When someone makes a move
Of which we don't approve,
Who is it that always intervenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.,
They have their place, I guess,
But first send the Marines!*
From George W. Bush's war machine comes word that thousands more Marines will soon head for Afghanistan to fight the war he abandoned nearly five years ago for the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq.
This doesn't mean we're getting out of Iraq. We will probably be debating the Iraq war in the 2012 Presidential campaign, along with the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and God-knows-where-else.
Call it the endless war syndrome – the result of too many years of out-of-control policies that have left us with little choice but to fight on and on for fictitious reasons and an arrogant illusion of superiority.
Bush has placed this nation in an untenable position. We have no business in Iraq but we can't leave. We could have finished the job in Afghanistan in 2003 but we pulled out to fight his useless war in Iraq. Bush will spend most of his final year in office trying to find a way to declare war on Iran.
John McCain says he doesn't care if troops are in Iraq for the next 100 years. Hillary Clinton won't commit to withdrawing troops from harm's way. No other first-tier candidate in either party promises to bring all the troops home if elected.
America's war machine is on automatic pilot and no one knows where to find the break.
For might makes right,
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
'Till somebody we like can be elected.
American conceit exists on the notion that our way of life is the only acceptable way for all other nations to live. Our system, our leaders believe, is the only acceptable one for all other peoples.
We attempt to export an illusion of democracy that doesn't exist in our own country. We extol the virtues of a freedom that we, as Americans, lost long ago. We preach ideals that we neither support nor practice.
We are a nation built on a false premise, attempting to foist a lie on a world that no longer trusts or admires us.
Diplomacy is not an option because when trust dies, peaceful negotiation becomes collateral damage.
So the only thing we have left is military force and the constant, politically-expedient need to invent excuses to use it.
Members of the corps
All hate the thought of war,
They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.
Stop calling it aggression,
O we hate that expression.
We only want the world to know
That we support the status quo.
They love us everywhere we go,
So when in doubt,
Send the Marines!
*(Song lyrics from "Send the Marines" by Tom Lehrer)
28 thoughts on “America’s uncontrollable war machine”
Sandra,
I actually agree with you that more federal government means less freedom, and I’ve already stated that I don’t march in sync with the Bush administration. (Nor do I want federally mandated health care, which in effect would hand Hillary the keys to the respirator.)
So I’m not “defending” Bush per se, just pointing out that any president who allows this nation to be attacked without responding to it is inviting more attacks and thus less freedom for all of us by default. (Because I’m even less crazy about entrusting a foreign power with our freedoms — particularly a fundamentalist Islamic state.)
But I must confess that I don’t buy into your belief that Bush is a mere tool of the religious right. His “Crusades” remark was merely a bad word choice in my estimation (not exactly a first for the president), and besides … how could he target Islam and simultaneously kiss up to the Arabs, as you contend? I don’t see how the two could co-exist.
Frankly, if any religion is on a crusade these days, it’s Islam (or at least the fundamentalist version), as evidenced by everything from the destruction of icons in Afghanistan to the bombing of Christian churches in the Middle East. And — oh, yeah — that little incident at the World Trade Center …
Carl, the true innocents in America are those who did not learn a trade to support themselves and their family. It all comes down to better academic programs. I remember before Bush was elected and the RNC called in some successful educators across America. These were teachers who taught academics the way they learned them. I saw a dozen men and women try to influence the RNC by opening up the State Board of Education to gather to learn from those who succeeded in even the most poverty stricken areas of America.
This was all ignored for a federal mandate to test the kids. 7 years later not a single drop out came back and those who stayed ended up with a 5th grade reading ability.
Arizona has opened 20 some off charter schools to catch those students who were overlooked. Our drop out rate has fallen and the reading scores have improved. The Federal government does not have the authority to test any child in America. It simply wasted 7 years, and wasted millions of dollars.
We’ve known for 200 years how to teach children to read and write and somehow nobody understands the problem. How can private schools do this with a third of the cost of public schools? I think forced discipline might be the answer.
Well, if you listened clearly to President Bush’s comments after 9/11, he called for a Crusade! This is a dangerous way to look at 9/11.
I most certainly did not want to shrug off Afghanistan but to go in and take out the Taliban. He made an attempt to do this and then diverted to his original plan to go after Islam in Iraq. Many D.C. insiders have written that Bush wanted Saddam and used Iraq as terrorists. They are now! I believe that Bush diverting to Iraq simply brought Al Qaeda into one place. It caused the deaths of more people than 9/11.
