What do you expect?

How do the parties involved in this latest clash of cultures explain the benefits of their actions to the citizens, the people that wake up and go to work, find food, pay for shelter, educate the young and old, get sick, make people well, start businesses, write plays...

How do these weapons that take so much of our money, crazy things that are either designed to destroy,  which they do very well, or to protect, not so much in this case. Both projects are insanely successful in one area, the conversion of your hard earned taxes into a corporate welfare system that supports the military/industrial complex that Ike warned us about in his parting speech. 

He warned us that the appetite for the type of power and wealth that can be gained in that area was not likely to be self limiting, like any addiction the demand increasing, the lengths that the individuals in the system would go to to preserve the rush of that existence would make a junkie blush. 

We now have sitting Vice Presidents on the payroll (yes we know that it OK now, every press secretary has rolled their eyes and tried to explain how this person is above reproach to those skeptical of a former Defense Secretary who walked into a CEO position as his first job in private industry) of a defense contractor who was awarded the largest no bid contracts ever to serve in a war that he started. 

Noam Chomsky predicted the escalation of the stereotype of the Islamo-Terrorist as the next reason for massive investments in military platforms, although to avoid the retooling costs the platforms (militarese for a technological system design to destroy, the opposite of things like MRI's, cars and plumbing, which are technological systems designed to sustain and enhance our lives as opposed to ending them horribly and in great amounts.

Now we are working hard to raise tensions with Russia just as Korea becomes impossible to represent as a threat due to wide spread starvation. Iran, which spends a tenth of a penny to every dollar we spend on defense is the last remaining Global Threat, and they have raised toothless ranting to a new level of absurdity.

The good news is that people are able to see the foolishness and demand more accountability from the ego maniacs that call themselves leaders, produced through the new media moment mentality that puts more and more emphasis on manipulation and less and less on information. 

Obama is a product of the system, but all change agents  are, how else do you get in the position to make change, but with his new administration maybe we can grow to expect something else.