Two Minutes To Midnight

World War III may not have begun in earnest just yet, but the risk of it occurring still looms large if the conflicts over in the Middle East region continue to accelerate.  The biggest elephant in the room is not Daesh (ISIL), Iraq, Syria, Iran or any country over in that region--it is the USA and Russia, and to a lesser extent Israel, who combined possess enough nukes to kill at least 8 billion people.  All it will take is one miscommunication and BOOM--it's game over for all of humanity.  And the two primary countries have not exactly been very friendly to each other lately.  Combine that with the threat of climate change, and the World Doomsday Clock, currently set to three minutes to midnight, might as well be set to two.  A certain Iron Maiden song comes to mind.

Meanwhile, rich war profiteers of the mercenary-industrial complex (MIC) are literally making a killing off of it all.  Like the song says, the golden goose is on the loose, and it's never out of season.  Major General Smedley Butler wrote an excellent book about it back in 1935, War Is A Racket, that should be required reading for everyone and would seem to apply a fortiori to our time.  The profiteers/racketeers and their sycophantic lackeys in government keep on pushing for more and more American military involvement in Iraq, Syria, and other countries, when it is clear that America's meddling essentially created Daesh in the first place.  In fact, not only did the 2003 invasion of Iraq pave the way for the current crisis by destabilizing Iraq, but the USA had also been arming various "rebel" groups in Syria in the hopes of toppling Assad.   And many of those "rebels" turned traitor and joined al-Qaeda and what would become Daesh as well.  It is exceedingly likely that the oligarchs did so deliberately in order to further their Machiavellian machinations.

The time to end all of this insanity and evil is yesterday.  The TSAP hereby proposes a law be passed that we call the War Pigs Act, named after both the ineffectual War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the Black Sabbath song War Pigs.  The first part of the new law would put some teeth in the War Powers Act by closing the loopholes and holding the President liable for any consequences of a war that is not authorized by Congress and is not during a state of emergency caused by an attack on the USA.  And absent a formal declaration of war by Congress, absolutely no war may last beyond 90 days (60 days followed by a 30 day withdrawal), save for a temporary authorization of force that expires 90 days after the authorization passes or 180 days after the war began, whichever occurs first.  After that, the must be a formal declaration of war, or the war must end.  Period.  The second part of the law would implement some of Maj. Gen. Butler's recommendations from his book, taking into account that we currently have an all-volunteer military.  Take the profit out of war, first of all.  And for any war lasting beyond six months (which by definition would now require a formal declaration of war), require an annual limited plebiscite of all citizens that would be eligible for military service.  Make it a non-secret ballot such that those who vote "yes" would be drafted if we run out of volunteers, followed by those who abstain from the vote if necessary.  Those who vote "no" would be exempt from any such draft.  A kind of "consensual conscription", if you will.  We would all have skin in the game.  Women would be included as well, but before they draft the very first woman, we should draft men in their 40s and 50s first.  The demographic group who starts the wars but rarely fights.  It's only fair, right fellas?

Watch as war becomes a thing of the past.  As Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler said, "TO HELL WITH WAR!"