The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the

unplesantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of

war largely invisible. That is accomplished by heaping all of the

fighting burden on a tiny and mostly economically marginalized faction

of the population, by using sterile, mechanized instruments to deliver

the violence, and by suppressing any real discussion in establishment

media circles of America's innocent victims and the worldwide anti-American rage that generates.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/17/endless-war-on-terror-obama

year of endless war that passes further normalizes the endless rights

erosions justified in its name. The second term of the Bush

administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been

devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked

powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those

powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and

due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now

permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in

American political culture.

)

"We're borrowing 10% of GDP each year to get 1-2% growth. That isn't"
an improving economy. We're simply mortgaging the future.