What if the citizens of Germany during the 1930s somehow could have known in advance how World War II was going to end. Would they have bought into the lies of Hitler and the Third Reich? Would they have gone along with the wanton aggression knowing it was a suicide mission and would turn their beloved homeland into a pile of rubble and put nearly 9,000,000 of them in early graves?
What about Japan? Before World War II, Japan was securely locked down. No dissent from the imperialistic designs of the emperor and his military class was permitted. Even so, if the vast majority had known that like Germany, their nation would be almost completely destroyed and they’d lose over 3,000,000 people for nothing, would they have so willingly and enthusiastically rushed to the battlefield to invite annihilation and defeat?
Our leaders __ our cowardly, divisive, destructive, unimaginative, delusional American leaders __ from Barack Obama to John Kerry to Joe Biden to John McCain, are taking America into another war. Sure, the bombing of Syria has been shelved for now. But only for now. Only because we have been humiliated and humbled by such sterling examples of brotherhood and compassion as Vladimir Putin, and reduced to looking like the big, dumb bully on the block not that long ago by no less than Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran.
But make no mistake about it. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, the Ukraine, and eventually Iran. It’s all part of the same flawed over-reaching strategy that predates even Clinton. That pathological plan for achieving unnecessary and ill-conceived hegemony over the Middle East and Eurasia may at times appear to be on hold, but it will not go away, and it won’t unless we make it go away.
As uninformed and misinformed as we Americans generally are, we know how this is going to end. It doesn’t take a genius to see that despite our incredible military prowess and huge advantage in the quantity and sophistication of weaponry in our arsenal, we are really bad at war. Maybe it feels good to thump our chests and yell “mission accomplished” with a big shit-eating smirk on our faces, but our self-congratulations bear no relation to reality. We lost horribly in Vietnam. We are losing in Afghanistan. We made a mess out of Iraq and now have little control over the developments in that country. Libya is in chaos. We had our finger on the launch button in Syria and instead of gaining credibility in the world, have become the object of derision, upstaged and shamed into backing down by taunts from overseas and a surprising and encouraging swell of antipathy at home.
The truth is, we have a terrible track record over the last sixty years of muscle flexing military escapades, and haven’t even had to face what might be regarded as a formidable world-class enemy. God help us if we do go toe-to-toe with Russia or China.
Actually, god help the entire human race!
As we swagger into the OK corral twirling our guns and acting all cocky and cool, because after all we are so exceptional and so entitled and so self-righteous and so powerful and of course always have God on our side, what are the options? Apparently the only way we will actually “win” a real war against a serious enemy is if we go nuclear. And if we go nuclear, they will to.
And we all know how that will turn out.
So if we know in advance how World War III will end, why would anyone except the demented neocon imperialist cotorie of hell bent fanatics __ who can plead the insanity defense __ push for war? Which is the same as saying, why would anyone in their right mind go along with this madness?
Because we __ you and I __ do know how it will end.
Either we’re going to get our asses kicked or we’re going to destroy all civilization and risk the extinction of the human race.
Ask the Germans how things worked out for them when they tried to conquer the world.
Ask the Japanese.
I live in Japan. I already know how the Japanese feel about war. I know the shame they feel about their dark and vile history of aggression in pursuit of all manner of illusory glory and mountains of booty.
No, I don’t live in America any more. But I’m still a loyal American. I deeply care for my country. And I know this.
We can’t count on the lying liars who claim to have our interests at heart, the play-for-pay politicians who are the lapdogs for the military-industrial complex and the bankers who build their staggering fortunes on the corpses of our soldiers and the tens of thousands of civilians who are collateral damage for our drones, carpet bombings and ordinance.
We cannot look to the barbaric megalomaniacs in positions of power who claim to share our values, and have the unmitigated audacity to talk about humanitarian bombing and merciful intervention, to claim we are protecting innocent people against ruthless dictators __ killing thousands of innocent victims in the process __ all in the name of promoting democracy and human rights, when every one of these wars is about gas and oil interests for their corporate butt buddies. To add even more hypocrisy to the insults and injuries, it is our military which possesses and employs more weapons of mass destruction than any other country in the world and it is our nation which counts among its friends and allies some of the most ruthless tyrants on the planet.
We sure can’t look to the leadership of the most sociopathic president in our history, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who recently said in a U.N. speech: “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region. We will confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War.”
That means it’s up to us.
It’s up to each and every American to say ‘NO’ to the madness.
It’s up to us to stop all the talk about war.
It’s up to us to demand a true and honest commitment to peace, not the simpleminded, hollow, meaningless blather that we’re being fed as the trigger-fingers of our war mongers tingle and twitch, just waiting for the right moment to churn up more carnage, destruction and hatred in the rest of the world.
Yes . . . we do know how this story ends.
It’s time for a new story.
