Uh, oh. It’s after Labor Day and our political leaders are pining for war.

Put away those whites and get out the camouflage.

It’s funny what our leaders admit to when they think no one is paying attention. Remember the run up to the Iraq War in 2002 and how Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, confessed that you needed to wait to September to sell war to the American people.

”From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Just remember that statement–war is viewed by our leaders as a just another product to be marketed to the American people.

Of course, the media is also beating the war drums. Charles Pierce at Esquire catches them at it on the Sunday shows, and relates the pro-war dynamic in his uniquely humorous fashion.

“Translation from the original weaselspeak: we’ve scared the rubes again, and we got the White House to go along with it, so this “ending all these wars” business has been put to bed.”

That’s exactly right. The corporate media has been unrelenting in their efforts to drum up enthusiasm for war amid a general war weariness among the American people. Assisting in this effort has been a parade of retired generals and think tank warriors, who bray for more attacks and more military spending. Left unsaid on these cable TV shows has been who these retired generals represent.

“Ramping up America’s military presence in Iraq and directly entering the war in Syria, along with greater military spending more broadly, is a debatable solution to a complex political and sectarian conflict. But those goals do unquestionably benefit one player in this saga: America’s defense industry.”

Matt Stoller, former senior policy analyst for Congressman Alan Grayson, explains how we got to this point, where the American people can be so easily stampeded into another war.

“The gist of the problem is that Americans have been lied to for years about our foreign policy, and these lies have now created binding policy constraints on our leaders which make it impossible to eliminate groups like ISIS.”

Read Matt’s entire article at Naked Capitalism. It’s a superb portrayal of the inherent contradictions of US foreign policy, and more importantly, not an analysis that you will read anywhere else. I will be writing much more on this subject in an upcoming post.