By Gaither Stewart
Hidden away somewhere within the labyrinth of the Pentagon there must be a top secret euphemism department engaged in the invention of the Orwellian surrogate words that have crept surreptitiously into the American English vocabulary and from there translated into many other languages. In my mind I see a unit of studiously serious executives, coffee mugs in their hands and their neckties awry, devising senseless terms for terrible things and used unthinkingly by people today from New York to California, from Maine to Texas. The goal of my imaginary secret unit is to render ugly terms meaningless or to transform them into their opposite. To quote the perceptive Scottish writer, Candia McWilliam, "plain words are always under threat." There are words that don't say what they mean and there are words that say what they don't mean.
Intensified or enhanced interrogation sounds oh so much more genteel than the hideous word TORTURE. Collateral damage goes down quite well instead of the savage bombing and strafing of a funeral procession or a wedding party. Military leaders themselves have come to love the suggestive word "footprints" to indicate the evidence of America's powerful presence throughout the world: "We were here and we leave this little sign with you." A little footprint, maybe a fleet of super bombers or Predator drones.
The point to keep in mind is that the names of things, issues, objects of life change, but the substance of the object itself remains-torture will always be torture, no matter what the gnomes propose and the media parrot.
Today, though generally unknown among the public, the relatively new term, "lily pad", is making its way forward to describe not that beautiful manifestation of nature but the new version of America's over 1000 military bases and garrisons spreading across some 150 countries of planet Earth. You can always count on those Pentagon gnomes. They regularly come up with something new. It remains unclear however if they first invent the terms and the military executes their implications or if the military experiments with a new lethal strategy and the gnomes then give it a purified label.
In the case of the "lily pad", this linguistic version of the sheep in wolf's clothing, was allegedly conceived to spread the U.S. footprint into every corner of our planet and to make military bases more effective and comprehensive while giving the impression that the government is both protecting "our way of life", while also saving taxpayer money-money then used for more weapons and the hiring of more mercenaries and for payoffs to eager satraps of the Empire's vassal states; some nations, peoples, and even minor empires can be more easily bought than subdued militarily.
WHAT IS A MILITARY LILY PAD?
Nature's lily pad is a floating leaf of the white water lily family. The scientific name of lily pad is nymphaea odorata. You might see a bullfrog sitting on a lily pad in a pond. The lily pad does not sink under its weight. The giant water lily, victoria amazonica, has the world's biggest lily pad, up to four feet, which can support the weight of several people at once. The lily pad lies tranquilly on the surface of the pond, offering both refuge and camouflage for the frog, protecting it from predators. The lily pad fits in with its natural surroundings, as does the frog.
Some nature-loving gnome then had the genial idea of a military base-lily pad. Why? For what purpose? For it is not true that smaller, more mobile lily pad-like bases, remain hidden and much cheaper. Nor is it true that local people, even in the jungle of a Pacific island do not know about them, are blind to their presence. Soldiers in jungle clothing jogging through the bush are not invisible. That planes landing and taking off are unheard and unnoticed is absurd. The 1000 military bases today cost the U.S. taxpayer's less? Not on your life, naïve taxpayer!
Is the U.S. objective to make less impact on local populations with a smaller presence, a less visible footprint and simultaneously perhaps offer employment to a few locals? Jamais de la vie! As if anyone in those secret Pentagon rooms gave one hoot in hell about those little brown people? Besides, just because a lily pad base appears to be the opposite of huge Ramstein or other city-like military bases in Germany and in the USA home territory itself doesn't mean that what begins as a lily pad in Bulgaria will not quickly become small towns as well. Soldiers have to be offered comfortable living conditions, which means bars and shops and eating places and medical facilities and private rooms for many; it means no latrine cleaning and kitchen police jobs for soldiers; locals do that for low pay. Soldiers today demand to have their families with them, which means apartment blocks and private cars and schools and hospitals. Moreover, every job the lily pad gnomes remove from the USA and outsource abroad, means less jobs in America.
That 1000 lily pad bases across the world cost the American taxpayer less is thus an illusion, a false clue to the raison d'etre of the so-called lily pad bases. The law of the unstoppable growth of bureaucracy dictates that with enough time small bases will become big bases. That is the way of the world. You build runways and training grounds and a few barracks and voila, the initially Spartan lily pad grows into another Ramstein. Meanwhile, military bases, whether lily pads or Ramsteins, continue to erode what remains of the U.S. image the world over, exacerbating hate for the USA wherever they are found.
So why? Why the string of America's military bases. Why the already failed experiment of tiny lily pads when all they mean is expanded U.S. militarization of the world? The why lies in the answer: it is part and parcel of American occupation of the world. The New World Order. The American Century.
Of course U.S. world domination remains the ultimate goal but the explanation is insufficient. Though a great part of the globe is already under U.S. domination, whether of the direct military sort or purely economic, there are still some hurdles to achieve total dominion. Not only obstacles but America's own manias and phobias to be overcome.
For there remains Russia and China to be dealt with. Touchy subjects indeed. Though total madness to consider, war with either is possible but in my estimation not probable. In any case, it is a mistake to lump the two great nations together or even to attempt to juxtapose the two. Russia is Russia; China is China. Russia is a much more immediate problem for U.S. aims than is China. As the astute student of international affairs and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in the third presidential debate "Russia is America's greatest enemy."
Here I have zeroed in on the Russian hurdle, wondering if the USA even has a legitimate Russian policy. In the mind of the mad planners, Russia is more than just a geopolitical problem. More than New World Order. The answer to the riddle to many like Romney is Russia. America rejects anything that can strengthen Russia. America fears Russia. America fears the revival of the Russian empire. The USA might prefer to bypass unbypassable Russia. But it cannot. Remember the old post-World War II quip that "the real role of NATO is to keep the Russians out (of Europe), the Americans in and the Germans down"? Still valid today.
Gaither Stewart
To be continued