State of Permanent Warfare

Glenn Greenwald tells it like it is....

It's hard to overstate how aberrational -- one might say "rogue" --
the U.S. is when it comes to war. No other country sits around
debating, as a routine and permanent feature of its political discussions,
whether this country or that one should be bombed next, or for how many more
years conquered targets should be occupied. And none use war as a
casual and continuous tool for advancing foreign policy interests, at least
nowhere close to the way we do (the demand that Iran not possess nuclear
weapons is clearly part of an overall, stated strategy of ensuring that other
countries remain incapable of deterring us from attacking them whenever we want
to). Committing to a withdrawal from Iraq appears to be acceptable, but
only as long as have our escalations and new wars lined up to replace
it (and that's to say nothing of the virtually invisible wars we're
fighting). For the U.S., war is the opposite of a "last resort":
it's the more or less permanent state of affairs, and few people who matter want
it to be any different.

The factions that exert the most dominant influence on our
foreign policy have only one principle: a state of permanent warfare is
necessary (the public and private military industry embraces that view because
wars are what bestow them with purpose, power and profits, and the
Foreign Policy Community does so because -- as Gelb says -- it bestows
"political and professional credibility"). In his 1790 Political
Observation, James Madison warned: "Of all the enemies of true
liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded. . . . No nation can preserve
its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Can anyone doubt that
"continual warfare" is exactly what the U.S. does and, by all appearances,
will continue to do for the foreseeable future (at least until we not only
run out of money to pay for these wars -- as we already have -- but also the
ability to finance these wars with more debt)? That proposition is
indisputable; it's true by definition. Doesn't turning ourselves into a
permanent war-fighting state have some rather serious repercussions that ought
to be weighed when deciding if that's something we really want to keep
doing?