Tom Engelhardt: New Strategic Plan for US Military?

Last week, the president made a rare appearance at the Pentagon to unveil a new strategic plan for US military policy and spending over the next decade. Let's leave the specifics for a future TomDispatch post and focus instead on the historical footnote: Obama was evidently the first president to offer remarks from a podium in the Pentagon press room. He made the point himself: "I understand this is the first time a president has done this. It's a pretty nice room. Yet no one thought to make anything of it, even though it tells much about our NEW American world. After all, when was the last time the president appeared at the Environmental Protection Agency to announce a 10-year plan for a "leaner, meaner" approach to the environment, or at the Education Department to outline the next decade of blue-skies thinking and spending fr giving our children a leg-up in a competitive world? Or how about at a State Department podium to describe future planning for a more peaceable planet more peaceably attained? Unfortunately, you can't remember such moments, and neither can America's reporters, because they just aren't part of Washington life, and strangest of all, no one finds this the tiniest bit odd or worth commenting on. Over the last decade, this country has been so strikingly militarized that no one can imagine 10 years of serious government planning or investment not connected to the military or the national security state. It's a dangerous world out there, so we are regularly told by officials who don't mention that no military that no military is built to handle the scariest things around. War and the sinews of war are now our business, and the US military is our go-to-outfit of choice for anything from humanitarian action to diplomacy!