.
I agree, except that the U.S. military certainly does wage war; many wars, in fact. Like most wars, U.S. war is waged for resources, mainly oil and pipelines for now, soon probably fracked gas and water.
As to Mary Shelley, genetic engineering is by far the behavior most relevant to the Frankenstein story.
And you can see the comments from idiot Americans that prove your point. “North Korea could conquer the U.S.” “North Korea is working hard to devise the means by which to destroy us.” Etc. Now you see what the few sane people here have to put up with.
Really though, the joke is that North Korea *could* conquer the U.S. It’s just a matter of using strategy to avoid the main American defenses. North Korea reputedly has a world-class biowar program … the U.S., in the meanwhile, allows ordinary flu to kill tens of thousands of people every winter just to show that we are completely defenseless against a run-of-the-mill airborne pathogen that any idiot can mutate back to 1918 levels of fatality, or cross-breed with avian flu, or worse. But they have more fun stuff like “ebolapox” they could pull out if they want. The North Koreans force their citizens to take mandatory vaccinations – and I doubt anybody asks twice what’s in the vaccine. So they could make their population 100% resistant to a disease, let it loose in the U.S., get everyone they really care about into bunkers, and wait out the angry response by the dying Americans.
Now as fun as all that is, they’d first want to crack the U.S. open and make it vulnerable. First they’d make all the self-driving cars of a couple of brands go nuts and mow down pedestrians and run over fire hydrants and crash into other vehicles at high speed. Then they’d slam on the brakes of every internet-connected car of some other brands. Then they’d use… another method to burn down all the office buildings. They would have the whole country on fire with no transportation or even water to fight it, and at the same time, we’re getting infected by a 99% lethal virus that the NKs are vaccinated against and we don’t even know about yet. Yeah, they’d come out of their bunkers to a nuclear wasteland, but there’d be a lot of free real estate for them to branch out to. But the viciousness of the American response *might* actually serve as a deterrent, depending on how horrible it is.
Nonsense. Even now, North Korea is working hard to devise the means by which to destroy us. It may take a while, but they have pure hatred on their side. Someday they may build a stealth rowboat with a nuke on it. And then I’d like to see the look on your face!
I think in the line: “Give me Liberty or Give me Death”, the death part won.
Every year at the end on May or beginning of June the Thunderbirds perform at the USAF Academy graduation, and thousands of cars park on streets anywhere close just to watch. This year one of the F-16s lost power after the show, crashing in a field during its return to nearby Peterson AFB. Nobody was hurt but that graduation ceremony was a few million more expensive than usual. And President Obama provided this year’s commencement address so Air Force One was also in the Pikes Peak region for the day. Ain’t empire grand?
Happy America’s blow-shit-up day, everyone. I’d like to reiterate, OUR country’s Independence Day might find truer meaning by ending its Big Brother funding – forever.
Wait, is that a silencer or a suppressor? (I don’t actually know much about guns, but I know you cannot post a sentence about a gun without some pedantic asshole on the internet coming out to correct you. ;)
The military does accomplish some decent things with its weapons, like keeping the North Koreans from coming south; but in truth good is most often done with weapons through the omission rather than the observance. The same principle should guide these public displays. Before the planes fly and the heavy vehicles roll, people need to ask what the total average expected fatality rate is going to be, from accidents, from cases of asthma caused by the pollution, from the risk that terrorists are going to take over that armored personnel carrier and roll it through that crowd with that little gun blazing. And then of course, there’s the cost. Still, it is better to suffer some expense than to suffer a draft!
Hear Hear!!
We probably need a draft to keep the military in line; if communities at large aren’t paying a price for ‘war’ then these messes we find ourselves in will perpetuate (assuming the people’s voice still matters). I believe TI has reported on Bacevich who’s written several books about military. Every business large and small needs threatened by draft.
On the silencer: you’re right. But here’s something: if that’s a real silencer getting passed around it could be construed as possession under NFA. Those people are possibly committing a felony offense for even touching.
The draft SHOULD be reinstated. Deferments, however, should be very difficult to obtain. If the cost of the GWOT were shared by all, and I mean all, perhaps there would be less war. If more senator’s kids, or even some president’s kids were at risk….well, maybe, it’s a thought. How ’bout a couple billionaires in the infantry.
