I have a big problem of understanding, how anyone in the Pentagon, or our elected, or our high ranking military officers could possibly believe we would win another war against anyone. And if it were an atomic war, no one would win. No one wins most wars actually.

So many of our generals and prior generals have stated, with good reason, that our army is brocken. That was LAST year. At this time in Iraq, over 20,000 of the ground troops serving there are over the age of 55. Many are on a second or third tour of from 12 to 14 months. Our military vehcles are in a sorry state of condition. Many of our aircraft are in poor condition and most are over twenty years of age, many are much older.

The troop morale is not good, they are rapidly becoming tired of attempting to stop a civil war, and call it what we may, it is a civil war in Iraq. A war with Iran would be a tragic mistake and China and Russia have both stated they would suport Iran if anyone attacks or bombs them. It don't look good to me.

Amerika has been heading toward fascism for a long time. The neocons didn't start us in this direction, they are only the purest incarnation thus far. The laws are in place to impliment an brutal dictatorship though the need to do so hasn't been there. Unless this administration is removed and/or those laws rolled back, we will find ourselves in a fully implemented fascist state when the economy fails or opposition grows, and don't delude yourself that a vote for Clinton or Obama will make a diffence in stopping the fascist juggernaut here or against Iran.

Read HIenberg. Read Kunsler. Read Monbiot.

Its over. Bushco will attack Iran (after a suitable homeland black op to whip the sheeple into a frenzy). But the IMMEDIATE aftermath will be a COMPLETE severing of oil supplies from the Middle East. The Al-Suad regime will not be able to oppose the will of their populace. OPEC will institute an embargo that will make '72-'73 look like a kindergarden spat. US national oil production peaked and delined in'73 just as reknowned petrogeologist M.K. Hubbert predicted. And the early data coming in says world production peaked in '05-'06. You will be fighting a war over fumes, on fumes.

The hydrogen economy is a lie. Ethanol is a lie. Nuke power is a lie.

Just last week Bush signed into law the ability to sieze your assets if you attend a peace march. The camps are built, ready to be filled. The neo-con private army, Blackwater, is already in place.

The great experiment of the democratic republic of the US is over. Murdered by the intelectuall grandchildren of the Nazis.

It's your mess. You clean it up.

I do believe a fascist state will be attempted by the neo-con chickenhawks. But after observing them in action (Katrina; Iraq; the passport fiasco; and on and on) I do not believe they have the competence to pull it off.

What I see coming is worse: The complete breakdown of social order. Chaos. They will clumsily and ineffectually attempt to use brute force to quell the remnants of democratic ferment. The armed forces will not follow them, or at least not smoothly and completely, and they will be unable to prevail. The result will be bantustans of warring factions, some loyal to the fascists, some to the nation. And there won't even be passports to get out of here with.

Could get really bad, y'all...

Kunsler has an insight as to how bad it will get. Read 'The Long Emergency'. Scare the crap out of yourself. Then get a shovel, a hoe, and an axe, and start a garden.

Time to grow up kiddies. No more 'Star Trek'. No more 'American Idol'. It's gonna be 'Handmaids Tale' meets 'V For Vendetta" right before its 'Road Warrior'.

You want to know that the future will be?

Read S. M. Stirlings 'Dies the Fire'. No national government. No national army. Small bands of neighbors helping each other survive, fighting it out with swords and axes against thugs from other places in the ruins of a porno shop.

Your on your own.

No comments here on Steve himself.
Here is a person who can have anything - as most neocons seem to be.
I am not sure whether he has been directly effected by Mr. Bush's policies negatively.

But here he is, speaking on behalf on the have nots.
Kudos to you Mr. Weber.

alamac, Amerika is already here for Muslims, "illegals," prisoners, environmental and animal rights activists who aren't adequately respectful of property. They'll get the rest of us after the next turrist attack.

