Thursday, October 2, 2014

Might As Well Face It, America Is Addicted to War


nfortunately, being in the position of 'I told you so' is little succor in this horrendous Middle East situation.. All of us predicted that going into Iraq was like going head first into a hornet's nest. The United States has been at war -- major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts, and covert actions -- nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began. That's more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions.
   Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face. Simply said, we suck at war. They are, however, the words that can't be said in a country committed to a fixated military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counter-insurgency, proxy wars, and back again. Maybe, and forgive my vulgarity, but it seems to me it's the big pricks with the little pricks complex.
    Regarding the motley crew of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz (who ironically was asked to give his opinion on the current situation in Iraq by David Gregory on Meet the Press this weekend), --David Gregory, have you no shame, no sense of history?-- it is
over 500,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; cost the United States over two trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight; and alienated many American allies in the Western world as well as the 15th century mentalities in the Middle East. Knowing that the Middle East is the graveyard of empires, we should have smacked Afghanistan, captured Bin Laden and scrammed. Mission accomplished. No treasure lost, no blood spent.
   I want to know, I need to know, has the hourglass run out of sand for the darker impulses of this demented decider of our national politics and his destructive policies for the great harm he has done to this once glorious nation?
  Today we pledge allegiance to Sheldon Adelson and/or Forster Freiss, and/or the Brothers Koch? --Or some cunning, corporation with a secret agenda? We're caught in a trap of ding-a-ling senators, an avaricious congress, and a can't walk-the-talk President. Well, in today's politics it's woe to America, because any one of these mega millionaires and corporations are able to write million dollar checks. In today's politics, virtually every imaginable issue you may care about is currently undermined and damaged by our new loose-as-a-goose campaign finance system which requires our elected officials of both political parties to spend more than half their time raising campaign dollars and then to vote 90% the way the money wants! Our friend, Lisa Bloom had it right when she wrote 'we are now a plutocracy'.

To right this egregious error, George W. Bush and gang must be put on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,800 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq.

obvious to all who seek the truth that the Bush Administration specifically redacted all evidence to the contrary and then deliberately, with malice aforethought manipulated the intelligence to lie us into war in Iraq. I contend that it's not just possible but necessary to hold these low life higher-ups responsible for heinous acts--not out of revenge, but to preserve justice.
     Make no mistake, things have been done to America that are unwise, unjust, unconscionable, unacceptable and un-American by President George Bush (and Obama) who pursued his partisanship, his profiteering, his perjury, is pardons and his power that were frankly, unpardonable. Now we have specific examples of intelligence being discarded, not because the intelligence was wrong but because the intelligence did not fit with President Bush's iron whim to invade Iraq which was a sovereign nation that did not have the capability to launch a "mushroom cloud". To right this egregious error, George W. Bush and gang must be put on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,800 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq. A case should be made to forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses--a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soldiers but also
     The American Military has been getting away with mass murder for decades. America's military has contaminated the planet with the indefensible use of depleted uranium on the battlefield. Equally egregious are the experimental vaccines given to our troops, without their knowledge or consent, which has resulted in the fact that 250,000 troops are now permanently disabled, 15,000 troops are dead and over 425,000 are ill and slowly dying from what the DOD still insists on calling "a mystery disease." At the end of the day, for what?
     The truth is we suck at war and we seem to go to war only against the most impoverished of nations, as that seems to be the only place our war makers feel confident in flexing their war muscles, when they know they can't bite back with nuclear force. Today, there's no sensible solution in going forward, and we can't go back. We are caught in our own kaleidoscope of horrors.
     I wish I can end this retort with a hopeful note, but sadly I see no upside in this situation.

Your friend,
iLENE
xo
Ilene


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