Gun ‘Background Check’ on Pentagon

Pentagon

Stringent "background checks" are central to many proposals for curbing gun violence. The following is a background check on the nation’s largest buyer of firearms:

The applicant, U.S. Pentagon, seeks to purchase a wide variety of firearms in vast quantities. This background check has determined that the applicant has a long history of assisting individuals, organizations and governments prone to gun violence.

Pentagon has often served as an active accomplice or direct perpetrator of killings on a mass scale. During the last 50 years, the applicant has directly inflicted large-scale death and injuries in numerous countries, among them the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan (partial list). Resulting fatalities are estimated to have been more than 5 million people.

For purposes of this background check, special attention has been necessarily focused on the scope of firearms currently sought by Pentagon. They include numerous types of semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles as well as many other assault weapons. Continuing purchases by the applicant include drones and cruise missiles along with the latest models of compatible projectiles and matching explosives.

Notable on Pentagon’s shopping list is the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This "bunker buster" weapon – with a weight of 30,000 pounds, set for delivery by a B-2 stealth bomber – is for prospective use in Iran.

While considering the likely outcomes of authorizing Pentagon to purchase such large-scale assault weapons, past lethal recklessness should be viewed in context of present-day mindset. A meaningful background check must include a current psychological profile.

Despite the abundant evidence of massive carnage made possible by past Pentagon acquisitions of firearms and other weapons, the applicant is unrepentant. This indicates that the applicant is sociopathic – unwilling to acknowledge, let alone express any semblance of remorse for, pain and suffering inflicted on human beings.

The unrepentant character of Pentagon is reflected in continued use of the alias "Department of Defense." This background check strongly indicates the prevalence of a highly functional yet psychically numbed institutional personality disorder, with reflexive denial and perennial insistence on claiming victim status even while victimizing others.

In addition, Pentagon has used guns of all types to fire on countless civilians including young people. The ongoing threat to children posed by weapons in the hands of the applicant, therefore, is grave.

Grim evidence emerged with the unauthorized release of the "Collateral Murder" video three years ago by WikiLeaks. That video, filmed in 2007 in the district of New Baghdad, showed a callous disregard for human life as 30 mm cannon fire from Apache helicopters caused the deaths of nearly a dozen Iraqi adults while wounding two children.

In a deeply sociopathic mode, Pentagon – rather than expressing remorse or taking action to prevent such tragedies in the future – has sought retribution against those shedding light on many of such terrible actions. Pentagon has subjected whistleblower Bradley Manning to protracted inhumane treatment and relentless prosecution. By sharp contrast, in the last few days alone, tens of thousands of people have expressed their admiration, love and support by signing an online letter to Thank Bradley Manning.

Meanwhile, Pentagon is seeking approvals for items ranging from new firearms to F-35 jet fighters, recently dubbed by Time magazine "the costliest weapons program in human history."

Even a cursory background check on the applicant must conclude that augmenting Pentagon’s vast stockpile of guns and other weapons would be unconscionable.

If background checks are to be a meaningful tool for curbing gun violence, they must apply to individuals and institutions alike, without fear or favor.

______________________________

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

21 thoughts on “Gun ‘Background Check’ on Pentagon”

  2. Fantastic! I applaud this piece of sanity as some one and others are finally getting it right as I have been saying and doing for many years. How is that I must submit to endless checks while the checkers do not? We the people, whom the Pentagon is sworn to protect, are the ones being attacked by those that swore an oath to uphold the Constitution in order to work in any military capacity. Yet often when background checks are done on checkers we find many past convicted felons. Any one who participated in the War On Terror is a war criminal, or any war not approved by congress, a war criminal is far more heavy a burden of guilt than a felon. That is the real reason Vets are suiciding at such alarming rates. Still they are copping out. The real soldier of responsibility goes back to the theatre he/she committed war crimes/genocide in and dedicates their lives to repairing the damage they did at what ever personal cost.

  3. Good article. The hypocrisy is getting mighty thick here in the US. DC slaughters and kills on an international level, then wags its finger at the proles and lectures them on being too violent.

