Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Democrats and War Escalation
The party has a large anti-war base, and that base will grow wider and stronger among voters as the realities of the Obama war program become more evident. The current backing or acceptance of the escalation from liberal think tanks and some online activist groups will not be able to prevent the growth of opposition among key voting blocs.
In their eagerness to help the Obama presidency, many of its prominent liberal supporters -- whatever their private views on the escalation -- are willing to function as enablers of the expanded warfare. Many assume that opposition would undermine the administration and play into the hands of Republicans. But in the long run, going along with the escalation is not helping Obama; by putting off the days of reckoning, the acceptance of the escalation may actually help Obama destroy his own presidency.
Ideally, in 2009, Democratic lawmakers would see as role models the senators who opposed the Vietnam War -- first Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, and then (years later) others including Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Earlier and stronger opposition from elected officials could have saved countless lives. The dreams of the Great Society might not have been crushed. And Richard Nixon might never have become president.
Now, everyone has the potential to help challenge the escalation of the Afghanistan-Pakistan war -- on a collision course with heightened disaster.
Over the weekend, the Sunday Times of London reported that U.S. drone attacks along the Afghan-Pakistani border on Saturday killed "foreign militants" and "women and children" -- while Pakistani officials asserted that "American drone attacks on the border . . . are causing a massive humanitarian emergency." The newspaper says that "as many as 1 million people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army."
This is standard catastrophic impact of a counterinsurgency war. In short, as former Kennedy administration official William Polk spells out in his recent book "Violent Politics," the key elements are in place for the U.S. war in Afghanistan to fail on its own terms while heightening the death and misery on a large scale.
Citing UN poverty data, a recent essay by Tom Hayden points out that in Afghanistan and Pakistan "the levels of suffering are among the most extreme in the world, and from suffering, from having nothing to live for, comes the will to die for a cause." While the Washington spin machine touts development aid, the humanitarian effort adds up to a few pennies for each dollar going to the U.S. war effort.
A report from the Carnegie Endowment began this year with the stark conclusion that "the only meaningful way to halt the insurgency's momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban." Hayden made the same point when he wrote that "military occupation, particularly a surge of U.S. troops into the Pashtun region in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the surest way to inflame nationalist resistance and greater support for the Taliban."
Over the weekend, in his pitch for more NATO support, President Obama tried to make the U.S. war goals seem circumscribed: "I want everybody to understand that our focus is to defeat Al Qaeda." But there's no evidence that Al Qaeda has a significant foothold in Afghanistan. That group long since decamped to Pakistan.
In any event, the claim that a massive war is necessary to fight terrorism is hardly new. Lest we forget: After George W. Bush could no longer cling to his claims about WMDs in Iraq, he settled on the anti-terrorist rationale for continuing the Iraq occupation.
Even among allies, the anti-terrorism rationale is not flying for a troop buildup in Afghanistan. After Obama's latest appeal to the leaders of NATO countries, as the New York Times reported Sunday, "his calls for a more lasting European troop increase for Afghanistan were politely brushed aside."
Europe will provide no more than 5,000 new troops, and most of them just for the Afghan pre-election period till late summer. In the words of the Times: "Mr. Obama is raising the number of American troops this year to about 68,000 from the current 38,000, which will significantly Americanize the war."
For those already concerned about Obama's re-election prospects, such war realities may seem faraway and relatively abstract. But escalation will fracture his base inside the Democratic Party. If the president insists on leading a party of war, then activists will educate, agitate and organize to transform it into a party for peace.
The mirage of wise counterinsurgency has been re-conjured by the Obama White House, echoing the "best and brightest" from Democratic administrations of the 1960s. But the party affiliation of the U.S. president will make no difference to people far away who mourn the loss of loved ones. And, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or the United States, the president will be held to the astute standard that Barack Obama laid out as he addressed unfriendly foreign leaders in his inaugural speech: "People will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."