It doesn't much matter whether it's Iran or some other place. That this world has become nothing more than a market is clear. A market for human lives, for human flesh, for souls. That each of you to an extent, and fully, for all of the fools who support or commit the atrocities being passed as leadership in the world today, value money over all else is sickening. No, it's maddening, disgusting, downright fucking evil. It would be much easier for me to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger if you'd all just stop with the bullshit platitudes of remorse. None of you are the least bit concerned with the lives of your children, much less somebody elses children. The rich don't care that their kids are gang raping co-eds and their ministers are butt fucking alter boys. None of ya care that you cannot communicate with your tattoo ridden children, or that the driving of nails through body parts and smoking and injecting and ingesting chemicals is a scream for us to stop the madness. You all whisper that you're against oppression and murder while sipping your lattes and paying for it. You sure would support something good if it would just materialize before your lazy eyes. But prepared to give up a goddamned thing you are not. Your capitalist lifestyle is doomed to fail. The leeches at the top prey on all, without consideration of any. They are no different than those of you in the middle who support them except for the capital they have to work with. As progress creates more and more, the need to dispose of the surplus consumes and maddens you. Either you mutilate an entire culture to make way for more free markets, or you go buy more needless bullshit. In both cases the waste is futile. You want more. You don't care that what you get is taken from another. It's the way of life, the American dream, human nature. Dead indians would probably disagree, but human nature it has become, at least.

So yes, the morals and ethics of the founding fathers are totally gone. The possibility of restoring order and fairness in the world is outta the question. Simply because humans will not consider making their lives any less easy and comfortable than they are right now, and they aren't smart enough to consider what happens next.

You moan and groan that congress didn't have the sense, compassion, fortitude or political savvy to withhold funds with which to continue the wholesale annhialation of a people. What funds should they have withheld? Your goddamned funds! The abject failure in halting the murderous rampage by stopping the funding for George the Antichrist, that you see with crystal clarity, that congress took part in, was within your means to carry out. Yet you wish to conceal from yourselves the fact that your inaction is just as hideous. Oh but it is only different in terms of how much you have to lose. The puppet masters stand to gain trillions. Unspendable amounts of fortune and power, while you only stand to maintain your subservient roles in the master plan of total destruction. Your slave wages and I-pods. Your blessed televisions and anit-depressants. Your false indignation. For this you will gladly give up the right for my children and yours to pursue happiness, in a clean sustainable environment. For this you will sacrifice the rule of law, the concepts of fairness and equality, the right for people not like you to take a breath.

But rest assured, there will be noone left to say they told you so. The path is clear and we are well on our way down that path. I'm afraid it is irreversable at this point. Yet I still have a fragment of hope, that we can all pull together and save the world. But the time to act was years ago, not years from now.

If you like the thought of absolute domination, torture, cruelty, humiliation, and suffering, then let this play out. It won't be long before the fate of the Iraqis is your own.

If you want to tell yourself that radioactivity all over the world will be tolerable, then allow the current way of life to continue. Go ahead, send em some more money to build more nukes. You can even tell yourself that it might not happen.

If you believe that the powers that be will eventually become satisfied and allow for their newly acquired power and riches to go to waste, then order another latte. Maybe you can even become one of them.

If you think the way of capitalist markets will balance themselves out inspite of the absolute garauntee that surplus produces more need to manipulate the people of the world, keep paying taxes. In fact, open your own business and manipulate a smaller portion of the market for your own profits and be swallowed up by a larger corporation.

But do the borderline basket cases of the world like me a favor, and stop pretending to give a shit. The false hope is most disturbing...

If you think like me, and honestly want to do your part to stop the terrible treatment of humans worldwide, you must refrain from paying for it. There is no other way. Without your money and mine, and the trillions of dollars collected annually, the monsters in Washington will have nothing with which to operate.

Except of course the trillions tossed in by the already filthy rich who want to continue down the road to dominance.

Guess where that money comes from? Exactly! You again. Stopping paying taxes isn't enough. We also have to stop the accumulation of wealth by the dozen or so "companies" that still continue to leverage, buyout, takeover, sabatoge and manipulate us, the working class, and the small business owner.

It is with these two overwhelming sources of revenue that the current governmental system continues to grow larger and continues to suppress us. But as the divide between them and us becomes more and more vast, they are compelled to force their will upon the remainder of the world's population. They don't yet own everything in the US but it's just a matter of time before they do. Regulations and subsidies designed to ruin the small business are becoming more prevalant and more successful. The working class can by sheer mathematics, only afford to buy so much of what the mega thieves produce, forcing them to do business with the "free world". It is the same regulation, manipulation, subsidizing and overall cheating that leads others to hate us. War will never end, untill the last one, which is coming sooner rather than later.

