{"id":1642,"date":"2014-11-15T14:51:48","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T19:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1642"},"modified":"2014-11-15T14:51:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-15T19:51:48","slug":"tomgram-david-vine-a-permanent-infrastructure-for-permanent-war-tomdispatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1642","title":{"rendered":"Tomgram: David Vine, A Permanent Infrastructure for Permanent War | TomDispatch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomgram: David Vine, A Permanent Infrastructure for Permanent War | TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a September address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Barack Obamaspoke<\/a>\u00a0forcefully about the \u201ccycle of conflict\u201d in the Middle East, about \u201cviolence within Muslim communities that has become the source of so much human misery.\u201d The president was adamant: \u201cIt is time to acknowledge the destruction wrought by proxy wars and terror campaigns between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East.\u201d Then with hardly a pause, he went on to promote his own proxy wars (including the backing of Syrian rebels and\u00a0Iraqi forces<\/a>\u00a0against the Islamic State), as though Washington\u2019s military escapades in the region hadn\u2019t stoked\u00a0sectarian tensions<\/a>\u00a0and been high-performance engines for \u201chuman misery<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the president left a lot out of his regional wrap-up. On the subject of proxies, Iraqi troops and small numbers of Syrian rebels have hardly been alone in receiving American military support. Yet few in our world have paid much attention to everything Washington has done to keep the region\u00a0awash in weaponry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since mid-year, for example, the State Department and the Pentagon have helped pave the way for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) launchers and associated equipment and to spend billions more on Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles; for Lebanon to purchase nearly $200 million in Huey helicopters and supporting gear; for Turkey to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM (Air-to-Air) missiles; and for Israel to stock up on half a billion dollars worth of AIM-9X Sidewinder (air-to-air) missiles; not to mention other deals to aid the militaries of Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomgram: David Vine, A Permanent Infrastructure for Permanent War | TomDispatch. In a September address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Barack Obamaspoke\u00a0forcefully about the \u201ccycle of conflict\u201d in the Middle East, about \u201cviolence within Muslim communities that has become the source of so much human misery.\u201d The president was adamant: \u201cIt is time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[522,525,584,1150,821,862],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-obama","tag-proxy-war","tag-ukraine","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1643,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}