Bullshit. Tell me *ONCE* when a draft ever meant anything but a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. Drafting soldiers means that you don’t want to pay people the modest wage – hardly a hero’s reward, really – that it takes to recruit volunteers. What we pay soldiers is by no means proper recompense for limbs and lives lost, but at least it is a token sign of seriousness. And the thing is, if you’re not willing to pay a fair wage, you’re not willing to pay for veteran medical care and other benefits either. And the rich wouldn’t be rich if they didn’t have some way of steering clear of a screw like that. For example, you see a lot of folks in the U.S. for graduate school, waiting out their country’s draft. There’s no way they’re going to put up with a system that genuinely locks their kids inside the country for a big chunk of their lives, because you know, the rich flit from country to country like butterflies between flowers. They’d say that if the U.S. enacted something like that they’d just leave and take their capital with them, until Congress fell begging at their knees for forgiveness (and they would).
Very good piece!
With the ending of the draft, suppose a PR campaign is needed to bring in recruits.
Advocating for ending the draft was the biggest mistake of the anti-Vietnam war movement. We all hated the draft and thought that ending it would greatly reduce the size and power of the military, but it didn’t. What it did do was create a situation where middle and upper class kids don’t care about U.S. wars because they aren’t in danger of having to fight in them. I say bring back the draft. If it existed at the time, there would have been no Iraq War II.
Agree heartily, Jeff D
I was a “nasty reservist” and did my time in Iraq. Total strategic blunder, daily changes to rules of engagement. 90 percent of my brothers were lower to upper middle class, with the 10 percent split between extremely poor and extremely well off.
Who but a moron would volunteer to defend a “Police State”?
1. People who support what the military does;
2. People who are clueless; and/or
3. Poor people willing to sell their souls.
@JudasGoat and @Jeff D
Very sadly, there is a segment of population that has NO OPTIONS ( no money for higher education, no jobs, no health care,no shelter ) BUT to join the military…….. they are not morons and and are not selling their souls…. … they are just trying to SURVIVE ( i. e . if they don’t get killed before hey are done with the military ).
Not a very accurate assessment of the military. People who join are overwhelmingly better educated than their civilian counterparts. Not only that, but military veterans are more likely to continue service to the public through volunteerism and charitable donations.
It most certainly is selling your soul if you know what the military does and don’t support that. If, on the other hand, you do know and support it, you’re an asshole.
It’s good that fewer Americans are dying. It’s bad that we’re still killing foreigners. I don’t know whether it’s evil that they show these weapons to the public in this way, but the other side of the story needs told more often…
Guns and Hotdogs. The flower of a nations youth goes off to war for Banksters. Banksters never see a day in jail. Politicians serve as pimps for Banksters, deceiding who will get filleted for national security.
Tell all who might listen, not to join up. Only idiots continue to support the military, because the military won’t defend themselves from the Banksters.
So true!
It is ironical that millions in the USA will be celebrating “Independence Day” when at the same time USA military hardware will be killing/oppressing millions in some parts of the world. Wonder, when celebrating THEIR Independence Day, the Americans will be thinking of “INDEPENDENCE” /”FREEDOM” for the victims from the terror/savagery of American Drones, Bombs and Missiles!!!
A 2008 study by Harvard Medical School and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimated 3.8 million violent war deaths, combat and civilian, north and south, during the years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.[xliv] The civilian deaths outnumbered the combat deaths, again amounting to about two-thirds of total deaths. The wounded were in much higher numbers, and judging by South Vietnamese hospital records, one-third were women and one-quarter children under age 13. U.S. casualties included 58,000 killed and 153,303 wounded, plus 2,489 missing. (Medical advances help explain the ratio of wounded to killed; subsequent medical advanced and body armor advances may help explain why U.S. deaths in Iraq were not at a level similar to U.S. deaths in Korea or Veitnam.) The 3.8 million out of a population of 40 million is nearly a 10% loss, or twice what OIL did to Iraq. War spilled into neighboring countries. Refugee crises ensued. Environmental damage and delayed deaths, often due to Agent Orange, continue to this day.