There should be no Taliban left in Afghanistan but it would have kept us out of Iraq had we done it. This sits smack into the responsibility of Bush 43. Also had we removed our troops out of the Muslim holy ground, there would have been no 9/11.
Do some reading on this before you slash into my comments. I absolutely believe that the religious right put Bush into the White House to destroy Islam. Bush had another agenda as he discovered the Middle East oil had peaked and he wanted all that was left. He makes kissies with the Arabs and even OPEC, and many Americans believe him. Well, most do not.
You can continue to protect Bush but you cannot clear his legacy which has destroyed America’s reputation all over the world along with the Republican Party and done great harm to the religious right. I cringe when so many Republican candidates continue to brag about Bush’s accomplishments as it shows me the corruption; that is now the foundation for the GOP.
In my opinion the Republicans are as corrupt as the Democrats and another 8 years of either party will destroy what is left of American values. The more influence we are forced to live with under the federal government, the faster we will destroy America.
Just look at the campaigns of the Republicans running at this time. They all play with words and retract their own statements when called to explain them. There is only one straight talker among the lot and that is Ron Paul. I’m not certain he won’t fall into the corruption of the Evangelicals as that emotion has pulled many decent men into a force for Jesus Christ which will erase our American Values.
The future of America looks very bleak to many of us. I’m tired of fighting for American freedoms when the voters don’t want them back.
Thanks Paolo for one of your fine, thoughtful, humanitarian posts! 🙂
I agree, if we have to choose relative to which side of the welfare/warfare state coin we should wager in a coinflip, then I’ll opt for the welfare side as you…!
What’s the point of this continual, ongoing butchery of innocents simply to enrich the shadowy oligarchs that own the MIC, our government and other governments of the world; lock, stock and barrel…?!
Carl Nemo **==
War is the ultimate government program.
As a libertarian, I disagree with liberals who want to expand so-called “social programs.” But I disagree infinitely more with so-called “conservatives.”
“Conservatives” want to use the coercive power of the state in its most destructive manner: WAR.
At least, in social programs, you produce something of marginal value, be it inefficiently produced school lunches or tacky, cheap “public housing.” Even the most graft-ridden “liberal” bureaucrat doesn’t want to destroy the housing project he just created.
But in war, you see government at its most essential: killing people, destroying property, torturing helpless prisoners–you name it.
Conservatives, you see, are really much more pro state than so-called “liberals.” Their protestations against the “welfare state” are worse than hollow: if you don’t believe this, observe how George Bush expanded federal spending across the board, with his allegedly “conservative” Republican majorities in both houses of Congress refusing to restrain him at all!
Libertarians and Liberals should unite against the very concept of WAR. War is almost never the answer to anything.
Sandra Price wrote:
Was it the religious right who wants to force us into the Great Crusade that destroys Islam?
___________________________
*** Well no, Sandra, if you’re talking about Afghanistan, the reason we’re there is obviously 9/11.
As with Pearl Harbor, no president — Republican, Democrat or otherwise — can allow an unprovoked attack on American soil without responding forcefully to it. Otherwise, you’re only inviting more attacks on your soil and more death to thousands more of your citizens. That’s a lesson as basic as observing what happens when you allow a bully to steal your lunch money.
We can always debate the merits of sending troops into Iraq, but Afghanistan was perfectly justified. I have a hard time believing that this country would be safer today if we’d just shrugged off the World Trade Center attack, buried the 3,000 victims, and invited Osama & Friends to join us in singing Kum-ba-ya and making S’mores around the campfire.
Of the 99% in “blissful ignorance”, about 50% of those I would respectfully amend to “willful blissful ignorance”.
“I often sit back and blame it on the amount of reading I do and blame it on my imagination.”
Its not your imagination. You are among the 1% who are awake. 99% live on in blissful ignorance. If everyone would read one relevant political book a year we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today. Just my humble opinion.
— Kent Shaw
Warren, your nightmares are what keep me actively writing and sending warning signs to as many people as possible. It has been many years since I trusted the American government. I often sit back and blame it on the amount of reading I do and blame it on my imagination. I saw this monster movement start after WW2 and Korea when the John Birch Society began their dreadful movement to destroy American values. It was my first hint of a movement to make America for white Christians only.
Americans are too easily diverted to their guilt of sins and not having the ability to live by their own convictions, need the illusion of a higher being. This caused a majority of once proud independent Americans to fold up and follow their clergy.
