America and Israel: Modern Day Spartas

by Stephen Lendman

America and Israel live by the sword. One day they'll perish by it.

The more belligerence they pursue, the more enemies they make. They also lose influence. Eventually homeland support will erode, decay, and fade.

What can't go on forever, won't. Neither nation understands in their rage to fight enemies they invent because real ones don't exist. The strategy's doomed, but how much more death, destruction, and human misery will occur first. The thought's chilling and appalling.

Both nations are sham democracies. They tolerate none at home or abroad. How can they when wars define their existence. They're not for noble aims, national security or self-defense. They're about advancing imperial dominance and tolerating no dissent.

US Special Study Group Members Advocated War as Policy

In the early 1960s, a Special Study Group produced America's Iron Mountain report. It's purpose was "to determine, accurately and realistically, the nature of the problems that would confront the United States if and when a condition of 'permanent peace' should arrive, and to draft a program for dealing with this contingency."

At first suppressed, an unnamed insider revealed it. Its findings said disarmament would require "scrapping....a critical proportion of the most highly developed occupational specialties in the economy."

Diverting an arms budget to a "non-military system (was called) remote (in a) market economy." Replacing it with public works was said to be "wishful thinking (and) unrealistic."

Seymour Melman's important work proved them wrong. Only his students and readers understand. Militarism comes at the expense of corrupted leaders, a culture of violence, lost industrialization, crumbling infrastructure, and suffering millions on their own, uncared for, unwanted, ignored, and forgotten to assure steady funding for America's wars, no matter the cost to society.

Melman also showed how dollars spent for vital domestic needs achieve far more bang for the buck. Instead of building constructively, Washington ignored Eisenhower's warning and pursued decades of death and destruction. America and its targeted countries suffered as a result.

Yet Iron Mountain Special Study Group members called war "the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire. (It's) the system (that's) governed most human societies of record, as it (does) today."

Threats don't cause wars. In fact, those alleged "against the national interest are usually created or accelerated to meet the changing needs of the war system."

It was also wrongly called an "essential economic stabilizer." In addition, war's political importance was stressed. It defines and enforces relations with other nations.

National sovereignty "resides in its war powers." They include the power of local police to deal with "internal enemies in a military manner."

Moreover, wars serve ecological purposes. They "reduce the consuming population to a level consistent with the survival of the species." Yet mass destruction is inefficient. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate.

So other methods must be employed to remove "useless eaters," as Henry Kissinger called them and recommended exterminating millions.

Throughout its history, America pursued permanent wars at home and abroad. Post-WW II, they raged more aggressively globally. The business of America became permanent wars. They've ravaged nations for wealth, power, resource control, and unchallenged world dominance.

Like GW Bush and other US presidents, Obama's an unindicted war criminal multiple times over. He exceeds the worst of his predecessors.

He continues waging wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as numerous proxy ones in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working households.

He's a global menace with a friendly face concealing a heart of stone and attitude to match.

Benefitting Wall Street, other corporate favorites, America's super-rich, and advancing the nation's imperium alone matters. People needs are out of sight and mind.

Tyranny's official policy. Numerous police state laws enforce it. Recent ones passed hardened it. America's unfit to live in. Occupy Wall Street's a warning of eventual larger scale public rebellion. People only tolerate so much. When thresholds too painful to endure are crossed, they react. Expect more.

America's Partner in Crimes of War and Against Humanity

Israel replicates the worst of America's agenda. State terror is official policy. So is indoctrinating youths to be warriors. Belligerence defines Israel's existence.

Following its War of Independence, it stayed politically and militarily hardline. It negotiates from strength, choses confrontation over diplomacy, naked aggression against invented enemies, and occupation to seize all parts of Judea and Sumaria it wants, as well as Jerusalem as its exclusive capital.

In 1982, senior foreign affairs advisor Oded Yinon published a policy paper advising a divide and conquer agenda. Titled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," it said Israel must dominate the region and become a world power to survive.

