Trolling All Pentagon Hacks

We are a week or so out from Veterans’ Day and, as too altogether convenient timing would have it, the United States Department of Defense just announced that–to the shock of no one–it has failed its seventh straight audit.

Don’t worry though, the highest officials at the Pentagon, all self-sacrificial public servants of course–they’re are on top if it. No, they are not assuring the rest of us that weeks of sleepless nights are about to be had all over Alexandria and Bethesda as the minions scour for where all of the money went. Accounting is so beneath them. Instead, as Kathleen Hicks, the Deputy Secretary of Defense expressed recently to Jon Stewart, the key mission now of the Pentagon is to inform us that we do not comprehend what an audit is. You see, Stewart had the audacity to call the misplacement of scores of billions of dollars, fraud. Shame, shame on you, actor Jon Stewart. Your departure from the script rendered Deputy Hicks disappointed and bewildered. She searched for a line and found only, “You’re too stupid to know what an audit is.” Actor Jon got back on script and on cue, sheepishly wagged his tail and laid down in the corner.

Could I just offer that such Orwellian deflection is minor to the point of insignificance in comparison to the much more ominous and programmatic ploy which the Pentagon has foisted upon us, well, since at least those sneaky Japanese bombed our colony in the far Pacific? Here’s the ploy from the Department of War (I mean, “Defense”): You need us. You need us so badly that without all of the tanks and guns and missiles and jets and warships; without all of the noble warriors who join our ranks to do true service to “the nation”–all the baddies of the world would have vaporized you years ago. Sure, we antagonize them–that’s our bag, Jack. We call it spreading and defending democracy around the world, but all of that spreading of democracy sure does bring with it our own reason to be–nothing short of vindication to be sure. Why these people resent our benign campaigns to impose self-rule and sovereignty upon them, we have no idea, nor do we feel compelled to examine such trivialities. Carpet bombing Germany and Japan four score years ago resulted in “democracy” so it stands to reason that carpet bombing every other nook and cranny of the globe will have the same effect. Either way, you need us more now than ever. You want us on that wall; You need us on that wall. The natives of the empire are restless. Note: You do not need us on the non-existent wall planned on the border with Mexico. You need us on the myriad of fronts we’ve created around the world, especially in those far off places none of you can find on a map. Do audits feature maps?! Who knows!

I don’t stand and applaud like a mindless seal when a Navy Seal gets honored at a baseball game. I bet a lot of the Navy Seals are cool guys; hell so are Marines and Army Rangers. A lot of ordinary, individual veterans are chums. Few are blind nationalists. Most are honorable patriots. But let’s not ignore several unavoidable truths here: many are messed up. Messed up from what they saw, what they were called to do. Messed up because they chose to be away from family, from civilian life, from productive careers. To these guys, I have a measure of sympathy. Then there’s the others, indeed, the multitude. Very few were or are conscripts. They signed up for this or that corps. They joined their state’s national guard (?) knowing full well that they would not be deployed to defend Rhode Island from a Connecticut incursion, nor deployed to do something substantive at all for the benefit of Rhode Island.

Sorry, then, Owen Benjamin is right in large part–many are just babies, and very expensive ones to have on the Pentagon’s apparently non-existent payroll.

Is it not beyond high time for everyone, veteran and non-veteran alike, to question the state and its collective, coercive force and to stop reflexively bowing in blind homage to its chiefs, and yes, even before its rank and its file? Are we allowed to feign ignorance as to what it is doing, this imperial-military-industrial complex, as missiles made in St. Louis (who knew St. Louis manufactured anything anymore–go back to the Corvette for God’s sake…) land in Russia? Precision rockets made in California level Gazan and Lebanese apartment complexes, and Kathleen Hicks will tell us, gleefully channeling Madeleine Albright, that it is all worth it. She cannot determine the expenditure anyway, so it is definitely worth it.

Call me ungrateful. Call me disrespectful. But, by this point, I cannot, nor can you claim ignorance or naivete. 

Leviathan calls the Lilliputians to service and for the Smurfs to pay for it all. No thanks.

Sing a different tune and the rest of the world will thank us for it.

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