David Swanson – Author of ‘War Is A Lie’? I love your work!
Sorry Maisie I drive an ice cream truck in Los Angeles!
I LOVE ice cream! Peach is my favourite flavour with real fruit bits in it..
Americans are very ill.
No, sadly, the masses are brainwashed. When MSM rolls over and no longer provides investigative journalism, but cowtows to The Pentagon, White House, et al, this is what we get. I fear for this once great country….. but then again perhaps I too am brainwashed it was never great.
In addition to brainwashed, unimaginative. This partly due to the misfortune that accompanies the good fortune of not having a war fought on US soil in over 150 years. The last generation that fought in a real war have now died off, and even that generation never fully conveyed the horrors of war to their children and grandchildren.
Ever been to Verdun? A trip certainly worth taking, to a battlefield that still shows the scars made in 1916, where the French and Germans lost more lives than the US has in ALL of its wars, combined. But most Americans have never heard of it, much less visited the battlefield. Instead, they think war is like a video game – indeed the military even uses video games in training – and their latest innovation is warfare that is so remote controlled that the greatest risk to the hero soldiers who fight is an enlarged thumb.
A brainwashed person is an ill person and a brainwashed American is a disease carrier. The pols she votes for are symptoms of the disease she carries, and t is the responsibility of the sick individual to heal herself because her culture is not going to do it for her. Staying sick is also an option, but it might not be the easiest option.
Americans are no different than people anywhere else in the world. People everywhere like to talk about the greatness of their ancestors, their people, their literature, their lands, their Gods, and the brilliance of their futures. The carrier of the disease is a supplicant media, that plays along with this narrative, the world over. Support independent media and the disease may yet die.
The NYT and CNN are prostitutes just doing their jobs, and anyone with a couple of neurons knows he needs to take precautions to avoid coming down with a dose. Time spent with prostitutes could be better spent on other things, for example, reading the Pentagon Papers — cited here because the book’s subject matter has been mentioned in this thread.
“Americans are no different than people anywhere else in the world. People everywhere like to talk about the greatness of their ancestors, their people, their literature, their lands, their Gods, and the brilliance of their futures.”
There were always dissidents too, people who viewed the conventional wisdom as horse shit. And every individual made a conscious choice to go along with the insanity or not.
The carrier of the contemporary form of the disease are the American men and women, stenographers included, who will vote for any Democrat, Republican or Libertarian in November. The ‘we’re not exceptional, we’re just like everybody else’ plea of innocence is whataboutery — an effort to deflect attention from The Great American People’s responsibility.
The Great American People is violently ill. Voter endorsed yellow socialism, exportation of the working and middle class economy, the mountains of corpses in the ME, the rivers of refugees fleeing it, and the extremely stupid provocations against nuclear armed Russia is the evidence.
Happy 4th, Oh Exceptional Americans! Be proud!
Send more troops, missiles, and tanks to the Russian border while still bogged down in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, … Meet your quota and then some: incite more people against you today than yesterday.
Wave that flag! Vote! Get the same result and blame immigrants!
But please, do build that wall and stay inside it until you get well.
I am not American, and was born Muslim. But having been brought up under propaganda of a different sort, came to recognize the similarity of the said propaganda, used against minorities or foreigners, when I left my home country. It’s the same story everywhere. The minorities are always “lazy,” “dumb,” “pot heads,” or “they can’t be trusted,” because their allegiance really lies with that other country.
But I’m sure, you’re from a country in Mars, with no mental diseases of the greatness of your people, and the inferiority of minorities, or foreigners, who you’ve never subjugated. I’m sure it’s a disease that inflicts only Americans. The rest of the Earth, plays music with their weapons and their media, I’m sure.
I think you should take an interplanetary trip from Mars, and travel to any country, so you can see what goes on in the politics of an imperfect country. Or you could just sit down and read Roman history. It’s the same fucking shit. Those people from Germania are barbarians, and we Romans are spreading Democracy. And that’s why we need to kill them. To spread democracy.
It’s not really a brand new American affliction, as you seem to suggest… is what I’m saying.
