http://www.worldpsychology.net/World%20Psychology/VirtualPsyFiles/nova_pag1.htm

The Terrorism of the Military

When it comes to thinking about the militaries potential for terrorism our imaginations are truly staggered. For instance, when World War II ended some 50 million people were left dead and some 10 million people were maimed and left disabled for life. In World War I, in one battle alone, the battle of Verdun, almost a million young men lost their lives. This was all brought about by the military whose purpose, by its very nature, is not to retain peace but to promote war. It is not to preserve our life and our environment but, on the contrary, to destroy. The military may be viewed as an institution that is legally commissioned by a legitimate government to commit atrocious crimes against humanity. They are professional organizations sanctioned to terrorize on command.

The current U.S. military budget is $396 billion, and it's expanding rapidly. That's roughly $5000 for every household in the U.S. But what's more relevant is how it stacks up relative to other countries in the world with militaries. The next largest military budgets: Russia $60 billion; China $42 billion; Japan $40.4 billion; United Kingdom $34 billion; Saudi Arabia $27.2; France $25.3 billion; Germany $21 billion; Brazil $17.9 billion; India $15.6 billion; Italy $15.5 billion; South Korea $11.8 billion; Iran $9 billion; Israel $9 billion; Taiwan $8.2 billion. The United States, with only four percent of the world's population, is spending more than the other 96 percent. It is a glaring fact that the US is spending significantly more than the combined budgets of every other country in the world and is prepared to spend much more if necessary as the recent increases suggest. 

The terrorism of the military cannot be measured strictly by the number of people it is able to kill. The first terror of the military is seen in the hundreds of billions of dollars, that could go into advancing the quality of life on the planet, goes instead into to the weapons industry that is a very large lucrative business controlled by a very select group of very powerful men. Funding for international family planning, sufficient to insure that everyone in the Third World has access to family planning services would involve, for instance only about $10 billion/year, peanuts relative to the First World's military budget. Such family planning has already been proven to pull the pressure off of world population explosion and thus works powerfully to reduce human suffering, pain and disease. Yet people, especially in Washington, fight against this funding using fanatic religious abortion politics as reason, preferring mass instruments of human destruction to humane help with family planning and the general education of women, which goes very far in improving their lot in life.

"Through manipulation and tactics of fear, the weapons industry controls governments draining them mercilessly from their financial resources."

- Charles Mercieca, Ph.D.

The weapons industry, according to Mercieca, which claims it exists to save and protect the lives of people, is instead "a main source of people's suffering, a financial burden on entire nations, a cause to numerous regional conflicts, and the greatest threat to our environment." The weapons industry is known to be one of the biggest producers of toxic waste contributing, more than any other single industry, to the destruction of our ecological system.

"If we were to judge a tree by the fruit it gives, then the weapons industry must be viewed as the most satanic and vicious device that ever existed in human history." 

- Charles Mercieca, Ph.D.   

Mercieca, President of the International Association of Educators for World Peace and Professor at Alabama A&M University said, "There has never been one nation in history that had a big military without having people, at the same time, suffering from every kind of deprivation, like lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of adequate nutrition, you name it. This applies to quite a few millions of people in the United States today where more people are being shot and killed every year than in all of the countries of the world combined." It's not just about social spending Vs military, or the butter Vs guns paradigm, it's about attention, mental resources, direction, and unfortunately power concentrated again in the hands of the few.

People of all nations are indoctrinated from early age to view their militaries will pride. Feelings of hope, prosperity, stability and peace are also commonly linked to identification with ones military history or prowess. No differently then the people in Russia and in other communist countries which were once indoctrinated to view communism in a positive light, military nationalism runs deep in the blood of many people from many different imperial or formally imperial countries.

Mercieca concludes that we "need to follow the footsteps not of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, who believed their security lied in a strong military, but in the philosophy of Mother Teresa of Calcutta who proved that we can conquer the world through our love, dedication, and service to the poor. And that it is possible to find strength not in military weapons but in spirituality." Unfortunately the people in power in America do not feel this way and they have the backing of a great percentage of the American people.

