Category: Economy and war

Give peace a chance: Don’t believe the war profiteers, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm
Vereshchagin’s painting The Apotheosis of War (1871) came to be admired as one of the earliest artistic expressions of pacifism – Public Domain

by Roy Eidelson

My research shows that the one percenters’ manipulative messages—what I call “mind games”—target five concerns that dominate our daily lives: namely, issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. These are the psychological templates we use to make sense of the world around us. Each is associated with a key question we ask ourselves regularly: Are we safe? Are we being treated fairly? Who should we trust? Are we good enough? And, can we control what happens to us? And it’s no coincidence that each is also linked to a powerful emotion that can be hard to control: fear, anger, suspicion, pride, and despair, respectively.

War profiteers prey on these five concerns with two simple goals in mind. First, they aim to create and maintain an American public that either embraces or at least accepts an endless war mentality. And second, they use these mind games to marginalize and disempower anti-war voices. For each of these five concerns, I’d like to provide two examples of the mind games I’m talking about, and then discuss how we can counter them.

Let’s start with vulnerability. Whether as quickly passing thoughts or haunting worries, we tend to wonder if the people we care about are in harm’s way, and if there might be danger on the horizon. Right or wrong, our judgments on these matters go a long way in determining the choices we make and the actions we take. Our focus on vulnerability isn’t surprising. It’s only when we think we’re safe that we comfortably turn our attention to other things. Unfortunately, however, we’re not very good at assessing risks or the effectiveness of potential responses to them. That’s why psychological appeals targeting these vulnerability concerns are a core element of the war machine’s propaganda arsenal.

“It’s A Dangerous World” is one vulnerability mind game that war profiteers regularly use to build public support for their greed-driven activities. They argue that their actions are necessary in order to keep everyone safe from ominous threats. They exaggerate or entirely fabricate these dangers—whether they’re talking about dominoes falling to the Red Menace in Southeast Asia, or the Axis of Evil and mushroom clouds over U.S. cities, or anti-war protestors purportedly posing a threat to our national security. They know that we’re soft targets for such psychological tactics because, in our desire to avoid being unprepared when danger strikes, we’re quick to imagine catastrophic outcomes no matter how unlikely they may be. That’s why we can be easy prey when they urge us to fall in line, comply with their instructions, and perhaps relinquish our civil rights as well.

At the same time, war machine representatives often turn to a second vulnerability mind game—“Change Is Dangerous”—when they’re trying to marginalize their critics. Here, when a proposed reform would hamper their ambitions, they mislead us by insisting that these changes will place everyone in greater jeopardy—whether the proposal is about reducing our staggering 800 overseas military bases; or withdrawing troops from Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq; or cutting our enormous defense budget. This mind game often works because of what psychologists call “status quo bias.” That is, we generally prefer to keep things the way they are—even if they’re not particularly good—rather than face the uncertainty of less familiar options, even if those other alternatives are exactly what’s needed to make the world a safer place. But, of course, our welfare is not the most pressing issue as far as the war profiteers are concerned.

Let’s turn now to injustice, the second core concern. Cases of real or perceived mistreatment frequently stir anger and resentment, as well as an urge to right wrongs and bring accountability to those who are responsible. That can all be very good. But our perceptions about what’s just and what’s not are imperfect. This makes us potential easy targets for manipulation by those who have a selfish interest in shaping our views of right and wrong to their advantage—and it’s exactly what representatives of the war machine work hard to do.

For example, “We’re Fighting Injustice” is one of the war profiteers’ favorite injustice mind games for generating public support for endless wars. Here, they insist that their actions reflect an abiding commitment to combating wrongdoing—whether they’re falsely arguing that Iran has engaged in unprovoked hostility; or that Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, who exposed U.S. war crimes, deserve punishment for treason; or that government surveillance and disruption of anti-war groups are necessary responses to purported unlawful activity. This mind game is designed to misappropriate and misdirect our sense of outrage over injustice. It takes advantage of our psychological tendency to believe that the world is just, and to therefore assume that those who have obtained positions of power are fair-minded rather than driven by craven self-interest—even though their actions so often harm rather than help the prospects for peace.

Simultaneously, “We’re the Victims” is a second injustice mind game, and it’s used to marginalize critics. When their policies or actions are condemned, representatives of the war machine brazenly complain of being mistreated themselves. So, for example, the Pentagon expressed outrage that the Abu Ghraib torture photos were disseminated without its permission; the White House blusters that the International Criminal Court has a vendetta against innocent American soldiers, or so they say; and bomb-making companies gripe that they shouldn’t be criticized for selling weapons to overseas dictators since our government has authorized the sales—as if that somehow makes it the right thing to do. Claims like these are designed to encourage uncertainty and disagreement among the public over issues of right and wrong, and victim and perpetrator. When this turning of the tables is successful, our concern is directed away from those who actually suffer from our endless wars.

Note from Kathie MM: Tune in Wednesday for Part 3.

