Plessner Chronicle Blog

And if you believe that a McCane presidency will be able to reduce our military commitments around the world or significantly improve our relations with friendly nations you may be in for a whole bunch of disappointments.

A new McCane presidency will be confronted with dozens of neo-conservative war hawks planted in the White House, the Defense and State Departments. They are avid in seeing America increase and extend its imperial footprint around the globe and especially in the oil rich Middle East.

A new administration — McCane or Obama — will not be able to replace those operatives fast enough to completely stop them from advancing the disastrous initiative they created in the Bush administration.

And some of those people, because they are vital to daily operations or because they have powerful benefactors, will inevitably be allowed to stay on to “insure a smooth transition”. Its how the system works.

Then there are the American oil companies and their partners in the Arab world; Dick Cheney and his buddies who want to secure control over Iraq’s oil exports.

The Bush administration’s negotiations to secure 50 permanent American bases in Iraq is intended to secure that source of supply and profits for American companies.

If George W. Bush is able to create a document that our Congress might approve, then he will have established generations-long American imperialism and the neo-conservatives will have achieved their original goal. Then the United States will be burdened with running an imperial empire to support international corporations, and American military men and women will continue to die unnecessarily for generations.

But there’s more. The oil industry will be followed by other corporations eager to keep the war machine alive. John McCane can talk about being a maverick but he is going to need money — lots of money — to finance his campaign. And he will take it gladly from all sorts of corporations that have an interest in providing military supplies, hardware, security services in war zones, along our borders and elsewhere.

There are also the research and development companies at work on new military hardware, much of it untested and outdated even before it is finally designed.

Although many of those programs have bloated budgets, questionable value and poor management, you can be sure that lobbyists and Members of Congress who want Federal money spent in their districts will pressure a McCane administration to show its gratitude to the people who helped finance his campaign.

And when it comes to reducing our troop strength in Iraq or withdrawing entirely, which will never happen in a Republican administration, a President John McCane would be acting against everything his party and he, through his entire adult life, has stood for.

And that ain’t gonna happen!

(You can comment on Gerald Plessner’s comments at his BLOG at geraldplessner.com.)

Of course it helped that I went through college in the same dorm with some of them — veterans of the Korean War, mostly — and a rowdy and randy bunch of characters they were! I was just a kid out of high school and they were men of the world who told great stories and raised a little good-natured Hell!

But as I grew older and formed the political outlook I have today, I realized how profoundly wise the G. I. Bill really was.

Not only did it give deserving ordinary Americans a chance to climb up the ladder to economic success and a better life. It also gave our country a burst of knowledge, intellect, creativity and initiative that led to things like computers, Silicon Valley, the Space Age, today’s quality of life, great new literature and art and just about everything good(and some of it questionable), that the United States has given to the world over the last 50 years!

And it did all that by helping every kind of American, male or female, black, white or brown, urban or rural, rich or poor.

Some of that money was wasted and there was fraud in some education that wasn’t delivered, but overall I still believe that the G. I. Bill was the best social legislation in history!

And that’s probably why George W. Bush(and John McCain) are opposed to it.

They say they are concerned that making a free college education so attractive will cause young people in our military to not re-enlist and that’s probably right.

But that’s like admitting it will discourage young people in the military from aspiring to a better life and that’s wrong!

(If you think I’m being racist or classist just look at the next list of Americans lost in Iraq and count how many come from small towns or count how many Senators or Congressional Representatives have children in the military.)

We must begin to understand one truth about our current national policy and how it impacts upon other issues.

The war on Iraq, and many other military activities are acts of imperialism and imperialistic states need professional rather than citizen militaries. A professional military will, of necessity, require large numbers of younger, less educated, lower class recruits.

Giving those recruits the chance to secure advanced education and move back to civilian life will make it much more difficult to maintain a professional military.

And that’s why you shouldn’t be surprised by the president’s position. I won’t be surprised by conservatives who will agree with him.