I cured myself of sickness of rabid nationalism with absolulte no help from my ‘native’ culture, parents, or peers. I believed I was cancer-free long before relatives promised to kill me for the sin of getting healthy, but after that I was certain.
I was born in Texas, where evil is highly concentrated. After twenty seven years I left Mars for San Francisco in the late 1980s, where I learned Neo Liberal America is just as fucked up (anyone with a smidgeon of human decency knows that now). I left Venus for Brazil, and also lived in the UK, working in their Ministry of Information during 2002-2005, where I saw the innards of a force-multiplying sausage factory up close. I have also spent time in China with relatives of modest means — not as an insulated tourist — where I heard a few stories about the bad old days, and read about a few of them too in China history texts. I am currently in Brazil watching ghosts of 1964 creep out of their holes.
If this were 1962 and I had to name the worst place in the world I would probably say China. But it’s 2016. The most violently ill society in the world is the one you are defending with your evil bullshit. Bingeing on unprovoked offensive war and torture is no more respectable today then it was a century ago. The demented Americans you so weakly defend, for whatever reason, have no excuses.
The difference is in the culture. Some people are inherently bigger assholes than others, but what controls how a society or country acts is its culture, not the individuals. American culture is totally evil. This doesn’t mean that other cultures aren’t evil too, but …
That said, what makes American culture so evil IS the people. The reason that the people here are worse than elsewhere is that America for centuries has invited people from other cultures to move here, on the promises of both making money and freedom for religious fanatics. Americans are the most greedy, selfish, materialistic people in the world. And compared to other developed countries, the U.S. is the capital of religious fanaticism.
So yes, Americans ARE different, because America is a magnet for assholes.
This “culture” is a human culture. You think the Chinese and the Russians are hiding their military prowess? In most countries in the world, the military is allowed to parade their wares on national television.
I have no problems with this article, as I think this kind of behavior is ridiculous, and The Intercept is only doing its job, and doing it well. But to say that Americans are somehow sicker, is not looking at the problem effectively. It’s the same thing as saying, all Muslims are crazy terrorists. It doesn’t solve anything.
It was great … a little over 500 years ago.
Notice that other Western nations don’t do this. The presentation of institutionalized macho violence as ‘American exceptionalism’ enmeshed within love of country is grotesque, and one of the many ways in which US culture is warped into a false state of consciousness – a mesmerized state of shallow consumerism grafted to a belief that being ‘good’ justifies whatever oppression or aggression you want to exact. This outlook is useful to the establishment as it excuses a lack of reflection or deep thought in the populace, presenting a society of fanatical national confidence to itself that is blind to its own need for complete renewal – and of course the outlook is also one of the major ways in which potential killers in America all-too-easily convince themselves that weaponry is made for problem-solving.
“Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man’s tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart.
And victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.”*
(*From the Tao Te Ching)
Great post, couldn’t agree more. These problems are rooted in a lack of spirituality. Unfortunately, Americans have religion without spirituality, which is totally evil.
um, countries actually do have events similar to this. Airshows and re-enactments in France, Bundeswehr displays in Germany, expos in the Czech Republic.
“War is Beautiful” by David Shields is an interesting commentary on how war and violence have been romanticized with photography to trigger sympathetic, defensive and patriotic emotions rather than horror and ugliness of war. The way in which the government seduces their citizens with such imagery is subliminal advertising on a whole other level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGkGhj7PI1k
So many people have it all so wrong.
Today we see in Jon’s piece how the military is spending millions on PR and show-and-tells in the US.
Yesterday there was an article in the NYTimes about how the US military band budget is somewhat over $400 Million per year.
That is all good news, folks, because it means that they have less money to buy Hellfire missiles, DU ammunition, cluster bombs,
land mines, napalm, and other toys that they employ routinely and world wide to kill people.
My approach would be to double the number of bands, double the number of band performances, air shows featuring the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels, have more flyovers at baseball and football games, Abrams tank demos in the infields at NASCAR events (come to think of it, football and baseball games too), a battalion marching in every small town parade. Let them spend $100 billion per year on this – all of it at home, where it trickles down into the local economies, and none of it causing a single death (save possibly due to boredom), and making no new enemies for the US abroad.
