We are on episode number 351, The 2022 National Security Strategy.

Why are we talking about it on TCR? Pentagon is the world’s biggest consumer of fossil fuels. Plus, the purpose of our military (arguably) is to preserve our unfair advantage on the world stage, whereby we can continue to consume 25% of the world’s resources. Consumption takes a lot of fossil fuels and is therefore a major cause of global warming. War is a moral issue. Climate is a moral issue. War involves important questions about how we are governed and by whom we are governed. Climate involves important questions about how we are governed and by whom we are governed.

In reading and commenting on this report … We should ask, how believable are the words we are reading? We should ask, what narrative is being supported? What are other countries around the world hearing and thinking when they hear or read these words?

I’m going to take the position that These words Are completely disingenuous (insincere, duplicitous) Ahistorical (not rooted in fact) Threatening (because other countries know what they REALLY mean.) These words called the national defense strategy are not about defense. They are about aggression. A war of aggression is a capital crime. These words, called the national defense strategy, are not making the American people safer. They are creating a world that is much more dangerous for the American people. These words are designed to make money for the MIC and all of Wall Street, but they are not for the good of the American people or the people of the world. These words constitute high sounding rhetoric that masks a deeply violent country, a deeply violent government, a deeply violent foreign policy. These words are completely useless in addressing the real problems of Americans or people around the world.

Consider these quotes:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few … No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” —James Madison, 1795

The final phase of our national sickness is the disease of militarism…We are arrogant in professing to be concerned about the freedom of foreign nations while not setting our own house in order… No enemy has ever been able to cause such damage to us as we inflict upon ourselves. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. --Charter of the United Nations . “In order to bring a nation to support the burdens incident to maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of an external menace or of internal conditions rendered intolerable by the unjust restraints of foreign nations. This involves the development to a high degree of the nation-hero nation-villain ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of the duty of sacrifice.” —John Foster Dulles