Even the LP divided into social laws versus independent freedoms. I believe America is doomed to follow the most powerful leader that has morphed into the military comlex that Ike warned us about.
We apparently cannot stop this until we get into a serious revolution against D.C. I fear it will take a near extinction of our populations before some hidden survival instinct kicks in. My living on the San Andreas fault brought with it a natural survival action. I will never accept slavery as a natural way of existence. There is no movement for freedom left in America.
I’m afraid you are right, Warren.
— Kent Shaw
These wars will come home. I fear that’s their purpose. The “War on Terror” will become a war between the government and its people. Make no mistake. What’s going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, etc. etc., is all about creating the mechanisms for total control within the United States. What’s being created is an internal atmosphere of complete mistrust of anything external, a sort of xenophobia, with the government as the only savior. Anyone who speaks against Bush policy already is an enemy. This week the head of our intelligence agencies said that the government needed to monitor every internet communication. We will see those troops coming home, eventually, to fight anyone who this government labels a threat. Nightmare time.
Thanks Doug Thompson for the heads-up on this ongoing deadly development…!
In the Terminator III movie, starring “Arnold” the robots and machine intelligences take over the world through Skynet; ie., a complex MIC scheme that links all the worlds satellites, mainframes, PC’s and everything that’s program driven as one…! The machines’ new goal is to destroy “all” humans…?!
What we are witnessing is a variant of the Terminator III plot in that the MIC has taken over the U.S. government along with many other governments of the world with its citizenry being taken along for a deadly ride to technocratic-based, tax-sucking hegemony…then on to oblivion! Unfortunately little do they realize their terminal, unfettered greed is going to destroy the very hand that feeds them.
It’s insanity for sure, but it seems to feel AOK to the brain-dead, uninformed citizens of the “Big Mall”; i.e, planet earth… 😐
Carl Nemo **==
anthny
The link I provided below is a very interesting little story that you can take or leave as true or false.
I think this story is true, and I just did not fall off the turnip wagon in last nights rain.
I have read other conspiracies about zionists brought the communists into power and it can still be in power with-in the powerful money business’.
https://www.savethemales.ca/000447.html
ONE MORE TIME……….
Doug wrote:
“Call it the endless war syndrome – the result of too many years of out-of-control policies that have left us with little choice but to fight on and on for fictitious reasons and an arrogant illusion of superiority.”
Thanks Doug. Actually, I can think back many months ago when so many of the Democrats candidates were hoping to win the majority in both chambers…who made claims to do undo so many problems created by our current administration, especially the war.
There were many Rant Forum and Frontpage members…posting, “it’s not going to happen.” The Democrats won’t fix anything, especially ending the war in Iraq when they realize the economic cost of shutting down the war.
Kent…ditto to your posting.
“Call it the endless war syndrome – the result of too many years of out-of-control policies that have left us with little choice but to fight on and on for fictitious reasons and an arrogant illusion of superiority.”
At least 40% of the economy depends on “defense”. Stop the wars, crash the economy. We are screwed, blued, and tattooed.
One of the better rants, simple eloquence and straight to the point.
— Kent Shaw
Doug..ya said a mouth full…and its all true.
It’s taken the better part of 8 yrs to get us mired in the messes we’re in. The truth is, we don’t have a clue just how deep we are actually in but we all know its a serious situation on many fronts. This adminstration has been the most secretive in history thus…we have been kept in the dark as to exactly what we have been dying and paying for.
I don’t personally believe there is any way that we are going to find these secrets out until the after a new president is elected and fully briefed, then still more time as the mulitude of untold lies,greed and stupidity begin to unfold.
It has been clear to me for a long time that it’s going to take the dedicated and diligent work of the next few administrations to get these complicated mop-up jobs completed.
If we are fortunate enough to get a new president that is honest, open and is not beholden to a corporation.. it will be a step in the right direction. This will not mean an instant cure-all and we won’t necessarily like all the steps that will have to be undertaken.
We have all seen pictures of the bombed out and war torn devastated cities…my minds eye keeps recalling a picture I seen as a little girl..it was during WW2 of a mother and child wondering through the rubble caused by the bombs, once the area of their home.
This to me is sybolic of the devastation that now exists in all things Bush and his crew have had their hands in.
Arm yourself with information..VOTE RESPONSIBLY!
Folks..we are a long way from having this behind us but as Churchill one said “NEVER NEVER NEVER give up.”
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