Please, please, take the last opportunity to save humanity. NOW!!! Withhold your funds from the evil doers! If it involves interest, do without. If it involves a company on the stock market, buy it somewhere else. Make it if you can. If it involves insurance, rest assured you are propping up the oligarchy. If you fear for your credit, remeber that is how the ruling elite track your value, not your loved ones. If it invoves fossill fuels, you may as well become less reliant on that because only the elite will have access to the last of it anyway. Lower your standards for the good of the world.

I don't wish to offend. Only to raise awareness. Before it's too late. Damn.

peace, not piece

Hate to nitpick, but in the closing lines the author betrays part of the problem: Ignorance of history, invoked by putting Abe Lincoln on a pedestal before Thomas Jeferson, when so many great men could be there first. You want a slave abolitionist? Why not Benjamin Franklin, who was never a tyrant?

Why do people persist in this worship of Abraham Lincoln, who was neither a great president nor a friend to african americans? He made white supremacist remarks in the Lincoln-Douglas debates and he belonged to the "colonization" movement, which had as its intent the objective of sending the 'emancipated' black slaves back to Africa or to plantations in the Caribbean.

In fact of all the presidents, Lincoln was most like George W. Bush. He was taller than Bush and more intelligent, but otherwise quite similar in many ways--none of them good. If we don't even know what sort of men made this a free country, how can we hope to defend it?

As they say on day three of the flood, "This is no longer a rescue mission." Rent "Mad Max," arm yourself, get survival training, and head north. Some sort of massive enlightenment followed by a rapid action plan are beyond the scope of human capability, especially on the scale which is necessary.

The good news is that not all of us will die. Those of us preparing for the obvious near future plan on watching this movie until the credits roll.

...er ...wow... marctileston...

Did you type that all on one breath?

alamac:
i agree
i think we call this type of leader a warlord..
will be such fun..
the ultimate football game..
ken

"We will join the parade of nations who succumbed to the intoxicating effects of their own poetry..."

no...it was never poetry...it was
never moral.

vote green

Someone once said that the love of money is the root of all Evil.

"Now It's On to Iran and Let's Win There!"

Depends on what "win" means in this context. If the object of this spectacle is to ensure hatred for the USA all over the world that will span generations, or the fiancial collapse of the USA - BOTH scenarios will be the guaranteed consequences of the USA and that is not even half of it - then "Mission Accomplished."

See that's the trouble with optimists like steve. They mean well but they sugar coat everything. What steve said ...plus the added disruptions and constant emergencies brought on by global warming. Let's just say things will be getting hot and hotter still if steve is right and it's already too late. Remember steve is the optimist.

i just love it when posters invoke a mad max/road warrior dystopic future and tell people to stock up on their guns & spam, or start their own branch davidian compound somewhere (all organic, of course) as the only way of surviving the nightmare coming upon us. typical american individualist claptrap. the future is yours, if you have the courage to kill your neighbors and hordes of invaders when the time comes.

either we all figure this crap out together, or there is no future for anyone. your pea shooters aren't going to save you from the fast approaching fascist police state, much less ravenous hordes fleeing environmental/social catastrophe.

marctileston,

Great read, and I agree with you. We demand everybody else make sacrafices while we sit in comfort.

How many commentors on this site would actually run for office and try and make a difference. How many actually even vote. How many have SUV's, cell phones, and iPod's? How many drive eco-friendly cars?

We are part of the problem. And other nations are paying for it.

Iraq is paying for it now, Iran will pay for it next. South and Central America paid for it in the 80's. All of the Middle East paid for it at the turn of last century and now we are after them again. We won't even answer the question "why do they hate us". We don't want to know the answer because we'd have to change our lifestyle.

History shows that in every fascist dictatorship there is a partisan resistance. In evey economic collapse there are community organizers. There is no point in doomsaying, we need to be able to build new and better institutions under the belly of the beast and a better world from the ahses of the old. Most people will work together, it's human nature. Yes, there are always barbarians, there are now, but they can be fended off, especially once their bullets run out and they are hungry.