George Monbiot writes in the Guardian as to why Appeasing the Armed Forces Has Become a Political Necessity for the American President: “…(W)hile we are slowly becoming aware of the corporate capture of our governments, we seem to have overlooked the growing power of another recipient of this back-to-front lobbying. In the United States, a sort of reverse military coup appears to be taking place.

Both the president and the opposition seem to be offering the armed forces, though they do not appear to have requested it, an ever greater share of the business of government.

Every week, the state department makes a list of Mr Bush’s most important speeches and visits, to distribute to US embassies around the world. The embassy in London has a public archive dating from June last year. During this period, Bush has made 41 major speeches to live audiences. Of these, 14 – just over a third – were delivered to military personnel or veterans.

Now Bush, of course, is commander-in-chief as well as president, and he has every right to address the troops. But this commander-in-chief goes far beyond the patriotic blandishments of previous leaders. He sometimes dresses up in the uniform of the troops he is meeting.

He quotes their mottoes and songs, retells their internal jokes, mimics their slang. He informs the ‘dog-faced soldiers’ that they are ‘the rock of Marne’, or asks naval cadets whether they gave ‘the left-handed salute to Tecumseh, the God of 2.0’. The television audience is mystified, but the men love him for it. He is, or so his speeches suggest, one of them.

He starts by leading them in chants of ‘Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!’, then plasters them with praise and reminds them that their pay, healthcare and housing (unlike those of any other workers in America) are being upgraded. After this, they will cheer everything he says. So he uses these occasions to attack his opponents and announce new and often controversial policies.

The marines were the first to be told about his interstate electricity grid; he instructed the American Legion about the reform of the Medicare program; last week he explained his plans for the taxation of small businesses to the national guard. The troops may not have the faintest idea what he’s talking about, but they cheer him to the rafters anyway. After that, implementing these policies looks like a patriotic duty.

This strikes me as an abuse of his position as commander-in-chief, rather like the use of Air Force One (the presidential airplane) for political fundraising tours. The war against terror is a feeble excuse. Indeed, all this began long before September 2001; between February and August that year he gave eight major speeches to the military, some of which were stuffed with policy announcements.

But there is a lot more at stake than merely casting the cloak of patriotism over his corporate welfare programs. Appeasing the armed forces has become, for President Bush, a political necessity. He cannot win the next election without them. Unless he can destroy the resistance in Iraq, the resistance will destroy his political career. But crushing it requires the continuous presence of a vast professional army and tens of thousands of reservists.” [via CommonDreams]