Give peace a chance: Don’t believe the war profiteers

Posted on by kathiemm
Vereshchagin’s painting The Apotheosis of War (1871) came to be admired as one of the earliest artistic expressions of pacifism – Public Domain

by Roy Eidelson

Last month I had the opportunity to share some thoughts at a Divest Philly from the War Machine event, hosted by Wooden Shoe Books and sponsored by World Beyond War, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and other anti-war groups. Below are my remarks, slightly edited for clarity. My thanks to everyone involved. 

In late May, Vice President Mike Pence was the commencement speaker at West Point. In part, he told the graduating cadets this: “It is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life. You will lead soldiers in combat. It will happen…And when that day comes, I know you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will fight, and you will win. The American people expect nothing less.”

What Pence didn’t mention that day is why he could be so sure that this will come to pass. Or who the primary beneficiaries will be, if or when it does. Because the winners won’t be the American people, who see their taxes go to missiles instead of healthcare and education. Nor will they be the soldiers themselves—some of whom will return in flag-draped caskets while many more sustain life-altering physical and psychological injuries. The winners also won’t be the citizens of other countries who experience death and displacement on a horrific scale from our awesome military might. And our planet’s now-fragile climate won’t come out on top either, since the Pentagon is the single largest oil consumer in the world.

No, the spoils will go to our massive and multifaceted war machine. The war machine is comprised of companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, among others, that make billions of dollars each year from war, war preparations, and arms sales. In fact, the U.S. government pays Lockheed alone more each year than it provides in funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Labor Department, and the Interior Department combined. The war machine also includes the CEOs of these defense contractors, who personally take in tens of millions of dollars annually, and the many politicians in Washington who help secure their jobs by collectively accepting millions of dollars in contributions from the defense industry—roughly evenly split between both major parties. And let’s not forget the retired politicians and retired military officers, who travel the pot-of-gold pipeline to become highly paid board members and spokespersons for these same companies.

Vice-President Pence also didn’t mention to the cadets that the U.S. military budget today exceeds that of the next seven largest countries combined—an enthusiastic display of Congressional bipartisanship at its very worst. Nor did he note that we’re the largest international seller of major weapons in the world, with ongoing efforts to promote even bigger markets for U.S. arms companies in countries run by ruthless, repressive autocrats. That’s how it came to pass last August, for example, that Saudi Arabia used an expensive Lockheed laser-guided bomb to blow up a bus in Yemen, killing 40 young boys who were on a school trip.

Given these realities, I’d like to offer my perspective—as a psychologist—on a question that has never really been more timely: How is it that the war profiteers, card-carrying members of the so-called 1%, continue to thrive despite all the harm and misery they cause for so many? We know that the 1%—the self-interested very rich and powerful—set the priorities of many of our elected officials. We also know that they exert considerable influence over the mainstream media regarding which narratives are promoted and which are obscured. But in my own work, what’s most important—and what too often goes unrecognized—are the propaganda strategies they use to prevent us from realizing what’s gone wrong, who’s to blame, and how we can make things better. And nowhere is this more apparent or more consequential than when it comes to the one-percenters who run our war machine. In my next three posts, I describe these strategies.

US Military Is a Bigger Polluter than As Many As 140 Countries – Shrinking This War Machine Is a Must

Posted on by kathiemm
San Francisco Youth Climate Strike – March 15, 2019. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

By Benjamin Neimark, Oliver Belcher and Patrick Bigger – The Conversation

24 Jun 2019 – The US military’s carbon bootprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ships, trucks and cargo planes to supply its operations with everything from bombs to humanitarian aid and hydrocarbon fuels. Our new study calculated the contribution of this vast infrastructure to climate change.

Greenhouse gas emission accounting usually focuses on how much energy and fuel civilians use. But recent work, including our own, shows that the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal.

In 2017, the US military bought about 269,230 barrels of oil a day and emitted more than 25,000 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide by burning those fuels. The US Air Force purchased US$4.9 billion worth of fuel, and the navy US$2.8 billion, followed by the army at US$947m and the Marines at US$36m.

It’s no coincidence that US military emissions tend to be overlooked in climate change studies. It’s very difficult to get consistent data from the Pentagon and across US government departments. In fact, the United States insisted on an exemption for reporting military emissions in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This loophole was closed by the Paris Accord, but with the Trump administration due to withdraw from the accord in 2020, this gap will will return.

Our study is based on data retrieved from multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to the US Defense Logistics Agency, the massive bureaucratic agency tasked with managing the US military’s supply chains, including its hydrocarbon fuel purchases and distribution.

The US military has long understood that it isn’t immune from the potential consequences of climate change – recognising it as a “threat multiplier” that can exacerbate other risks. Many, though not all, military bases have been preparing for climate change impacts like sea level rise. Nor has the military ignored its own contribution to the problem. As we have previously shown, the military has invested in developing alternative energy sources like biofuels, but these comprise only a tiny fraction of spending on fuels.