- Posted in
71 Comments so far
Show All"If the president insists on leading a party of war, then activists will educate, agitate and organize to transform it into a party for peace."
The Dems never have been, nor ever will be, a party for peace. They supported both wars in Iraq, continue to support the war in Afghanistan (and now Pakistan), supported the bombing of Yugoslavia, supported Vietnam & Korea. Probably Grenada and Panama as well.
Does your "pen name" represent that you are "new" to the USA and its history?
The Americans from the very beginning have been a "warrior nation". Each generation, has its own wars. In fact ,the nation has never known a single generation, i.e. 30 year span, that did not have at least one war. Often, several at one time. "The Americans just love a war; if they are winning" (Mark Twain)
Instead of resorting to war as a "last resort", the USA opens several "resorts" of war with each administration.
These people (the Americans) L O V E war, they glorify it, they promote it, (often clandestinely while publicly condemning it), they wallow in it, in short; they live for the next war, and the one right after the next one also.
They have actually won just a few of them, the ones they loose, they still promote as "noble causes, just gone wrong because there were those "others" among us that made us loose the "lost wars"" And they just go on and on. A very real example of how impotent the USA actually is, they are the most technologically advanced, warrior nation currently in existence, and they still cannot defeat a force largely manned and controlled by ill equipped, marginally literate members of a medieval religious mind set who are willing to blow themselves and countless others to small pieces so that they can "eat lamb with Prophet in Paradise, while enjoying their "virgins"...........and after eight and seven years respectively, the USA is still there----getting the "shit kicked out of them".
In fact, for the avid reader, here is a challenge. Name one other nation currently in existence that has had MORE wars than the USA, in the past century? Then the one's who are still in existence who had more wars than the USA, in the previous centuries. You will find that the nations that continue to promote war---always join the ranks of the "former power holders", fall into decay, and become simple footnotes in history.
The USA has already filled the role as a terrible warning for the future.
The real question is simply----how much longer will the rest of the world be willing to tolerate the USA? I'm not betting on it, are you?
Good luck America, you really need it.
odoco
Interesting post . . .
Solutions? Advice? Anything other than skepticism and cynicism?
You desire a "Solution", "Advice"------
Here is one the USA never tried before.
Live the example that you present to the world, and the world will emulate that example.
But then, isn't that what the USA actually hs been doing all along?
Good Luck America, you really need it.
An example follows:
At last night's Country Music Awards Show, a song was introduced by a legless Iraq invasion vet.
The singer than began a song reviewing the "fallen warriors" in America's wars.
When it came to the Civil War, the photos were exclusively those of Confederate soldiers.
Imagine that. A "country" that fought against the United States of America, glorified as America's heroes.
No real surprise. In millions of minds, that war continues to this day.
Even the Civil War in the USofA was a manufactured war buy the corporate industrialists, like all the rest of the wars around the world...
Who was to gain...?
Remington and other gun manufacturers Stood to profit...
(even George Washington complained about war profiteers back in his day)
The Factory owners in the North, who depended on an abundance of cheap labor to maximize their profits...
(the men who fought in the wars or fled from the wars moved to the cities from the war ravaged countryside and competed for "scarce" jobs with the freed slaves from the south and the immigrants from the shore)
Expanded role of the Unitary Executive and Federal System under Lincoln...
Human Chattel Slavery was clumsy and expensive, compared to indentured servitude and wage slavery, where you are not responsible for the food and housing and health care of the workers... And with the introduction of modern technology, it made more sense to create and exploit the proletariat class to be the worker bees of society...
The confederacy of dunces still have sour grapes in their Dixie cup of Kool-Aid
Quite perceptive. Despite the issue of slavery that war was indeed fought to determine which faction would control this nation, the agrarian South or the industrial North.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits." Albert Einstein
Snobama (or is it Snobombya?)is looking more and more like LBJ everyday, an less and less like FDR, MLK, or JFK.
The Democrats are just another pro-corporate war party. That is why I'm a proud member of the Green Party.