There has never been a war machine like the one that now exists in America and it has outclassed all other war machines who just cannot keep up with the spending that a modern technologically driven army requires today. It has its troops flung afar around the world, in 100 countries it is estimated, and now it is officially at war with terrorists and is about to be engaged in war against Saddam. And at the end of 2002 the Bush administration announced that it is going ahead with a missile defense system even though the missiles have not proven to be effective. Fear and war, insecurity and deprivation of positive alternatives represent the initial level of military terrorism to society.

The School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, which has trained about 60,000 Latin American police and soldiers, represents another more hidden level of military terrorism. It's well known that among the techniques recommended for use against insurgents in its manuals are blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of the suspect's relatives. The hidden secret wars, that were exposed for instance in the scandal with the Contra rebels in Nicaraguan affair only highlights a vast military and CIA funded type of military action that can only be called and defined as terrorist. From prisoners hung by the arms until their muscles rip, raw voltage applied to genitalia, suspects slowly dipped in vats of acid. When the jailers tire of tormenting the body they go after the soul. They will bring in a wife or daughter and rape her again and again before your eyes. They will bring in your little girl and methodically crush the bones in her feet. They will behead a mother in front of her children. If one does not consider these kinds of activities as terrorist one should visit their local doctor. Just because 'official' governmental organizations have often sponsored them changes nothing.

Obviously there are many different ways to wage war, and when the subtler and easily kept secret ways fail overt direct military champagnes become options. With a 300 billion dollar a year (peace time) war machine primed and pumped, and ready to go to 400 billion in war time, and with all of this under the control of a man of doubtful moral and psychological character, it is no joke when Doug Casey says, "I've got a feeling what's brewing is the biggest thing since at least World War II. The historical clock looks to me like it's at about 1936. Straws in the wind are starting to signal a brewing hurricane." What was Einstein talking about when he said, "Poor America, the Apocalyptic rider is coming." It sounds like that should read today poor world instead of poor America yet many in America are both worried and scared as to what is already happening there. If this is just the beginning of a great time of darkness, can anyone actually imagine what it will be like in the middle or after the end?

It was a miracle that we got through the cold war without any atomic exchanges, is it possible that humanity could squeeze through a second major miracle during the following decade? The World is at war, it is just beginning but it comes at the end of a long string of wars that have been fought for one reason or another throughout history. And even if beyond all odds atomic weapons of mass destruction are never ever used again we have seen how airplanes, chemical and biological weapons, and even conventional bombs can be used in their place. It is always a sad and scary time, the beginning of world wars, when madmen are set loose to affect their agendas on the world stage. Americans are again ready to make war not love and of course they have their excuses. New York gave that to them but as we will say many times, violence as a response to terrorism is the worst way to go. It is unlikely that our leaders will learn this lesson even though there are plenty of historical and present world events that suggest strongly that this is true.

Doug Casey continued with, "Americans have often wondered where the Germans were able to recruit all the people who staffed the Gestapo and the SS. The fact is, however, that sociopaths, sociopath sympathizers, the weak-kneed, and the easily-led form a standard distribution across all societies, in all times. We have just as many in America now as the Germans did in the 1930s" and this means that there are people who will actually become happy or pleased with the way things are turning out. Dark times are good times for dark people yet we wonder why we have come again to this historic point. History repeats itself endlessly because we do not learn our vital lessons and because we as a race do not change and do not confront what is wrong with us.

Most of us were deeply shocked on September 11th, and most of us agreed that if we had seen it in a movie we would have thought it most fantastic and overdone. It was beyond even the 'official' imagination of the intelligence community though there were warnings and even though the World Trade Center had been attacked and damaged before. Never have there been so many people on the planet and never has their been so much military muscle. The potential for destruction is incalculable. When we see what two men did in Washington DC with a single gun, how they were able to kill over a dozen people and terrorize and entire city for three weeks, it might be possible to conceptualize this potential if the worlds war machines were ever set fully or even partially loose.