"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Max Boot on War
"So, according to Boot, everything must change at an ever-increasing pace and on an ever-expanding scale. He does not say how that is feasible; nor does he ask whether American or any other human society can conceivably sustain such a continuous proliferation of military enterprise and expenditure. Limits surely exist. No government can continue for very long to spend far more than it takes in while relying on foreigners to finance such extravagance by buying its bonds. Yet that is what the US is doing today. Moreover, aggressive wars like those Americans have been fighting on and off ever since 1955 in Vietnam , Afghanistan , and Iraq inflame opposition both at home and abroad. Surely, if changes of policy fail to diminish such fighting and to check the US government's increasingly strenuous preparation for future wars, a general economic and social collapse like that which overtook the USSR is more likely than the indefinite expansion of our military establishment that Boot foresees." (NY Review of Books) Why is it that neo-con chickenhawks love war so much, yet they never enlist themselves?
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