I wish I could support the Democrats but I have some bright lines and one of them is peace.
The Democratic Party is already a party whose rank and file members are a "party for peace" but the Democrats in Congress and the White House are a "party for war" for which they vote at every election because the "other" party is the "greater evil." So it doesn't matters what these "activists" educate, agitate and organize among them. The war party still has its hands on the throat of the propaganda machine that wins elections, and those "activists" themselves (like Solomon and Tom Hayden) will tell them to vote for the Democratic wing of the war party, after which (in their dreams) they will be able to "pressure" the Democratic hawks to become doves. Hey, that's the way "progressive" politics works in the U.S.of A.
Yep, we don't hear calls much from Solomon or Hayden to "pressure" Obama. They argued that point strongly, but it's missing from their post-election articles.
-TIA
Obama isn't threatening to do anything he didn't assure us he would do during his 2-year campaign. Hell, half his strategy for mobilizing his base was that he would finish the job Bush started and abandoned in Afghanistan, because it was the "right war" all along, while Iraq was the "wrong war." This is the choice voters had between McCain and Obama: continue with the waste and futility of an ill-conceived and -executed war (Iraq), or surge insanely toward an equally disastrous and criminal war in Afghanistan.
Some choice. But it's the one our Democratic war faithfuls, led by Obama, have focussed on for 8 years as a corrective to the failed efforts of the Bush-Cheney crime ring to gain us a military foothold in the Mideast we can be proud of. Obama thinks 2,500 years of history are irrelevant, that just because no country has ever succeeded in conquering and subduing the Afghans doesn't mean he can't do it. We're already a failed state, so why not dream the impossible dream! "American interests" override every other consideration, especially the sane ones. Sow chaos and destruction everywhere! It's how we show the world Team America means business! Even when the business in question is bankrupt.
Thank you Ephraim. Trying to tell even the closest of kith and kin got me persecuted. It's sad how our electorate refuses to listen and look outside the corporate media polls. I was even called a racist last year for bringing up these same points that you discussed. My coworkers and friends still think I'm bonkers for pointing out that Nader and Mckinney were correct all along and that even Bob Barr got his brain repaired while Barry and McSame were hell bent on staying the Bush course. Between the Obamabots and the Limbaugh dittoheads, I see no difference.
P.S.: Pleased to meet you. I have read your posts on this site and I like the way you put long term history and thinking first. I look forward to reading more of your posts and sharing more of your thoughts with others. Maybe someday you and I can wake the robots out of their spell before it's too late.
Ephraim,
Why then did so many Obama supporters believe he was a candidate who, once in office, would end the Bush policies of continued war, and economic fair play?
I guess don't understand why so many Obamabots believed in things he never expressed, except "change we can believe in?"
Prior to Reagan, the adage used to be - Democrats started Wars and Republicans ended them. This held true through Viet Nam. Since then, both Democrats and Republicans have started wars and nobody seems to end them.
Anyone who thinks the Dems are an anti-war party or a peace party are sadly uneducated in US history and sadly ignorant of the Democrat party. They are just as much war mongers as the Republicans.
'Don't get fooled again' - Pete Townsend
I actively supported Obama last year. If he continues to push for escallation, I will not support him again. In fact, I will campaign against him.
The Democrats should listen to me, as should Republicans. There are many on both sides who are tired of these fruitless wars.
Um, Barry made his intentions clear last year. What were you thinking then?
Remember Vietnam!
How can anyone still seriously talk of the Democratic Party as if it exists separate from the Republican Party.
"Top Democrats and many prominent supporters -with vocal agreement, tactical quibbles and total silence- are assisting the escalation of the US war effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan".
Really? and that's news?
"Back home, on the political front, the escalation will drive deep wedges into the Democratic Party."
Let's hope those wedges split it wide open and finally expose it for the disgusting sham that it is. It's nothing but another arm of the Imperial War Party.