Like the line of thinking, but the Federal Reserve will keep inflating do they can have their guns-and-butter up the masses.
That’s a very bad idea. The reason they spend so much on propaganda — just like the reason that large corporations spend so much on advertising — is that it works. In this case, it has worked to brainwash the average American into worshiping the military. And when the public worships the military, the military is given a virtually unlimited budget to do whatever it wants.
The U.S. military budget should be cut by 50% immediately, all foreign bases should be closed, and the military budget should be cut by another 50% within another three years. The U.S. military is used to basically steal resources from other countries (this includes geopolitical issues, which are also for that purpose) and has no legitimacy.
Thank you, Jon. Here is my take on the merchants of death and their propagandists.
http://currentincarmel.com/letter-remembering-soldiers-on-memorial-day-is-not-enough
Easy answer: no!
Edit: LOL, I kid. They obviously would continue to kill civilians. You must not know much about the Islamic State if you think anti-Western views are solely what motivate them.
Please feel free to use your own money, flag, and people to attack them. Leave me, my children, and my money out of it. I wash my hands of it until they are truly at the Gates of Indianapolis.
Assuming you pay taxes, your money is being used to attack the Islamic State.
However, your response has nothing to do with my point of contention which was that the Islamic State would not stop if the U.S. didn’t attack it. If you remember correctly, they sought their global caliphate before the U.S. intervened.
Have they attacked Switzerland, Guatemala, Costa Rica, or Tahitti?
No, but they’ve been involved in attacks against many counties not considered part of the “West.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_linked_to_ISIL
Start with Iraq. Since you must be living under a rock, how do you explain their trying to steal Iraq from their people and murdering their civilians as being the fault of the west? Does the Islamic State have no agency for their own actions!?
They are like any government (the “state” part of its name) trying to establish itself as the monopolist on the use of violence in a given area. They want to spread to the extent that Islam has spread in the past. Europe, with low birth rates, is an easy vacuum to fill. It will be a long time before they try to take over Flyover Country.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/597254/ISIS-Map-Europe-Terror-Organisation-Andrew-Hosken-Caliphate-Abu-Musab-al-Zarqawi
Well, since you just refuted your prior argument (attacks stop if the US takes their ball and goes home) I guess this discussion is concluded.
Attacks on US do stop if we stop attaching them. They have no near-term plans to establish establish their state here.
Have you stopped and considered that ISIL itself hasn’t attacked the U.S. on our soil?
Attacks thus far have been inspired by ISIL. You pretend as if you’re dealing with rational actors!!
Have you considered that they are inspired to attack only in places that are attacking ISIS? Read Prof. Robert Pape and you might see that rationality is part of the equation.
It’s YOU who doesn’t understand what’s going on. The ascendance of the religious fanatics in the Middle East started when the U.S. armed and trained the Mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. If you listen to what these people say, they’re attacking the West because the West is doing things in THEIR COUNTRIES that they don’t like. Whether it’s beyond the point of no return I don’t know, but the U.S. military has no business in other countries and should get the hell out immediately.
This is where it helps to actually read about the origins of the Islamic State and what they want. Maybe you should start there and then ask yourself: if hatred of the West is their motivation, why do they attack the Shia so relentlessly?
Also, the Mujahadin were fighting the Russians before the US intervened.
Your implicit argument is that the Islamic State speaks for all aggrieved Muslims across the ME and Central Asia. Yet, almost all Muslims hate the Islamic State. How do you jam the square peg in that round hole?
Why does the military have a budget to propagandize like this (rhetorical question)? As I just posted in another thread about General Breedlove trying to force the Obama administration to fight for the illegitimate coup assholes in Ukraine, the military is supposed to serve and take orders from us, not force or coerce us to do things like fight more wars, love war, or become even more militaristic. This society is broken beyond repair, and only a revolution has a chance to fix things. Unfortunately, a revolution in the U.S. would come from the nutcase right and the result could be as bad or worse than what we have now.
Well said!
In Vietnam we watched the news and said, “War is bad.” They watched the news and said, “War needs better PR.”
