Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Military as Social Workers

I just ran across a story "Pentagon Urges Military to Win the Peace" (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pentagon-Winning-the-Peace.html ) that pointed me to http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-12-DSB_SS_Report_Final.pdf, a report just released by the Defense Science Board titled "Transition to and from Hostilities".

This is without a doubt the most brazen attempt at a massive power grab and expansion of government that I have ever read.

I mean it. Hillary Clinton's health care scheme was small potatoes compared to this.

*Anyone* who is remotely concerned by the points Yaron Brook raises in his talk should read this report -- you can skim, cause it's 229 pages long and is thin on content (but thick on BS, gunsmoke and management jargon), but if you want a glimpse into just how the military is being undermined, and how bad it could get, this is it. I was going to read the whole thing, grab a few highlights and post them, but only 25% into this report I was overwhelmed by quotes for even a half dozen posts.

Let me sum up: the report makes a number of recommendations to the President, and in essence, calls for the most massive expansion of the welfare state since LBJ's "Great Society" -- it wants to do it for the entire
world.

It wants to massively expand the Department of State and Department of Defense with "a 'Manhattan Project'" for stabilization and reconstruction".

It wants the Army put in charge of this for now, and regional commanders to have "S&R" as primary duties. It admits (get this) that *every other department of government is too incompetent to perform this mission* and wants the Army *temporarily* in charge until other departments can be trained (see p35-36).

It explicitly states that we may not have the resources to conduct these welfare operations and implicitly suggests (in my opinion) if we don't have the reconstruction resources we shouldn't go to war, or else we will need a draft. (See p56).

It wants to use the National Guard and Reserves for these ends, though acknowledges that years of overseas "S&R" missions are incompatible with civilian careers.

It says "money is ammunition" and suggests doling out massive amounts of it to local commanders at a much faster pace than we do now. Etc. (that's only up to page 60 or so)

There is an unbelievable amount of pure and utter crap that I could analyze ad infinitum, and I had wanted to do background checks on the criminals behind it, but I will leave it here for now.