Let's see if I've got this straight: The country is drowning in so much debt right now (total national deficit approaching $14 TRILLION) that within ten years our kids will be saddled with about $250 grand a year just in interest to pay back - mostly to Chinese bankers. Meanwhile, the political elites won't get off their fat asses and either halt more Afghan "war" funding or make the damn thing pay for itself (higher taxes - as in all other real wars) - and this even as Wikileaks has confirmed the utter futility of this ongoing farce - the longest, most useless military fiasco in U.S. history.. Oh, and the military elites ensconced in the Pentagon (at the heart of the Military Industrial Complex) still can't locate the $1.1 trillion they lost in the late 90s (as former defense analyst Chuck Spinney exposed) even as they now can't find $8.7 billion earmarked for Iraq rebuilding - even as they want to start a WAR with Iran??? (I guess Iraq and Afghanistan demands and costs aren't enough for them.....or maybe their defense contractors)
Has the Military-Industrial Complex totally taken over the country, as Ike warned about in his January, 1961 'Farewell' address?
Where in Hell's bells are these war mongering buffoons going to get the money to mount another offensive? Hell, where are they going to get the manpower, given they're already in a condition of military overstretch - much like the Romans facing the barbarian hordes, ca. 450 -500 AD. Should Iran (in retaliation from missile strikes) mobilize ground forces and attack U.S.-NATO positions and bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, will these nimrods be prepared to install a new military draft? Say, to enlist forcibly another one million at least? (Iran has nearly one million hardened troops under arms.)
At first I didn't believe this horse manure, and thought the imagination of Joe Klein (TIME, July 26, 'Back on the Table', p. 22) was running away with him. According to Klein, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his inner military honchos (aka Joint Chiefs) have now put the military option "back on the table". They want to keep on with the economic and other sanctions, but are gradually coming to believe an attack of some kind is the only realistic option.
Klein posits that the U.S. Army's Central Command - in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, "has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes". One Israeli source evidently informed Klein: "There wasn't really a military option until a year ago". Klein also adds that U.S. officials are terrified that if they don't act, Israeli Premier Ben Netanyahu will "go rogue" and act on his own.
Oh- then there's the issue that Iran's Sunni neighbors, starting with Saudi Arabia, "really want the U.S. to do it".
Now, let's see if I've got this straight: the nation from whose deserts and outposts the 9-11 attackers sprung (all 19 of them), want the U.S. to bomb Iran for them? Have I got that correct? Is this really insane or what? And just what do these military geniuses expect the Iranians (who have a far more formidable military than either minor foes the U.S. is now fighting) will do? Sit back, take it on the chin and sing several verses of 'Kumbiyah"? And, IF a U.S. strike should happen to take out a joint RUSSIAN-Iranian nuke site, do these four stars really think Putin will sit back and take it - after he's invested say $20 billion? What f*$!#@ planet are you living on? (For those with the nerve to see how a fictional attack on an Iranian nuclear plant leads to total nuclear war, check out the chilling 1983 Brit movie, THREADS. Note especially the last scene, set ten years after the initial 10,000 megaton exchange and a global nuclear winter. If it doesn't make you piss in your pants, you aren't human!)
Anyway, I didn't take Klein's single frame story too seriously until earlier this week when the Associated Press broke the contents of a CNN-interview with Michael Hayden(former head of the CIA under Bush), who believes war with Iran is now "inexorable". (I believe he actually meant "inevitable", but at least he didn't enter a Palinism like "irrefudiatiable")
But this would be a serious mistake. As John F. Kennedy first noted in his American University speech in June, 1963, this country "cannot enforce its will on other nations at the end of American weapons of war", or what he called "Pax Americana". We cannot afford to impose our agenda on every rogue nation that develops nuclear weapons, or even has vague pretensions to - especially as Obama is talking about allocating $80 billion for updating the existing arsenal of U.S. warheads (even as he talks about cutting weapons in toto). This is ridiculous! Stick to one principle and cease splitting differences, Mr. President, then more people might understand you - and be in your favor- and you wouldn't have to go cross-country to enhance ratings.
