Oceania, 'Tis For Thee!

The opening words of the anthem of Oceania, the bloc in which Winston Smith finds his sorry self in the novel 1984.

In 1984, there is a state of ongoing war. The three slogans of the ruling Party are:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

We are in the time of troubles foreseen by Dwight David Eisenhower, who warned of in his Farewell Address of the Military-Industrial Complex. The objective of the Military-Industrial Complex is War.

Not surprising, War is good for the economy. It always has been. It still is. War is the ultimate in Consumption activity.

We are on the brink of the Era of Constant War.

In http://blog.mondediplo.net/2006-12-17-Carter-Israel-et-l-apartheid

we see:

Dans un entretien donné au Washington Times du 13 décembre, sous le nom « General Foresees(sic) "Generational War" against terrorism », le général Mark O. Schissler, directeur adjoint de la guerre contre le terrorisme au sein du bureau de planification de l’état-major américain, fait part de ses réflexions. « Nous sommes dans une guerre générationnelle. Vous pouvez essayer de combattre l’ennemi où il est et où il vous attaque, ou les empêcher en défendant votre patrie (...) Mais cela n’est pas suffisant pour les arrêter. Nous devons briser la chaîne et cela signifie l’idéologie. Nous devons montrer les erreurs de la pensée islamiste extrémiste. » Un de mes problèmes, ajoute-t-il, est de savoir comment « maintenir la volonté des Américains, maintenir cette volonté à travers le temps ». Cette guerre sera longue parce que « notre ennemi est engagé pour une lutte longue, ils sont complètement engagés sur un plan de 50 ou de 100 ans ».

This translates to General Mark Schissler saying the War is inter-generational. Our enemy in the War is set on a duration of 50 to 100 years!

( the original link was in the Washington Times, but they seem to have seen fit to remove it.)

I concur that we must fight against extremists. I deny this is a War. One of the determininants of the start of the War in Iraq was the need to have something that actually looks like a war, not just chasing a bunch of Wahhabis through the mountains.

We must fight against the Military-Industrial-Lobbyist cabal, the MIL. We must fight to define the scope of action, to define what is a war and what is not.

People will not support WAR expenditures for things that are obviously not war. The MIL created Iraq for this reason, out of many other reasons. For the people to support the government, the government must give them something that looks like war. Our generation knows the difference. All the generations gathered here today reading know the difference.

However, the generations of the future will have been degraded by the MIL and will not know what a real war was like. Their wars will be blunderings about the globe to enrich the MIL.