What's worse?

Now you tell me, folks - what was worse, Clinton getting a blow job or Clinton illegally bombing Serbia and Kosovo? I suppose I shouldn't even bother to mention that unmentionable murderer, George W Bush. What about all the unprovoked Burning Down the World he enjoyed doing in your name and using $3-4 trillion of your (our) tax dollars? I tried to STOP the Gulf War, The "drive-by wars" of Bill Clinton, and the "Shock & Awe" of Herr W. Don't like Obama's recent escalation in Afghanistan, either. Our government has (borrowed from foreign banks and) spent a mere $100 million on emergency relief for Haiti in the wake of the quake. That's less than 1% of the cost of sending the latest 30,000 cannon-fodder troops to Afghanistan, at a cost of one million dollars annually per soldier. At least 60% of all discretionary spending in the US is devoted to the Pentagon!

It's the "system," man. Woman. Read Dwight D. Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 Farewell Speech, warning the US and the world of the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex. Watch and listen to it online if you prefer; it's remarkable. Watch Errol Morris' "The Fog of War," where Morris interviews JFK's and LBJ's War Secretary Robert McNamara, who, throughout the course of the film, expounds upon 11 lessons about war he learned (too late) during his sordid career. McNamara says, "The human race needs to think more about killing." Amen, Robert.

A wise man once said - don't remember if it was Jesus, Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr. - that "we need to find a better way to settle differences between peoples than war." Now I am not a total pacifist; I believe Hitler, for example, could only be defeated by force of arms. But this nation hasn't DECLARED war since December 1941. That should be a required precondition of the United States before it attacks another country. The spineless Congress, to whom the Constitution assigns the responsibility for initiating armed intervention, has left this to a series of increasingly aggressive and opportunistic "Executive Presidents."We have so much work to do yet before our empire collapses, just like Imperial Rome, and for pretty much exactly the same reasons.