As usual, Norman Soloman is candid and largely correct, but I take issue with his framing about how many of the Democratic Party's prominent liberal supporters "assume that opposition [to Omama's announced military escalation in Afghanistan] would undermine the administration and play into the hands of the Republicans."
It is the policy of escalation itself that plays squarely into the GOP's hands, not the prospect of liberals opposing such escalation. Tricky Dick Nixon played the antiwar movement wedge issue like a fiddle to gain reelection in 1972, and George W. Bush and Karl Rove used the same tactic to achieve the same end result against John Kerry in 2004. Variations on this divide-the-Democratic-opposition theme were similarly at work during Reagan's invasion of Grenada, and in George H.W. Bush's military forays into Panama to bring down Noreiga, and later in forcing a Senate authorization vote on driving Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait.
Sure, all those Dems who failed to stand up for peace when the chips were down did indeed "enable" US militarism. But let us not lose sight of the forest by blithely pretending there is a moral equivalence among all the trees.
At least the Democratic Party has a peace wing (marginalized as progressives certainly consistently are within the DLC beltway leadership and in the mainstream media). But don't shoot the messenger. Don't equate the letter carrier with the author of the letter.
It is the policy of militarism that undermines Democratic values and plays into Republican hands, not the anguished opposition protests of those closer to the views of Main Street and the partisan grassroots.
Bill from Saginaw
Little side issue that seems to have been missed: If you were a terrorist organization in Afganistan/Pakistan for the last two years, and you heard all this talk about the US coming to get you. Would you stay in Afganistan/Pak? Or would you leave behind a token operation (something the US can keep its focus on) and move your main operations to another country entirely? I just don't get why no one has thought of this.
Well I thought (and think) constantly of this during the Iraqi occupation; I call it whack-a-mole where you beat the resisters down in one place and they pop up in another. Any talk of "defeating al Qaeda in AfPk" makes the ridiculous assumption that the "enemy" will remain in those countries to be "defeated." There is NO WAY to "narrow" the military opposition to American imperialism by defeating resistance operations in one place; ergo the Obama "strategy" is a bunch of who-know-what.
So that makes 2 of us ;+)
"In their eagerness to help the Obama presidency, many of its prominent liberal supporters -- whatever their private views on the escalation -- are willing to function as enablers of the expanded warfare. Many assume that opposition would undermine the administration and play into the hands of Republicans."
I think you got it wrong Norman. These liberals realize that AIPAC has Obama over a barrel. Bibi already said that if we don't act, Israel will (and start WWIII).
Sioux Rose
We can argue which party has more blood on its hands, or the degree to which both are now in cahoots owing their greatest allegiance it would seem to their money masters, most of which are invested in the military-industrial-complex and/or its big pharma/big agri/big prison complex cousins.
Instead of either-or, many of us prefer to transcend the mindset that opts for war AT ALL! I think there is promise here in this darkest of times, that with so many seeing literal loss on a personal level, the usual rants for so-called patriotism masking naked aggression of other lands will not cut it. Too many jobs have gone missing, too many injustices gone unredressed, too much money (at a time it's being called scarce when directed at the things that DO matter) being squandered on these macho conquests. Even if we recognize that the Iraqi occupation is mostly being done to control the last supplies of oil, and the ruse against Afghanistan to go after gas and other resources... a summary count of the costs behind these "enterprises" likely would demonstrate that for all the waste on these pursuits, their costs to our nation (not to mention the unfortunates in the path of our nation's callous military technology) exceed any remote argument for their viability.
I think ACTUAL conditions, a lessening in the overall quality of life for a great many, are going to make clear what an onslaught of political deceptions never can. The Truth is coming home and it is a powerful force to reckon with... even in a land of sleeping numb-skulls.
Hi Sioux,
Sometimes, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at our dysfunctional electorate. All I can tell myself is maybe it will take another Great Depression but 2-3 times of the 1930s one for the electorate to emerge out of its hatred and ignorance. Having studied 20th century US history and thought about Mars and Venus, sometimes I wonder if Mars dominated the mindset through most of the last century except for the Great Depression Era and then let Venus bring some sanity to all this madness only for Mars to strike again when he thought people could forget. I'm guessing Mars has learned to manipulate the public against itself by making it think that war and ignorance are somehow the panacea.