Beyond all this, we have neither the additional resources - in manpower or treasure- to sustain the type of global conflict that attacking Iran would bring. The military adventures being conducted now have crippled our economy and taken the lives of thousands of American men and women for little in return (certainly not preserving our "freedom" - that is pure bull pockey). It is a given that no nation can prosper while remaining in a perpetual state of war because death and destruction, while sometimes essential for a nation’s survival (as with World War II), do not produce wealth, they bleed it off remorselessly. For an excellent portrayal, readers ought to get hold of George Orwell's '1984' and read how endless war sucked the very life force from the poor citizens of Oceania- until they inexorably became the brainwashed slaves of a total fascist military state.
Founder James Madison's words say it best:
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few”
Has the Military-Industrial Complex totally taken over the country, as Ike warned about in his January, 1961 'Farewell' address?
Where in Hell's bells are these war mongering buffoons going to get the money to mount another offensive? Hell, where are they going to get the manpower, given they're already in a condition of military overstretch - much like the Romans facing the barbarian hordes, ca. 450 -500 AD. Should Iran (in retaliation from missile strikes) mobilize ground forces and attack U.S.-NATO positions and bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, will these nimrods be prepared to install a new military draft? Say, to enlist forcibly another one million at least? (Iran has nearly one million hardened troops under arms.)
At first I didn't believe this horse manure, and thought the imagination of Joe Klein (TIME, July 26, 'Back on the Table', p. 22) was running away with him. According to Klein, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his inner military honchos (aka Joint Chiefs) have now put the military option "back on the table". They want to keep on with the economic and other sanctions, but are gradually coming to believe an attack of some kind is the only realistic option.
Klein posits that the U.S. Army's Central Command - in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, "has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes". One Israeli source evidently informed Klein: "There wasn't really a military option until a year ago". Klein also adds that U.S. officials are terrified that if they don't act, Israeli Premier Ben Netanyahu will "go rogue" and act on his own.
Oh- then there's the issue that Iran's Sunni neighbors, starting with Saudi Arabia, "really want the U.S. to do it".
Now, let's see if I've got this straight: the nation from whose deserts and outposts the 9-11 attackers sprung (all 19 of them), want the U.S. to bomb Iran for them? Have I got that correct? Is this really insane or what? And just what do these military geniuses expect the Iranians (who have a far more formidable military than either minor foes the U.S. is now fighting) will do? Sit back, take it on the chin and sing several verses of 'Kumbiyah"? And, IF a U.S. strike should happen to take out a joint RUSSIAN-Iranian nuke site, do these four stars really think Putin will sit back and take it - after he's invested say $20 billion? What f*$!#@ planet are you living on? (For those with the nerve to see how a fictional attack on an Iranian nuclear plant leads to total nuclear war, check out the chilling 1983 Brit movie, THREADS. Note especially the last scene, set ten years after the initial 10,000 megaton exchange and a global nuclear winter. If it doesn't make you piss in your pants, you aren't human!)
Anyway, I didn't take Klein's single frame story too seriously until earlier this week when the Associated Press broke the contents of a CNN-interview with Michael Hayden(former head of the CIA under Bush), who believes war with Iran is now "inexorable". (I believe he actually meant "inevitable", but at least he didn't enter a Palinism like "irrefudiatiable")
But this would be a serious mistake. As John F. Kennedy first noted in his American University speech in June, 1963, this country "cannot enforce its will on other nations at the end of American weapons of war", or what he called "Pax Americana". We cannot afford to impose our agenda on every rogue nation that develops nuclear weapons, or even has vague pretensions to - especially as Obama is talking about allocating $80 billion for updating the existing arsenal of U.S. warheads (even as he talks about cutting weapons in toto). This is ridiculous! Stick to one principle and cease splitting differences, Mr. President, then more people might understand you - and be in your favor- and you wouldn't have to go cross-country to enhance ratings.
Beyond all this, we have neither the additional resources - in manpower or treasure- to sustain the type of global conflict that attacking Iran would bring. The military adventures being conducted now have crippled our economy and taken the lives of thousands of American men and women for little in return (certainly not preserving our "freedom" - that is pure bull pockey). It is a given that no nation can prosper while remaining in a perpetual state of war because death and destruction, while sometimes essential for a nation’s survival (as with World War II), do not produce wealth, they bleed it off remorselessly. For an excellent portrayal, readers ought to get hold of George Orwell's '1984' and read how endless war sucked the very life force from the poor citizens of Oceania- until they inexorably became the brainwashed slaves of a total fascist military state.
Founder James Madison's words say it best:
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few”
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