The Age of afRadiance: Using Nuclear Terror to wage the US War on Terror.

This is the Donning of the Age of Afraidiance.

GW Bush called it "Shock and Awe" when he let loose the full armada of US shock troops onto the comatose state of Iraq as part of his GWOT (Global War on Terror) campaign justifying it by what his Neo-Con cheerleaders called Full Spectrum Domination, a term so vile even Dr Strangelove shrank from using it. Not a single  person to whom I pointed out that "Shock and Awe" is synonymous with terror, had thought of that before. Likewise, no one today, when our politicians start screaming about the presence of Islamist terrorists and Russian aggression, seems to notice that what their hero Ronald Reagan's SDI was really about was building a Wall behind which to cower, even while he did his Hollywood best to have "Mr. Gorbachev, take down (t)his wall", while nobody in the press seemed to care the US was simultaneously constructing a nuclear wall from behind which they planned to dictate to the rest of the world how it should behave, or, to put it more simply: using Nuclear Terror on the rest of the world the way that Condoleeza Rice would use it on the citizens of her own country when Reagan's VP's son, cheered on by his Zionist band of cheer-leading Neo-cons, decided it was time to murder Saddam.

But we learned nothing from Condoleeza's turning our own weapon against us. Rather than realize that we had been held hostage to nukes in the same way that the rest of the world has been for more than three generations, we simply succumbed to the fear of another boogie man, and blithely sent our troops off to sow the Whirlwind and turn the scorching sands of Iraq, yet again, into a blinding, stinging, deadly Desert Storm.

From Craig Nelson's, The Age of Radiance:

"Where the enemy is not the soldier with his Kalashnikov nor even the bombers prowling the skies but the deadly power of abused technology, and the delicate balance of terror will no longer be maintained and instead go madly out of control" (Wohlstetter's 1959 Foreign Affairs article).

 "No responsible political leader would expose his nation to such a catastrophe" (yet that's what Ted Cruz missile does every time he so glibly extends an offer to his cheering constituency to toast some Middle Eastern country (which one doesn't really matter, who can keep them all straight?, aren't they all the same?)), while, of Course, The Don never has been nor now claims to be a responsible political leader, he even prides himself on NOT being one.

 The ratcheting levels of American terror in the face of the Soviets' presumably malevolent intentions can readily be seen in Eisenhower's 1958 State of the Union Address, as Ike was one of the more popular fear-mongering of Cold War leaders.(P256).

Whether Democrat or Republican, the main force brought into play in our national politics in this land of the brave has been Fear. The entire government, cheered on and abetted by such "news" outlets as Fox, has transitioned into one enormous Ministry of Fear.

To whit: from the 'Atlantic Council's' paper, 'Arming for Deterrence: How Poland and NATO Should Counter a Resurgent Russia’. Page 12, paragraph 7: “Poland should announce that it reserves the right to deploy offensive cyber operations (and not necessarily in response just to cyber attacks). The authorities could also suggest potential targets, which could include the Moscow metro, the St. Petersburg power network, and Russian state-run media outlets such as RT.”

Never mind that the Geneva Conventions state that: “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population, are prohibited.”

 Lol ... can you say, "Shock and Awe?" of which GW bragged, and BTW, was used specifically against the civilian population, following in Daddy's footsteps, who, everyone seems to have forotten, served as Director of the CIA and Reagan's rabid anti-communist detente-skewering administration, not to 'contain communism" as it claimed, but to destroy the Soviet Union. The latter had barely dissolved before Bush père, now free from worry of a Soviet response, was in full attack mode to show off, "This superb military he was always bragging about."

No one ever mentions, of course, Bush's stint as head of the CIA, even as they constantly harp on Putin's KGB background. Just as, as pointed out in  The Age of Radiance, no one deems it worthy of consideration that the US government had continued its atomic bomb project even after the Nazis were already defeated, despite the fact that the justification for the development of such a monstrously destructive weapon was NOT because of the Japanese on whom we dropped it, but because, if WE didn't develop it, the Fuehrer would (so once he was dead and buried, why keep on shoveling piles of cash into its development and deployment?). Never mind that we did develop it whereas he didn't. We spent so many billions on its production it was impossible not to use it to cow the entire globe into subservience to a future Shock and Awe world. As a means of maintaining peace, of course. Hence, an ICBM could be called the "Peacekeeper". But Reagan swore he wanted to rid the globe of Nuclear weapons, so how does one reconcile those two facts? If you rid the world of "Peacekeepers", doesn't that mean War?

I read a description of Britain's Labor Party in the Guardian the other day:

Once upon- a-time it used to speak out for peace and social justice but now is the main voice for the Blairites and the war party and is second-to-none in its baying for war against Russia.

One need merely substitute Clintonites and you have the American relationship with the MSM, as she obligingly demonstrated by her use of the half-crazed Marine General Allen  (Dulles?) at the DNC. It used to be called fear-mongering, now it's just Campaign Promises.

But turning America into a United State of Fear so as to ready it to hurl its armed forces against Russia, China, or  MENA is such an obvious act of desperation, that one would think, if the two Parties were actually competitive, one of them would call the other out on it. The fact that instead they jockey to outmaneuver each other to see who can bray the loudest about how our offensive Defensive Department is prepared to launch an all-out War on all of humanity, should demonstrate both Parties' utter depravity and our own descension into little more than a frightened mob, ready to barter our much-vaunted liberties and resilient economy for the dubious privilege of waging a full-fledged War of Terror against a motley band of rabid religionists. But this constantly aggressive posturing, far from showing the world our Might and Power, proves that all we know how to do anymore is buck and cower.