War. War. War, forever :(

The state of the union, as Glenn Greenwald describes, is awfully depressing ... Sometimes I do think that a permanent state of war is merely the other side of the professional military coin.  If it were a citizen military, well, we will have a military only if there is a "real" war emergency.  It is like how when citizen legislatures are replaced by year-round ones, we have now ended up with a system where incumbents stay on forever .... Oh well. 
Here is an excerpt from Greenwald:

war is basically the permanent American condition:  war is who we are and what we do as a nation.  We're essentially a war fighting state.  We have been at "war" the entire last decade (as well as largley non-stop for the decades which preceded it), and continue now to be at "war" with no end in sight.  That's clearly true of our specific wars (in Afghanistan).  And, worse, the way in which The War, more broadly, has been defined (i.e., against Islamic extremism/those who wish to harm Americans) makes it highly likely that it will never end in our lifetime.  The decree that we are "at war" has been repeated over and over for a full decade, drumbed into our heads from all directions without pause, sanctified as one of those Bipartisan Orthodoxies that nobody can dispute upon pain of having one's Seriousness credentials immediately and irrevocably revoked.  With war this normalized, is it really surprising that nobody debates it any longer?  It'd be like debating the color of the sky.
That's why I always find the War Excuse for anything the Government does so baffling and nonsensical.  Any objections one voices to what the Executive Branch does -- indefinite detentions, presidential assassinations of citizens, extreme secrecy, etc. -- will be met with the justification that such actions are permissible "during wartime," as though "wartime" is some special, temporary, fleeting state of affairs which necessitates vesting powers in the government which, during "normal" times, would be impermissible.
But the contrast between "war and "normal times" is totally illusory.  For the United States, war is normalcy.  The "war" we're fighting has been defined and designed to be virtually endless.  Political leaders from both parties have been explicit about that.  Here's how Obama put it last May in his "civil liberties" speech:

Now this generation faces a great test in the specter of terrorism. And unlike the Civil War or World War II, we can't count on a surrender ceremony to bring this journey to an end. Right now, in distant training camps and in crowded cities, there are people plotting to take American lives. That will be the case a year from now, five years from now, and -- in all probability -- 10 years from now.

All the way back in September, 2001, with the World Trade Center still smoldering, George Bush said basically the same thing:  "Now, this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. . . . Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen."  Thus:  to justify new and unaccountable powers based on the fact that we are "at war" is, in essence, to change the American political system permanently, because the "war," and the accompanying powers that it justifies, are not going anywhere for many, many years to come.
With both political parties affirming over and over that we are going to be at "war" for years, indeed decades, it's unsurprising that so few people are interested in debating "war."