Sioux Rose
Hi Jennifer. Being new to the forum you have not probably read my LONG explanations of how Mars came to dominate... the key lies with patriarchal religions. Venus is exalted in Pisces, the sign of THE Christ, the Avatar who arrived to seek to change the warrior mindset that belonged to Rome and represented the Age of Aries. (Aries is ruled by Mars.) The elite of that time (probably Rove was involved as one that adept at telling big lies had to have some major prior practice) maintained the old warrior ways but put Jesus' name on these as endorsement. The Piscean Age (that which is now giving rise to a major phase transition as we move into Aquarius) happens to lock deeply into the quality of deception. People have been lied to by their entrusted church and state leaders, with almost equal measure derived from much of academe, as well.
During the Great Depression pain and poverty were so pervasive that compassion made a brief comeback. It encapsulates what Jesus came to teach, and is considered by many "a higher love," thus resonant with Venus. By all estimates, the scales of justice have swung so far to the right and made war at the "king's pleasure" while bankrupting the kingdom, all the while the king's fiscal wizards have helped themselves to enormous riches to facilitate that bankruptcy. It would appear that it's time for a definitive swing back in Venus' direction. Right on time, too, given the next Great Depression is already in nascent stages of unfolding.
Hi Sioux. I'll have to do even more searching through the archives to find your posts which explain a lot but I think it won't be too hard since I usually google this all anyway. I'd love to read your explanations you posted earlier regardless of the length. I'm a patient reader so I won't mind. In fact, I get a subtle feeling that I might overcome the reeling worries, anxieties, and bitterness that I get stuck with everytime I feel helpless and powerless. Thank you. :)
In the tradition of the Matriarchs, (or Goddess) people lived peacefully for half a million years. Then the patriarchs showed up, many millennia too late to be believable, and had the daunting task of tryng to undo all the Woman values that had endured so long. So the book of genesis is the patriarch manifesto, where everything got flipped upside down. Woman power was most importantly (but far from exclusively) manifested in the great gift of bringing forth new life. So the angry god in the sky says man comes first and then- look at this- Adam gives birth to woman! Imagine that! Next Woman is made to appear given to wicked ways because she listens to the snake. And why did she do that, really? She did it because snakes were magic, being able as they were to be reborn (in biology this is only the shedding of the old skin) So snakes would be Eve's familiars, and so she would not only listen to him, she would trust him. in the old religion this was all completely natural. But the patriarch spin says she should never have done it, never have eaten the fruit (no fruit ws ever "forbidden" by mother nature). Now the patriarchs in full fury curse all women forever, and make humans ashamed of their bodies. The bodies that had always been joyfully celebrated, along with sexuality,in the millennia of the Matriarchs.
Finally the crazy old patriarch god takes the earth, Mother Nature herself away, and gives the earth to man, so he owns it now, and all the living things on the earth are under his "dominion". only now are we beginning to realize the full horror of this declaration of war on nature, as we see men busily plundering our planet, clearcutting our forests, blowing the tops off mountains, poisoning our water and our air.
Native Americans, like all first people- many of whom are still alive- never had anything to do with the sky god- you could as well call him mars too- just check out his rules of engagement in any battle in the bible :"destroy it utterly, leave nothing alive"
Sioux Rose
ABUELO: Wonderful post! You articulated in this entry a synopsis of what my latest book is all about! The only thing you left off was the inroads into bio-engineering which is like taking ALL of nature's bounty, a genetic library of boundless proportions, and suddenly putting it under the auspices of men in laboratory robes, men (and women trained to accord their "professional" views with those of patriarchally-oriented science) who think little of melding ostrich genes with those of clover as one example... in other words, they are doing to biology's banks of time the equivalent of poisoning its purity. Just as the biogenetic equivalent of corn is now fusing with fields planted with the genuine article, the very labyrinths of life itself have been tainted. Woe unto future surviving generations when the full measure of this bastardization of living forms walks the earth, or sits in fields better made for the harvest of items that would nourish.
