...to the executive branch, though that's a big piece of it. Dana Priest did a pretty decent job, in my view, of tracing the decades long trajectory of this development. One of these days I've got to get around to reading Andrew Bacevich - based on what I've heard from him in various interviews, I suspect the rest of the pieces are in there.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

Military Role in U.S. Embassies Creates Strains, Report Says
Mark Mazzetti | Dec 20

NYT - The expansion of the Pentagon’s presence in American embassies is creating frictions and overlapping missions that could undermine efforts to combat Islamic radicalism, a report by Congressional Republicans has found.

As the Pentagon takes on new roles collecting intelligence, initiating information operations and conducting other “self-assigned missions,” the report found that some embassies have effectively become command posts, with military personnel in those countries all but supplanting the role of ambassadors in conducting American foreign policy.

The report, completed by the Republican staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, concluded that Pentagon “enthusiasm” has blurred chains of command and has the potential to backfire by weakening American relationships abroad and setting back American counterterrorism efforts.

The report’s findings were based on interviews in roughly 20 embassies around the world. While the report found that most of the ambassadors had an adequate grasp of the American military activities in their country, three ambassadors “appeared overwhelmed by the growing presence of military personnel” and said they were ill informed of the operations that the Pentagon was conducting there. “In several cases, embassy staff saw their role as limited to a review of choices already made by ‘the military side of the house,’ ” the report said.

The report did not identify the three ambassadors, nor the ambassador heading “a small embassy in Africa” who told Senate staffers that within a year American military personnel might outnumber civilians at the embassy.

nyt

Evolutionary dead-ends... frightened men in a rapidly changing world they can't adapt to are delectible prey for military and athoritarian ideals and propaganda that play to their simple herd minds and they see the threat of the enemy to their hives everywhere... Muslims, women, immagrants.

They need to ingest more pharmaceutical hormones that are discharging into and infiltrating the biosphere, like more estrogen. Those who can might, just might evolve. The rest will just kill each other off in more wars, which unfortunately takes the innocent down with them.

With progressively more and more of the budged going into military spending, it seems natural that some of the government's services are also there.

Notably, the military whether it's the Coast Guard, the Army, or the National Guard is effectively a executive service. IMHO the Army was an appropriate tool to use to immediately address the disaster that is the Katrina aftermath. I'm not so sure I can say the same thing about the existance of the Army Corps of engineers - who are responsible for the navigability of the waterways.

In practice, the Army is relatively well organized, and has the strongest logistical infrastructure of any government organization, so , if you want something big done fast by the government, then the army is essentially the only option.

I'm rather ignorant about a lot of this stuff, but I can't help but have the opinion that the military is being called on to cover for the shortcomings of other parts of the government and also being called upon to prosecute a misconcieved agenda.