When kids (ie: just over 18) see guns, and ads, and “toys” (eg: tanks, fighters, missiles, etc.) and go, “Gee, I want to do that,” it kind of belies the whole meme of “Support or Troops”. That is, “Support our Troops”, which is supposed to rest on the non-demoninational idea that even if you don’t support our wars, you should at least support our soldiers, falls flat when people are signing up because it’s “cool” or looks “fun”.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t support the troops, but one also has to think, maybe if there weren’t so many willing to fight , maybe there wouldn’t be so many wars. I find myself conflicted, I want to give them a pass, that it is mostly an altruistic desire to protect their country, whether misguided or not. Still, a lot of people hanged after the world wars for similar claims of altruism. At some point even the most duty bound has the responsibility to exercise, and to follow, their conscience in light of orders.
George Orwell said, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf,” and surely that is true at times, but as I get older and watch nary a year without war, I think it’s reversed – we cannot sleep peaceably because there are always rough men ready to do violence, period.
Why should those of us opposed to U.S. military aggression support the troops? The “support the troops” concept is nothing but military propaganda that even most of the U.S. left has bought into. If I don’t support what someone is doing, I’m certainly not going to support that person either. I don’t support the troops, I support the Earth that’s being destroyed by the U.S. military and the victims of that military.
Amen to that. But keep in mind that some of the people in the military joined because they honestly believed they would be serving their country, either as a result of a lack of balanced information or maybe due to simple stupidity. There are undoubtedly many people on active duty who are moral. It would be wrong to condemn all people in uniform, just as it would be wrong to condemn all cops.
Well, generalizations are generally true; they allow for exceptions.
There are only three reasons someone would join a military: 1) they believe in what the military does; 2) they are ignorant about what the military does and therefore think they’re defending their country from the “bad guys”; or 3) they’re poor and willing to sell their soul. Your comment was about people in category 2. When you live in a country where information is available, there’s no excuse for being that ignorant, so that excuse doesn’t fly with me. The U.S. military is doing enormous harm fer crissakes, you can’t just say, “Oh, I didn’t know” and expect to be forgiven.
Nicely done. Like others here, I recall seeing the horrors of the Vietnam War on the nightly news; transparency of the sort that helped Americans understand what their government was doing on their behalf. If only our country’s media were as committed now as they were then to holding up a mirror for self-reflection.
These pictures are, to say the least, profoundly disturbing.
As part of the propaganda machine of the regime, here in New York City every NYPD vehicle has the slogan WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS but the correct writing should be WE SUPPORT OUR TERRORISTS.
The fascination of the Power of Death by the public of the US is undeniable, unmatched in any country, and is completely perverted given that this power is not counterlevered by an equal and better match for the power of life support, human rights, democracy, return on productivity and comfort. Instead this power of death is yet another symptom that parallels that hording and greed in an insect styled colony that is busy making enemies and conditioning children to be soldiers in wars, to kill and die for preservation of wealth and poverty.
SICK.
U.S.A. is Terrorist #1, but buried under a national ever-growing debt of $20 trillion it is destined to perish and only then will we have peace in the world.
There won’t be “peace in the world,” whatever that is, until humans evolve mentally and spiritually. The assholes here will just pop up somewhere else. The reason the U.S. is so evil is that its population has become accustomed and now feels entitled to massive material wealth, and will kill the Earth and everyone on it to maintain that wealth and get even more. If you think that there aren’t plenty of people in other countries with that same immoral attitude, you’re badly mistaken. When humans greatly decrease their desires for material things, maybe then they’ll stop fighting wars over them. Until then, it will just be more of the same.
Agreed. It’s a mistake to think the U.S. is bad therefor the others must be good. We are raised with the simplistic idea, repeated over and over in the structures of our society (political parties, sexes, etc.) that because one side is wrong, the other must be right. Because one side is bad, the other must be good.
Since as far as I see we are all human, that’s unlikely. Moreover if there is something positive to be remembered from our forefathers this July 4th, it’s that they tried to design a system of government that took into account the common failings of all humans. Unfortunately even so, it went off the rails almost immediately, but it is something to be proud of on Independence day that it was at least at the time, the best try yet.