Thanks Siuox Rose- that means a lot, coming from you.
actually i got kind of wound up there, and figured i'd gone on about long enough for one post.
i absolutely agree with you about bio engineering, and what Vandana Shiva calls "biopiracy" like when monsanto tries to patent seeds. As if they did not really belong always and forever to mother earth and her small farmers.
but is this not an extension to high madness of sky god's handing over "dominion" over the earth and all her life to men?
is your book published yet?
Sioux Rose
ABUELO: I don't think the sky god handed that power over so much as human agents abducted it. My book is about the cycles of time with the contention these are not separate from us, but pulse through us. It also explains at length how the moon moves us at profound levels as she animates not only the ocean's tides, but those that dwell in memory. These are the recurrent stories of time, embedded into the ethers to influence their character in a manner that draws parallels with the biological function of DNA (as it gives rise to physical structures). I don't think Jung himself could say for sure that the archetypes were not both products of the collective consciousness AND innate in and of themselves. In any case, given the strategy of keeping a sizable portion of the US population on anti-depressant drugs (the times ARE quite depressing! But is shutting down the sentience that reacts to what is underway necessarily a wise course of action?) I felt the need to explain why moods alter, and teach the rhythm structure underlying the themes of time and their periodic recurrence.
This work is being self-published, and I am currently -reading the galleys due Monday (an arduous task as I have to morph into editor, a persona better suited to a Virgo).
Thank you again for your gracious acknowledgement. I see you as a wise soul posting here with a good heart, added to a glib and incisive wit.
Actually Sioux, the Dems suck, but Repugs have lots more blood on their hands.
At the rate we're heading for Afghanistan and Pakistan, it'll be equals.
Which party did the President belong to when the following wars were started, and which party held the Presidency for the longest period of time, during the following wars: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War? And which party has controlled Congress the last few years, as the Afghan and Iraq wars have dragged on, with repeated Congressional approval for their continuation? Hint: not the Republicans! The US government has had blood on its hands ever since its founding, and throughout their history both major parties of today have played an equal role in this violence.
Democrats and escalation? Like love and marriage, one can't go without the other. That's why Democrats have been known as the War Party. They have given us every war that has killed more than 10,000 Americans. WW I (no reason to enter it), WW II (FDR), Korean War, Vietnam War.
Remember, Clinton got us involved in the Balkans. We are still occupying Kosovo with a large base. Obama has war hawk Brzezinski as one of the driving forces behind his foreign policy. The same Islamic extremists Brzezinski trained in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets gave us 9/11, thank you Jimmy Carter!
One of over a thousand bases not in the United States; five thousand bases in the States.
Don't blame it on democrats or republicans; but on the congressmen and women whom we seem to elect for life. They believe they don't have to answer to public opinion and desires. Truthfully, they don't have to as, long as we keep voting them in, each election.
On another note: The USNS Comfort just left Norfolk on a humanitarian mission to the Caribbean. This is the sort of escalation we need, not a war that cannot be won by military might alone.
Obama is simply reading the "President's Play Book." Wall Street runs the government (therefore Larry Summers is your man and not Dean Baker) and the Pentagon runs foreign policy (that's why we have Gates and not Kucinich).
It's sad but true--they sometimes pretend that they want to end war only to escalate the same old poop.
Norm does it again. He's complicit in getting the Dems elected and then attempts to portray himself as their critic.
What a joke!
Who does he think he is fooling?
One can believe there are tactical advantages in having a Democratic president. Those might include more space to organize, and arousal of energy in young people (which may later become radicalized). I think Solomon worked for the Dems for reasons like this. After they were elected, he starts criticizing them. Well, Right - that's what he's supposed to do! It's wrong to trash him for that.