Doing so requires balkanizing Arab states along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites. Yinon recommended replicating the Ottoman Empire's Millet (nation) system under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel pursues Yinon's strategy. It works best when Washington wages Israel's wars like in Iraq and Libya. The Israeli Lobby's pushing hard for war against Syria and Iran. Replacing independent regimes with pro-Western ones serves Israel, especially if balkanization follows.

Conflict as Natural

Decades of Arab-Israel conflict produced seven full-scale wars, two Intifadas, and daily violence in Occupied Palestine.

Palestinians live in terror of who'll be harmed next. So do Israeli Arabs called fifth column threats, according to racist government officials wanting them removed by one means or other. If not stopped, perhaps  a "final solution" policy one day will be adopted. Currently, a slow-motion one's followed, especially in Gaza.

Palestinians and regional states are menaced by Israeli belligerence. The threat's too great to ignore. In a population of about 5.8 million Jews, over a million are active or reserve combatants. They're equipped with state-of-the art weapons, including a powerful nuclear arsenal and long-range delivery systems. Moreover, partnered with Washington, Israel literally gets away with murder.

Its child recruitment program indoctrinates youths to be warriors. It also teaches them to view Arabs and, of course, Iranians as existential threats. Throughout the country and Occupied Palestine, soldiers are everywhere, including in population centers and Jewish classrooms.

Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians encounter them daily. With exceptions, conscription is mandatory at age 18. Under-age youths may enlist. Child recruitment is done informally. Women serve like men. All citizens and permanent residents are affected, except Arabs. They may volunteer but aren't drafted.

Classroom education teaches children to view military service as "noble and worthy." At a very early age, they're brainwashed to accept militarism and belligerence as normal and necessary for Israel's survival.

Soldiers are present in schools and classrooms. Teachers, especially principals, are retired military officers. Photos of fallen heros adorn walls. Field trips for all ages visit military memorials on former battlegrounds.

Beginning in kindergarten, textbooks and classroom instruction teach militarism. High schools have mandatory "preparation for the IDF" programs. They include training and indoctrination to be warriors. Military heros and conquests are glorified. Arabs are vilified.

Besides school, children are exposed in ceremonies, commemorations, speeches, military base field trips, and holiday celebrations of battles between "us" and "bad guys." No guessing which ones. As a result, they're imbued to accept militarism and war as natural.

When called to wage it, they're ready. They're taught to accept military service as a right of passage in preparation for adulthood. An entire population is brainwashed to fight.

Some grow up believing they're obligated to treat Palestinians violently, including harassing them, beating them, breaking into their homes, destroying their property, and at times killing them.

Defending Israel's all that matters. Without threats, they're invented. Heightened fear's maintained. Young minds are easiest to convince, especially with constant repetition.

Israelis are conditioned to accept confrontational violence as natural. American youths aren't indoctrinated the same way. More subtle methods include scoundrel journalism and political Washington heightening fear, vilifying enemies, and cheerleading US wars.

Although young men don't face conscription, enough recruits are enlisted to pursue endless imperial wars. Promises rarely kept induce them to put themselves in harm's way. Millions become permanently scared. Others replace them for employment when jobs are hard to find and perhaps believing they're doing the right thing.

Few understand that lies define all wars. Noble aims disappear when exposed. Alleged enemies don't exist so they're invented. America's war machine rampages ruthlessly without end. So does Israel's.

Their crimes of war and against humanity harm millions. Their rogue agendas assure eventual self-destruction. What can't go on forever, won't. It's just a matter of time, and imagine a world without menaces this great.

It's coming unless they destroy it in the interim. It's no idle threat given out-of-control policies each pursues. Stopping them is job one! Everyone must get involved. Indifference isn't an option.

Only sustained activism works. It's high time it busted out all over. Our very survival's at stake.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

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