And then Adams and Jefferson went at it, and it was all downhill from there but…
While most of the stuff that you present is correct I think that you are mixing mangoes and avocadoes; under the pretext that other nations are wrong the U.S.A. has conveniently appointed itself as policeman of the world in and in the process freshly invade, loot, and exterminate hundreds of millions of their people. Who cares if they good or evil ?
I guess I should have been more clear. I did not at all mean to excuse U.S. militarism, imperialism, or theft of other people’s land & resources and destruction of their lives and societies. I’m just saying that humans as a whole are bad and until they get much better these problems will remain. You can’t fix a problem by attacking its symptoms, you have to fix its roots. In this case the root is lack of spirituality.
“only then will we have peace in the world”
That’s doubtful. The U.S. has made a lot of enemies and they will come for the spoils at the point that the present governance system implodes. The rape of Berlin, and the rest of Soviet controlled, post war Germany, comes to mind. Our exceptional neighbours have a tiger by the tail.
It is sickening to see the “children” being exposed to this…..
But then, it is not only our military….. children are being exploited every where…….”all the child soldiers”!!
This seems unreal…… but it is not…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMI4gbSOSVI
This is how,” A terrible love of war” which is a book on this subject begins.
Let’s not forget the military has dedicated staff to assist with Hollywood films and TV shows.
That exposure is far more prevalent for the majority of Americans.
It also isn’t an accident that plots justifying torture and war as the answer to all problems while minimizing the gore and consequences are common.
It’s amazing that millions of Americans marched in the streets to try to prevent the war in Iraq despite the ubiquitous militaristic propaganda…
… almost as amazing as the fact that those who lied us into that war and “legalized” torture didn’t face any consequences for their criminality.
Many thanks to Ms Nina Berman for EXPOSING the military’s way of making “weaponry” appear “sexy” and making war and killing seem harmless and seducing young people to join the military.
Thank you Jon for the story and posting these pictures.
I distinctly remember watching the evening news as an eleven year old kid in 1970.
They showed a S Vietnamese officer executing a bound N Vietnamese prisoner, with a single point blank shot to the head with a pistol, brain matter spewing from the bullet exit side, the real deal, in your face on the evening news.
Way back when our MSM had guts n courage.
Was that the famous Saigon Execution shot from 1968? Or was it something else?
Jon, horrors of wars will never be forgotten by the victims and by those who feel war is itself a crime…. if the images are difficult to watch, can one imagine what the reality must be like??? Is it any wonder, hundred of thousands who have experienced a war, end up losing their minds??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4yZCaeboCs
I guess the moral of the Saigon execution being broadcast on the evening news?
Is that the vast majority of the general public react so viscerally to blood n guts for a damn good reason. That soldiers who can get beyond the visceral shock n horror and still function? Still pay a price, albeit delayed and after the crisis is over.
You wanna go to war? Then take a good hard look at the results, every night, on the evening news.
Even though that was shown on TV for the one second that it took to happen, it was the iconic photo of that image which remained and continues to remain seared into the minds and memories of many citizens who have enough empathy for those who directly suffer from war, and understanding of what comes from war and those who participate in the atrocities of war. I believe the photo was first published in LIFE magazine.
Three minute video of the event and the photographer speaking about the accident of his haven taken the photo. I said “accident” because he didn’t expect the execution, he only expected a threat without a follow through to actual execution. He explains in the interview.
There is something about a poignant photo that sears itself into the brain’s long term memory in a way a transitory video cannot. The actual video of it…it is so quick that the it hard to see it as murder, but the desperate look on the slain man’s face stays forever.
I fear such a video or photo would no longer have such an impact. “Superman vs. Batman”, a movie that should be tailored for the youngest of children, and sadly in some way is, shows more violence in a few frames than that video/photo you reference. We live in a virtual gladiator ring these days.
Carl, I think it would still have an impact. The US Gov sure thinks so, from making “embedded” reporter deals with the MSM in order to sanitize front-line reporting, to fighting like hell to not release things like the Abu Ghraib photos, or now the Gitmo torture tapes. I think some pictures are still worth a whole lot more than 1000 words, even to such an inured, propagandized, and ignorant public.