Doom Doom Everywhere

..."a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and 1930s." Or so Dennis Blair our intel chief says.

This phrase/quote is all over the net with articles of doom and gloom. Prepare - judgment day is coming sayeth the expert bloggers and think tankers, and I particularly cannot stomach Chris Hedges (author of above Alternet piece), even if he is a Bush critic.

HEDGES: The specter of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a monograph titled "Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development."

That monograph was written Nov. 2008 by Nathan Freier, retired military brass; his last military assignment as the Director of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), and now paid by government funded stink tanks to come up with scary bullshit and justification for contingency spending on scary bullshit. The military has always raised the spectre of social unrest. Riots and unrest were common between 1750 and 1800 and between 1800 to 1850, and again between 1850 to 1900, and again between 1900 to 1960, and again. Note we get major wars along the way ... war puts those unrested folks to work ...

To elucidate how genius Mr. Freier is, he also comments in the pdf report that "Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait was a strategic surprise." Do you believe DoD was surprised when Saddam invaded Kuwait?

HEDGES: The corporate thieves, those who insisted they be paid tens of millions of dollars because they were the best and the brightest, have been exposed as con artists. Our elected officials, along with the press, have been exposed as corrupt and spineless corporate lackeys. Our business schools and intellectual elite have been exposed as frauds. The age of the West has ended. Look to China. Laissez-faire capitalism has destroyed itself. It is time to dust off your copies of Marx.

Yep, we're all just aching in our bones to live like a billion Chinese peasants.

Freier's paper states "DoD is now doing valuable work on strategic shocks. This work must endure and mature through the upcoming political transition. "

I guess some folks haven't dusted off their Marx and are going to be shocked when Obama drags us into WWIII on the way to the upcoming China-styled political transition?

Or maybe Freier was thinking the political transition to a Black prezident might cause white folks to riot and revolt? Surely he wasn't thinking the Obama administration would really change anything at DoD.

Or maybe Freier was just thinking of his curriculum vitae.