Tuesday, August 14, 2012 at 7:30 p.m., Ukrainian East Village Restaurant 140 Second Avenue.
John Chodes will speak about the American Military’s obsession with technology, demand for enormous amounts of money and its power over the civilian government resulting in a virtual military dictatorship. He will touch on what bombing and airpower has accomplished in wars we have been engaged in after World War II and its effectiveness or lack thereof.
John Chodes provided the following overview of his presentation based upon the book he wrote entitled “The Myth of America’s Military Power” that will be available for purchase at the meeting:
Our Founding Fathers warned us about the dangers of a large standing army. Dwight Eisenhower, as President, in the 1950s, enlightened us about the ever-expanding “military-industrial complex.”
These warnings have gone unheeded. The armed forces continue to grow, and are in the process of creating a permanent military dictatorship. This has partially bankrupted the United States of America. One of the side effects has been the ever-increasing use of military tribunals to convict criminals.
The enormity of our atomic stockpile has terrorized Americans for generations, allowing the military to have a mental stranglehold over the minds of our people, as they proclaim that only our generals can prevent an atomic holocaust that will end all life on Earth. They have spent millions, billions and trillions of dollars to develop high tech weapons that they claim are better than what has come before.
The military’s obsession with “newer must be better,” ad what was good last year is obsolete today, has had a profound effect on the world-view of Americans in general.
Mostly, the mania to achieve the “automated battlefield” has proven to be a delusion, if not self-destructive. The attempt to transfer responsibility for victory from humans to machines, was a major factor for our crushing defeat in Vietnam, and for prolonging World War II.
Even more intriguing, our leading generals have been philosophically influenced by Hitlerian social doctrines which the Fuhrer instilled in his Wehrmacht, and now we incorporate into our armed forces. It seems to me id we unknowingly believe in Nazi social/military principles, then we have become Hitlerites ourselves. If all this is correct, then any trace of a democratic free market and a free society are coming to an end.
Some of the topics John Chodes will cover include:
* In World War II, how saturation bombing aided Germany’s war productivity
* Armored vehicles and tanks greatly prolonged World War II
* Atomic War: Hiroshima & Nagasaki; Misleading Results
* Normandy Invasion: Why A Stalemate?
* Vietnam: Not A Guerrilla War
* Vietnam Airpower: Jets vs. Prop Planes and their losses
* Vietnam: 1890 Mauser rifles vs. M-16s. Which kills better?
* America’s Equal Gender Military: U.S.A. follows ancient Sparta & Nazi Germany