    "This indicates that the applicant is sociopathic – unwilling to acknowledge, let alone express any semblance of remorse for, pain and suffering inflicted on human beings."

    True that.

    One day before the Sandy Hook shooting the USMC put out a news release about how children who carried shovels in Afghanistan were now legitimate targets of war because they might be digging, or had dug, holes for IEDs.

    And let's not forget Albright's infamous "The price is worth it" statement. From 1991 to 1996 the Iraqi people suffered the equivalent of a Sandy Hook shooting every two hours for 5 years straight.

    The insanity of it all does get mind numbing at times.

  4. I can't stand sleeping in complete silence, so I always have a fan on. Also, I'lll admit that I use my ipod for most of my work day since http://www.arabie3lan.com ????? ????????
    I spend a lot of it working through paperwork. I also often use it for my walks, though, from time to time, I'll go without it and just listen to the sounds around me and take in the nice weather.

  6. I read all the article, Your thinking is really great thanks for sharing with us your post. If you have more ideas against guns please update us.

  7. In many countries Government not allow to common people take the guns because it's illegal and becoming the cause of many disputes, fighting and other things like this nature. I am also totally against of this dangerous weapon that is badly affected to our youth.

  11. The USA has always interfered in the affairs of other nations. It supports Colombia's government because its an enemy o Venezuela and many other Latin American nations. It also kisses Israel's ass like the USA does. It supports Colombia's government to control drug trafficking although that doesn't always work.

  12. Mr. Glaser: Thank you for this totally true article, it would be interesting if the American people would know about this situation, but leave up to the Corporate media to twist things around. Only peaceful nations such as in Scandanavia for example, know and get the accumulative benefits of peace, since is much more interesting to built than to destroy; If true peace would come to Colombia, Colombia it self would go into a cycle of creativity and progress that would perhaps be, much more beneficial to the United States than this bloody war.

  14. Obama is doing this as we speak. No "cold war". The terrorist Obama supported a fascist military coup in Honduras in 2009 to overthrow their democracy and replace it with an authoritarian military dictatorship that has reversed all the social gains won back by the population after decades of US-backed authoritarianism, and Obama's supporting the dictatorship there to this day, in defiance of the whole world. Like all US imperialists, he hates democracy (control by the people). He is democracy's antithesis.

  15. Most of the democracies the USA has overthrown (over 30) have been in Latin America. We can look at every single case, as William Blum does in "Rogue State"; they're all the same. The USA is an authoritarian empire with fascist satellites put and kept in place to rob other countries and enrich itself.

  16. Same reason the USA has been doing this since its inception, kicked into high gear since 1945: to install and support governments that keep poor people in their place so they and their resources can be robbed by US international corporations.

  17. And now there are those who want to memorialize the survivors. We have developed the same disease that poisoned the Germans, it's called 'militarism'. The cure is still the same …WAR.

  18. " Why can’t we have holidays and parades for them, those real people who chose to do something besides take the war that was offered them?"

    Well we could, I mean holidays I don't know, I don't expect the empire to make a national holiday of "anti-empire day" anytime soon unfortunately. But parades, what is involved? Applying for a city permit for the peace parade or the honor the truce parade? We could.

  19. Even if the war ended in 1918 when it did, there might not have been a Second World War if that awful treaty with its war guilt laid at the feet of Germany and the economically devastating "reparations" forced on the German people had not been put into effect. Hard to say, but the zionists and banksters already had their plan for world domination underway prior to 1914 and creating wars are one of their major means toward that end.

  20. Had the war ended then and there, many things would have been different–in this alternate history, in addition to millions of people not dying, there might not have been a Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, no 'Lusitania' sinking in 1915, the USA certainly would not have become involved, no Versailles Treaty to cripple, bankrupt and humiliate Germany. Also a young Austrian soldier serving in the German Army named Adolf Hitler would have mustered out and probably become an artist or architect instead of going into politics as a result of the Versailles Treaty.

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