Michael Klare discusses the concept of 'permanent US military supremacy', and how it leads to tension with China over energy: "This outlook was first expressed in 1992 in the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years 1994-99, a master blueprint for US dominance in the post-cold war era."

This is thousand-year-reich stuff, at the very time when the whole world can see US hegemonic ambitions being punctured in Iraq. Nevertheless, the attitudes continue and the dangers are real, simply because the Pentagon system exists. The Pentagon is a corrupting influence on US politics through the mere fact of its existence. If it exists, it becomes a tool of policy, or as the saying goes: "if you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail"; or, as then Secretary of State Madelaine Albright remarked to Colin Powell, "What's the point in having this superb military you are always talking about if we can't use it?" Powell's response is equally illuminating, "I thought I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board." But for imperialists, militarists and warmongers, toy soldiers on a gameboard (or 'cannon fodder' in the more brutal and prosaic term) is exactly what they are, as Bush & Cheney have demonstrated for the umpteenth time in history.

And let's not forget Kissinger's classic formulation "military men [are] "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy."

Pepe Escobar discusses 'the conquest of Southwest Asia' (sorry, that should be the 'war on terror' or the 'fight for democracy') and the practically uniform negativity with which the aggression is regarded in the Middle East, a fact still not properly appreciated in the Anglo countries, no doubt due to the relentless barrage of propaganda from the corporate media.

Michael Klare discusses the concept of 'permanent US military supremacy', and how it leads to tension with China over energy: "This outlook was first expressed in 1992 in the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) for fiscal years 1994-99, a master blueprint for US dominance in the post-cold war era."

This is thousand-year-reich stuff, at the very time when the whole world can see US hegemonic ambitions being punctured in Iraq. Nevertheless, the attitudes continue and the dangers are real, simply because the Pentagon system exists. The Pentagon is a corrupting influence on US politics through the mere fact of its existence. If it exists, it becomes a tool of policy, or as the saying goes: "if you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail"; or, as then Secretary of State Madelaine Albright remarked to Colin Powell, "What's the point in having this superb military you are always talking about if we can't use it?" Powell's response is equally illuminating, "I thought I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board." But for imperialists, militarists and warmongers, toy soldiers on a gameboard (or 'cannon fodder' in the more brutal and prosaic term) is exactly what they are, as Bush & Cheney have demonstrated for the umpteenth time in history.

And let's not forget Kissinger's classic formulation "military men [are] "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy."

Pepe Escobar discusses 'the conquest of Southwest Asia' (sorry, that should be the 'war on terror' or the 'fight for democracy') and the practically uniform negativity with which the aggression is regarded in the Middle East, a fact still not properly appreciated in the Anglo countries, no doubt due to the relentless barrage of propaganda from the corporate media.