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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCharles P Pierce- Drums Along The Potomac: How This Country Never Learns Anything
Quite frankly, this has been one of the more depressing weeks we have seen in a very long time. The country seems to be sliding down some very familiar tracks into a military engagement in the Middle East -- an engagement that, at the moment, seems to be cloudy in its objectives, vague in its outlines, and obscure on the simple fact of what we are supposedly fighting for, and who we will be fighting with. Can we fight the Islamic State generally without help from (gasp!) Iran? Can we fight the Islamic State in Syria without a de facto alliance with Hafez al-Assad, who was Hitler only a year or so ago? And the most recent polling seems to indicate that all the institutions that are supposed to act as a brake on war powers within a self-governing republic are working in reverse again. The Congress is going to debate how much leeway it should give the president to make war, not whether he should be allowed to do it at all. The elite media, having scared Americans to death by giving the barbarians and their slaughter porn the international platform the barbarians so desired, is jumping on board with both feet. (To cite only one example, Chris Matthews is suiting up again.) The country has been prepared to give its children up again. At the very least, public opinion on what we should do is a muddle, which means that any plan that looks "bold" likely will carry the country with it, unintended consequences be damned.With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans.
You can see the logical canyon, can you not? The Islamic State is no more an actual threat to the United States than it was in October. But there have been more garish executions and more events elsewhere, so the perceived threat -- real or not -- has begun to work its dark magic on the national imagination, the way that aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds once did. The more bellicose of our leaders are openly shilling for a general engagement on the ground; the inevitable John McCain inevitably has called for a "mere" 10,000 ground troops, and he wants those troops to help fight against both the Islamic State and Assad. Because...do something!
So the mission already is creeping; hell, Congressman Ed Royce, who only chairs the House Foreign Relations Committee, wants the proposed authorization for the use of military force to include Iran. And god only knows what happens if the Islamic State grabs a couple of those 10,000 American ground troops and uses them for another snuff film.
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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a33248/drums-along-the-potomac-how-this-country-never-learns-anything/
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)slowly bleeding them, slowly denying them the ability to replenish supplies/make money. But people see beheadings and other televised brutality and get impatient and antsy, even though it impacts them NOT AT ALL. There's brutality all over the place--are we going to put troops (beyond special forces/intelligence) in Libya? Yemen? Nigeria?
marym625
(17,997 posts)Beheadings , etc, are just current day WMD. I don't mean they're not actually doing that to people. I mean the media hype to justify the war.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Boka Haram on thousands of innocent people?
The fake War in Iraq was very lucrative. The ending of that money maker for Defense Contractors was not going to make them happy.
We should have expected this fight to start it all over again.
What I didn't expect, was that Democrats would fall for it all over again.
Having control of the media, has made it all so easy for them.
Cut school lunches, we don't have money to take care of our children, but there is an endless supply of money for all these wars that, according to Feinstein and Rogers, who inadvertently admitted while trying to drum up 'fear' again, that we in 'FAR MORE DANGER' now that EVER.
Sometimes they just get caught up in their own lies that they end up telling the truth, but the Corporate Media, deliberately glosses over the truth when it emerges, however unintentionally, and refuses to question the war mongers.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)fighting in Africa--visceral Blackhawk Down associations. Plus, we don't have the relatively easy ability to slide back into a footprint/occupation in Nigeria, etc. the way we do in Iraq. The demand for ground troops, fueled by the MIC/GOP/Media, is because there is no real money to be made by dropping bombs and missiles and letting native forces take over (IOW, what we're doing now, which is slowly working). Ground troops = contracts with KBR, etc. = money.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)humanitarian in nature. My point is, that atrocities are not why we were starting the Iraq War all over again.
Not to mention the original plans regarding the ME as laid out in the Project for a New American Century.
marym625
(17,997 posts)I am flabbergasted at this. The poll I put up has 17% saying yes to this war. Here.
The "collateral damage" aka human lives, will be astronomical. There's no way around it without set boarders and obvious enemy. It's a horror among horrors were getting into and will be the main cause.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Only 2 recs. I guess DU'ers don't care much about the "collateral damage", either.
randys1
(16,286 posts)Shit will change in a heartbeat
4_TN_TITANS
(2,977 posts)enough
(13,262 posts)markpkessinger
(8,401 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)that the children of the rich and upper-middle class shoulder their share of the burden.
It's not and they won't. They will, like Cheney, always have 'other priorities.' (As though the children of the working class don't also have other priorities.)
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)in the M$M. "Sheeple" is a gross overestimation of the intelligence of the US populace.
No air power, no navy, much less a deep-water navy, no missiles. There are sound moral reasons to exterminate ISIL, though the US has in the past installed, armed, and supported worse, but that they "pose a threat" to the continental US is about the billionth reason on the list. Boy, people are dumb.
marym625
(17,997 posts)And even those that are not dumb seem to want to believe that this US involvement is justified and necessary.
Someone actually said on a post of mine "we need to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here." Sound familiar?
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)give their killing a little more air time....!
mountain grammy
(26,648 posts)I'm too depressed to say more.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)I'm so tired of the bloodthirstiness of my fellow citizens. Yeah sure, they say, I want war because I can still go home at night and order a pizza, doesn't bother me. Just some brown people way far away. Who cares?
Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain, i.e. all the world leaders who showed up to kiss the Saudi king's dead ass. Maybe they can get the Saud to do something.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)"Terrorism is the best political weapon for for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death." -- A Hitler
randome
(34,845 posts)And trying to judge it in yesterday's context doesn't help.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]
Paladin
(28,272 posts)Amen, Charlie. Matthews was always borderline watchable; now he's not watchable at all.
Another superb write-up by Mr. Pierce. He's right: we never learn anything from past mistakes.
JEB
(4,748 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)my life protesting yet another imperial debacle. Iraq and Afghanistan were 8 years too much. Good thing I kept all my anti-war signs in our storage unit - may be time to start pulling them out of the mothballs.
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)also never actually ended other than for marketing purposes the signs didn't need to be in storage anyway.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)actually stand when the rubber meets the road.
Another sad point is our protests are of little to no impact, they just give us a sense of doing something which provides an outlet to prevent boiling over in ways that are easy to ignore, ridicule, or attack if need be.
The Civil Rights and the anti Vietnam movements are silly models to follow today. There are no better angels to effectively appeal to and no guilt to work on nor does nearly everyone share in someway in the pain of the wars.
Playing paddycake will yield expected results.
gwheezie
(3,580 posts)Nationalize private industry to support the war effort. The vote and draft might be easy to get but raising taxes and the government taking over the oil companies would put a stop to it quick.
Solly Mack
(90,785 posts)alterfurz
(2,474 posts)The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history. -- Martin Heidegger