The American military’s climate policy remains contradictory. There have been attempts to “green” aspects of its operations by increasing renewable electricity generation on bases, but it remains the single largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons in the world. It has also locked itself into hydrocarbon-based weapons systems for years to come, by depending on existing aircraft and warships for open-ended operations.

Not green, but less, military

Climate change has become a hot-button topic on the campaign trail for the 2020 presidential election. Leading Democratic candidates, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, and members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling for major climate initiatives like the Green New Deal. For any of that to be effective, the US military’s carbon bootprint must be addressed in domestic policy and international climate treaties.

Our study shows that action on climate change demands shuttering vast sections of the military machine. There are few activities on Earth as environmentally catastrophic as waging war. Significant reductions to the Pentagon’s budget and shrinking its capacity to wage war would cause a huge drop in demand from the biggest consumer of liquid fuels in the world.

It does no good tinkering around the edges of the war machine’s environmental impact. The money spent procuring and distributing fuel across the US empire could instead be spent as a peace dividend, helping to fund a Green New Deal in whatever form it might take. There are no shortage of policy priorities that could use a funding bump. Any of these options would be better than fuelling one of the largest military forces in history.

– Benjamin Neimark – Senior Lecturer, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University
– Oliver Belcher – Assistant Professor of Geography, Durham University
– Patrick Bigger – Lecturer of Human Geography, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University

Article by Neimark, Belcher, and Bigger is from Transcend Media Services July 2, 2019; originally published on theconversation.com July 1, 2019. Creative Commons License.

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Note from Kathie MM: Pegean says UGH! Did you hear about the military extravaganza in Washington DC yesterday? What did that do for the environment? What did it do for the nation’s image? It sure costs a lot of taxpayer dollars to portray the country as the world’s greatest bully! While you’re here, click this link for some of the most important photos you’ve ever seen.

Commentary is by Kathie MM and Pegean.

The Big Lie

Posted on by kathiemm

By Arsen Gourjian

End US military wars and US drug wars. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Jeff Davis Show

The big lie peddled by our leaders at the beginning of this millennium was that the military had to go into Iraq because Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Although the rationale for military intervention was based on inconclusive reports, the lie was still sold to the public. The cartoon Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire, published on Engaging Peace April 15, 2019, brilliantly illustrates the tactics that the government used to sell that lie.

Even prior to September 11, 2001, the military-industrial complex did a rather good job of drumming up public support for the invasion of Iraq. However, the level of that support reached an apex following the September 11 attacks. In fact, according to a Gallup poll conducted at the time, the majority of surveyed individuals falsely believed that Iraq was responsible for those attacks. It is my firm belief that this was no accident. It seems that the government’s propaganda machine was working overtime to convince the public that it really was Iraq that was responsible. Perhaps this was done to exploit Iraq’s strategically advantageous geographic location, or perhaps the U.S. had long felt that it was time for Saddam to go because they could no longer exert enough influence over him. Either way, they undoubtedly felt that it was the right moment to push for war, given the public outrage over 9/11.

The devastating destabilization resulting from the power vacuum created in Iraq is still being felt to this day. It is quite unfortunate, but the U.S. has long been having a direct impact on the instability that some countries face. For instance, I strongly believe that many Mexican migrants are fleeing a never-ending war that is not often spoken about anymore — the “War on Drugs.” It is, in fact, the same “War on Drugs” that was used to justify the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. This war, propagated by the U.S., has fueled the rise of ruthlessly violent cartels, who have caused political corruption, violence, and instability in Mexico. This has led some Mexican citizens to seek refuge in the United States.

I am very understanding of their plight and believe that people such as this should be treated as refugees by our government. However, I also feel that a good number of those people would have liked to stay in Mexico, but could not, in large part due to the havoc wreaked by the cartels running their towns. Yet, I firmly believe that the power to wreak such havoc is mandated to the cartels as a result of the “War on Drugs.” As with Alcohol Prohibition in the first half of the twentieth century, it has created an increasingly lucrative black market, with profit margins (as well as substance use) actually increasing over time.

As a strong proponent of civil liberties, I believe that the government has long been abusing their powers by perpetuating the “War on Drugs,” leaving countless casualties in their wake. A lot of politicians talk about accepting migrants as refugees, but very few talk about the uncomfortable fact that oftentimes, our government is creating refugees by destabilizing nations. Sadly, it appears that this has been the case in both Latin America and Iraq.

Note from Kathie MM: Please check out the cartoon that inspired Arsen to write this post.

Arsen Gourjian earned a master’s degree in Psychology from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Worcester State University. He currently works as a Research Psychologist at The Fireside Center: Learning & Teaching International, a Massachusetts based clinic for psychological and educational services. He is also working towards his graduate degree in Applied Behavior Analysis at Regis College, with aspirations of becoming a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. In addition to Psychology, Arsen’s academic and research interests include Criminology, History, and Geopolitics.