We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, April 30, 2011

A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from Salon.
 The nomination of Petraeus doesn't change much; it merely reflects how Washington is run. That George Bush's favorite war-commanding General -- who advocated for and oversaw the Surge in Iraq -- is also Barack Obama's favorite war-commanding General, and that Obama is now appointing him to run a nominally civilian agency that has been converted into an "increasingly militarized" arm of the American war-fighting state, says all one needs to know about the fully bipartisan militarization of American policy. There's little functional difference between running America's multiple wars as a General and running them as CIA Director because American institutions in the National Security State are all devoted to the same overarching cause: Endless War.
I think that the appointment of Gen. Petraeus as CIA director is further evidence of imperial influences exerting more control of the US government and its Empire. 

In contrast to an intelligence operation, the CIA has, because of its secretive nature, always functioned primarily as a means of using military force to enforce the imperial policies of the ruling class. It was always employed whenever such policies and actions were illegal, or were immoral and could not be justified to the American public, and/or likely would not be sanctioned by official government institutions. 

The fact that this appointment has raised so little controversy is because the US ruling class, more than ever, prefers the use of force without having to cater to public opinion or go through the bother of getting government approval in conducting foreign policy. I think that this is more evidence that the governing capitalist class has shifted further toward a fascist style of rule.