Blowback As We Begin This Term Paper

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Until that is corrected, we should probably stop talking about "democracy" and "human rights."

His premise is that the power and autonomy of the defense establishment has increased in collusion with defense contractors. He points to the elimination of the draft as a contributing factor, calling the armed forces "mercenaries" and proposes that service in the military is the obligation of all citizens.

He points to a number of recent incidents by the military as a sign that it has, lost its relationship to the country because service in it is no longer an obligation of citizenship. Our military operates the biggest arms sales operation on earth; it rapes girls, women and schoolchildren in Okinawa; it cuts ski-lift cables in Italy, killing twenty vacationers, and dismisses what its insubordinate pilots have done as a "training accident"; it allows its nuclear attack submarines to be used for joy rides for wealthy civilian supporters and then covers up the negligence that caused the sinking of a Japanese high school training ship; it propagandizes the nation with Hollywood films glorifying military service (Pearl Harbor); and it manipulates the political process to get more carrier task forces, antimissile missiles, nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and other expensive gadgets for which we have no conceivable use.

He maintains that, as the size and prominence of the forces rise over time, the nation is more likely to use force in situations when other means of foreign policy would be more appropriate.

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Johnson makes some interesting points, and certainly there is ample evidence that blowback does exist to some extent. However, his solution to remove U.S. influence from obligations around the world, seem somewhat simplistic. Under his logic, he would have this country withdraw support from long-time ally Israel. The problem in the Middle East may not be that the U.S. has projected too much influence in that region, but rather that we have failed to be engaged enough with the parties. Certainly support for the only democratic state in that region should be considered appropriate.

In writing about the attacks on the World Trade Center, Johnson says, "one man's terrorist is, of course, another man's freedom fighter, and what U.S. officials denounce as unprovoked terrorist attacks on its innocent citizens are often meant as retaliation for previous American imperial actions." He attempts to justify the actions of the terrorists on 9-11 by saying that they were responding in the only way that they could against overwhelming U.S. military superiority. "The United States deploys such overwhelming military force globally that for its militarized opponents only an "asymmetric strategy," in the jargon of the Pentagon, has any chance of success." He points out that the attacks were not against America, but against American foreign policy, a distinction that the victims of 9-11 are unlikely to see......

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