Bigger the better

A full-fledged cottage industry is already focused on those who eagerly await the end of the Bush administration, offering calendars, magnets, and t-shirts for sale8230; But when the countdown ends and George W. Bush vacates the Oval Office, he will leave a legacy to contend with. Certainly, he wills to his successor a world marred by war and battered by deprivation, but perhaps his most enduring legacy is8230; a Pentagon metastasised almost beyond recognition. The Pentagon8217;s massive bulk-up these last seven years will not be easily unbuilt, no matter who dons the presidential mantle on January 19, 20098230;

Who, today, even remembers the debate at the end of the Cold War about what role US military power should play in a 8220;unipolar8221; world? Was US supremacy so well established8230; that Washington could rely on softer economic and cultural power, with military power no more than a backup8230;? Or was the US to8230; police the world as the fountainhead of 8220;humanitarian interventions8221;? Or was it the moment to boldly declare ourselves the world8217;s sole superpower and wield a high-tech military comparable to none, actively discouraging any other power8230; from future rivalry?

8230;September 11, 2001 decisively ended that debate. The Bush administration promptly declared total war on every front8230; The Pentagon8217;s 8220;footprint8221; was to be firmly planted, military base by military base, across the planet, with a special emphasis on its energy heartlands. Top administration officials began preparing the Pentagon to go anywhere and do anything, while rewriting, shredding, or ignoring whatever laws, national or international, stood in the way. In 2002, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld officially articulated a new US military posture that8230; was little short of revolutionary. It was called 8212; in classic Pentagon shorthand 8212;the 1-4-2-1 Defence Strategy replacing the Clinton administration8217;s already none-too-modest plan to be prepared to fight two major wars 8212; in the Middle East and Northeast Asia 8212; simultaneously.

Excerpted from Frida Berrigan8217;s 8216;The Pentagon takes over8217; in Mother Jones