BTW - to Greens and other 3rd partiers - I was with the Greens for years. Go out and get some of your people elected to local and state offices. Work for instant runoff voting (IRV) or proportional representation. Then think about contesting the presidency. We have a two-party (actually one-party) system. Voting for Nader or McKinney is a protest vote. Not wasted, exactly, but it doesn't accomplish much. We can try to build a 3rd party from the ground up. But we're not there yet. So why help elect Republicans? And the whole system is so rigged that it's hard to see where a 3rd party would make that much difference anyway. UNLESS we get IRV.
This poster shows contempt for democracy and ordinary voters. They're too dumb and feckless to deserve the right to vote for a wide range of candidates--just spoon-feed them two corporate clones, keep 'em distracted. Above all, these people are just aren't worth the time to present a progressive agenda in a presidential race--they don't need to hear about single-payer health care, public financing of elections, carbon tax, cutting the military budget to fund social needs, putting the Wall Street criminals behind bars, etc.
Just run for dog catcher and make no attempt to press progressive ideas to a national audience. Stay local and impotent. Cede the field to the corporate whores.
Yes, and I call myself a Green and progressive!
Wotta joke.
Obama: judged, and found wanting. Just another corporate Pentagon puppy.
Isn't this author the same guy who served as a party delegate last year even when he knew Barry's intentions crystal clear ? Besides, this party never learned its lessons be it LBJ's Vietnam War, Raygun's tax cuts for the wealthy, or Dubya's more tax cuts for the wealthy and Iraq war. I remember when I met one of the assistant managers of a company that was doing business with us and even met him and his wife. He was lucky to survive the Vietnam war despite losing his limbs and it took years for his wife and family to bring him to mental sanity. My biggest fear is that like Dubya and LBJ, Barry will produce more victims like him.
P.S.: My remote friend that I was referring to used to post here as "JWVerez" but no word on him yet. He was last reported in somewhat better but still ill condition and while most employees love him, top management is hell bent on replacing him. I can't say what they're up to but I've been told that they're often very political and that they've been drooling for McSame or Barry to escalate the wars and job outsourcing policies. Very scary.
It is not a pleasant thought, but it seems to me, at this point, that the American culture itself, as a whole -- in the majority -- are war mongering and conquering. And I don't find history refuting that. All humans have a war mentality as part of them, but since it's inception the USA has emphasized and consolidated this tendency. Of course there are the waves of propaganda from the rich elite, but this is allowed and taken seriously by most people, instead of being refused.
It is only when the culture itself changes -- or is neutralized by lack of resources -- that the US will stop making wars. One way or the other, this is on the way because it can no longer be sustained: we have run out of resources and capabilities, unless we go nuclear and destroy everything (which is a real danger). The people get the government they demand.
Here it is -- Americans want war.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/general_current_events/57_want_military_response_to_north_korea_missile_launch
57% Want Military Response to North Korea Missile Launch
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of U.S. voters nationwide favor a military response to eliminate North Korea’s missile launching capability. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 15% of voters oppose a military response while 28% are not sure.
[...]
Support for a military response comes from 66% of Republicans, 52% of Democrats and 54% of those not affiliated with either major political party.
You are absolutely correct. The United States has been a war-mongering entity since its very inception . . . and even before its official birth date of 1776, truth be told.
Yet it amazes me how many Americans insist we are a peaceful culture. These are the same people who ask, in all earnestness, "Why do they hate us?"
One need only look at the violent crap that passes as entertainment in this country to realize how ridiculous that notion - of our peaceful nature - really is.
Obama was very clear during the campaign that he would continue the wars and increase the military. All of the pseudo-anger directed toward him and the Dem Party is misplaced. It is the voters who screwed up. They are now getting what they voted for.
Maybe we can now do something about a third party - that pushes health of our communities above trillion dollar enforcers for big business. The old bomber bake sale wish, but as long as the republicrats both play the fear card so effectively and own the media...