America’s military speak of D- Day as the day when a major military action is to be started. The D-Day most familiar to Americans happened over 70 years ago when the Western Allies recklessly invaded Normandy during WWII. Ike’s troops wading through the shore off of Omaha Beach were sitting ducks for the waiting Germans, but enough managed to get through and continue on into the heart of Germany, getting there before Russia did, which was the political intent of the invasion. Eisenhower, in overruling his British counterpart, who had wanted to launch the operation by crossing the English Channel, sacrificed some 2500 men for an essentially non-military objective.
America’s regimes have always had ulterior motives for their militaristic imperialism that has led over the course of her history to the deaths and sufferings of millions, with one-half or more on average being noncombatant fatalities. [1] Today, most of the world’s inhabitants see America as the greatest threat to world peace. [2]
America is paying a heavy price to indulge her addiction to warring with a much heavier price yet to come unless and until she starts making friends instead of enemies on foreign soil. I call that heavier price “a different D-Day.” It means “doomsday,” and it will very likely show itself in the decades to come in one or more of these different forms; a nation beyond a failed state, armed revolution, escalating blowbacks, Armageddon, and other global calamities. They are not necessarily sequential. Some or all of them might happen at about the same time. Let’s briefly look into the future at each of them.
Failed State and Beyond
The NGO, Fund for Peace (FFP), regularly ranks the nations of the world on its “failed state index.” [3] Over 100 nations are put into the “alert” and “warning” categories. That the U.S. is not among them is to be expected since its biggest funders are the U.S. federal government, corporations, and foundations.
Putting the FFP’s list aside, I believe there is ample evidence summarized in the list of “sadtistic” below to suggest that America is indeed a failed state or close to becoming one.
America Today
” Corpocracy instead of democracy
” Endless wars and other military interventions
” Excessive deterioration of public infrastructures
” Expelled from the U.N. Human Rights Commission
” Frequent domestic gun violence and fatalities
” Government’s disregard for international accords/treaties
” Government’s failure to promote the common welfare
” Government’s inhibition of dissent
” Government lawlessness and unaccountability
” Government’s surveillance of all citizens
” Government’s use of torture
” Huge income inequality
” High unemployment rate
” High rate of poverty
” Large population of homeless
” Large prison population
” Low life expectancy
” Militarized police
” Millions of financial hardships from medical bills
” Six deaths a day from lack of health insurance
” Privatization of public services
_____________________________________________
Any one of those conditions would move America closer to becoming a failed state. Taken together they ought to put America there now. What waits beyond it could be an armed revolution.
?
Armed Revolution
Every generation needs a new revolution.
—Thomas Jefferson
Whether America’s second warrior-in-chief meant a real revolution like the bloody first one that defeated the British is unclear. America had to wait several generations before waging her second, very deadly revolution, the Civil War.
All of the conditions listed exist today. They are not conjectures about what might happen in the future. What might happen is the very real possibility that if her course is not reversed America may later this century experience widespread public unrest and violence that precipitates an armed revolution (just think of the number of gun carrying citizens in America). If it were to happen it would turn into a bloodbath with thousands of the regime’s tanks in the streets, drones overhead, storm troopers, and thuggish, militarized police. The few protestors’ deaths during the Vietnam War would be multiplied by the millions.
The revolution would probably be followed by a dictatorship, which in turn would eventually deteriorate into a state of dystopia and ultimate collapse. That has happened to a few nation states in the history of civilization and there is no guarantee it won’t happen to America.
External, Escalating Blowbacks
America was born in the womb of war
Will she die in its arms
—The author
There are two sources of blowbacks, or retaliatory actions, one internal involving citizens against their own government, as in an armed revolution, and the other external involving actions against a nation by sources outside of it. Both sources produce blowbacks varying in size, intensity, and harm done. By “escalating blowbacks” I mean repeated retaliations against the same target(s) that increase in size, intensity, and harm done.
If you agree with the view that the U.S. provoked Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor then that “day in infamy” was the most monumental blowback on America ever carried out by another nation—so far. More external blowbacks were to follow years later, some on American soil, some on Americans in foreign countries: the Beirut barracks bombings in 1983, the 1988 bombing of PAA Flight 103 over Lockerbie; the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996; the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; the “9/11” attack; the Baltimore marathon bombing in 2013.
Unless and until America’s warring habit is kicked more blowbacks are inevitable. Common sense tells us that. It’s simply a form of retributive justice, “an eye for an eye,” or in today’s world, a mass of bodies for a mass of bodies.” Here’s what Pierre Sprey, a former Pentagon official and fighter aircraft designer had to say about the matter: “—what happens on the ground is for every one of those impacts [drone strikes] you get five or ten times as many recruits for the Taliban as you’ve eliminated. [4]
(CONTINUED/ READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE)
Submitters Bio:
I am a retired (1995)organizational psychologist who has since concentrated on the subjects of the collusion between government and corporations and matters of war and peace. I have just finished writing my final book (final because I am staring 80 in the face), tentatively titled America’s Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying. If those two chronic habits, started when America started, aren’t broken they spell eventual doomsday.
thebigpicturereport ™ 