Back to Iraq!

Considering the wide-spread and rather surprising resistance to the idea of US intervention in Syria, an opposition that spans a wide spectrum of American political affinity from Left to Right, it's looking increasingly doubtful that the US will get involved there anytime soon. This is a good sign. Basically, it makes just as much sense to support rebel elements there as it did for the US to support the Afghani Mujahadeen beginning in 1980. The tendency for unintended consequences, like the attacks of 9/11, for instance, is a real peril. (Unless you believe of course, that it was the Bush Regime acting alone that brought down the Twin Towers, which is a rather remote possibility). And as far as simply arming the more palatable Syrian rebels, there is no assurance that any weapons sent would remain in democratic, secular hands. Maybe we should send a large number of US troops back to Iraq, where various Sunni and Shi'ite factions have stepped up their explosive attacks, resulting in the death and injury of scores of people daily. I'm kidding, of course.

Time for America to mind its own damn business

To extend the interventionist argument to its ultimate level of absurdity.... If I oppose the idea of pouring more gasoline on the fire by sending arms to the Muslim insurgency in Mindanao, I'm a de-facto supporter of the vile and corrupt Filipino government. If I'm against arming the sundry bands of rapists and murderers in the DR Congo, where over a million have died during the last decade, I'm an appeaser, and no doubt I aid and abet the equally criminal government over there. How about supplying the Maoist revolutionaries fighting the Nepalese regime? Was it our moral duty to equip the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2010? Where does our supposed obligation to support every band of "Freedom Fighters" begin, and where the hell does it finally leave off? Where it comes to the international situation, the believers in American exceptionalism get quite carried away. You may recall that Republicans are preparing to shut down the federal government AGAIN, and the sequester that's resulted in tens of thousands of pre-schoolers losing their Head Start enrollment is looking to become a permanent fixture. How about working to get our own extremely f*cked up house in order before sticking our national proboscis into yet another foreign entanglement? Isn't it bad enough that USA already has 800 military bases in 140 countries without further exacerbating our budgetary woes by sending arms to a lot of people who are now openly declaring their intention to impose Sharia Law, should they prevail in Syria?

So long suckers, and thanks for all the caviar

Republican congressmen and women are so "patriotic" they love to shut down the federal government in a desperate ploy to defund the admittedly flawed Affordable Care Act. They express their "love" by massive cuts to the precious food stamp program that helps keep poor and working families just above starvation level. All this as they enjoy luxurious trips overseas, paid for by the taxpayers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/20/food-stamps-steak-vodka_n_3964695.html http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2011-09-05/haleys-trip-paris-air-show-costs-taxpayers-more-127000 Whereas several Democratic mayors express THEIR tender concern for retired municipal workers by cheating them out of their hard earned retirement income. Or by closing 50 public schools, as Rahm Emanuel did in Chicago. This in a country where the richest 400 individuals "earn" as much as the poorest 150,000,000 Americans COMBINED. Too bad we can't achieve the obvious solution to all these fiscal crises; raise income and capital gains taxes on the filthy rich who refuse to pay their fair share. http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2011-09-05/haleys-trip-paris-air-show-costs-taxpayers-more-127000

From time spent arguing with an interventionist on a web forum

H______, in my last post I wasn't so much positing a moral case as trying to reiterate the plain and obvious fact that post-industrial America is a nation so hooked on war and its concomitant military-industrial complex that we are now disastrously dependent on military spending. You yourself demonstrate that Americans are quite ideologically habituated to war-making in the extreme, with an accompanying de-emphasis on conducting diplomacy and other forms of conflict-resolution in the world arena. Your praise of the Bosnian intervention is a case in point. You manifest a knee-jerk assumption that it was America's "God-given" duty to impose our will in the former Yugoslavia. You appear to be a passionate practicioner of Manifest Destiny, come hell, high water or national insolvency. Really, such an attitude has as its logical outcome a moral imperative to get involved militarily everywhere from Nepal to Sri Lanka, Congo and Colombia; as a practical matter, we just can't afford to do that. I think we needed to stay out of Bosnia, and focus on promoting the relative economic prosperity of the Clinton era. A relative prosperity that you know as well as I was shortly squandered on an insane $3 trillion+ war of corporate greed in Iraq. If the situation in the Balkans was as dire as you assert (and I believe it was, though of course the Serbs weren't the sole transgressors), then the European community should have dealt with it, not the US. After all, the Bosnia conflict fell decisively in their geographic domain, and Germany had the money to bankroll any supposedly necessary intervention. USA was preoccupied at the time with Iraq, where we had imposed a no-fly zone and criminally brutal sanctions that resulted in the death of 500,000 children. And where, to bring us back to the use of chemical weapons, we had already utilized only god knows how much Depleted Uranium weaponry. Some estimates are that the USA had already spent a colossal TEN TRILLION DOLLARS on the Pentagon's largess by 1985. Our addiction to throwing away incalculable amounts of money on belligerent activities world-wide is one certain way among many to effectively destroy our civilian economy. And we have pretty much done just that by our preposterous habit of sticking our noses where they don't belong planet-wide, and wasting vast amounts of blood and treasure. But my moral case centers mainly around my firm conviction Americans, yourself included to a significant extent, are mindlessly enamored of the idea that "American Exceptionalism" requires us to perpetually shoulder the unreasonable imperialist burden of intervening practically everywhere there is a civil war, humanitarian crisis, or perceived need to secure vital US interests. That attitude has cost millions of lives and whatever fiscal stability we as a country could ever hope for. Just heard the other day our national debt has passed the $17 trillion mark; if you and yours want to strike Syria so urgently, how about finding a way to pay for it yourselves, rather than getting us even further in hock to Beijing? Anyway, it seems that you've gotten your wish granted already, partially at least, as the Pentagon is now sending additional materiel to the Syrian rebels, a grouping which includes any number of murderers, cannibals and other human rights abusers. What sort of Blowback do you suppose we're in for, now that we've sent guns and money to "Al Qaeda in Syria?"

The "game" of war has grown stale and ultimately, unprofitable

We Americans can't play that "game" anymore. The game of US world hegemony that is, enforced by US diktat, armaments and intervention. That very tired and destructive habit has grown stale. To put it mildly. We've been virtually bankrupted by constantly sending the Marines to every corner of the planet, whenever our supposed national interests have been threatened. A sizeable portion of our humongous, multi-trilion dollar national debt has been incurred by just such entanglements: Iraq, Afghanistan, and now maybe Syria. To say nothing of the maimed and wasted lives. I just don't believe we can realistically contribute to peace-making efforts in Syria by shipping over more items of death and destruction. It's a matter of public record now that several of the "rebel" groupings have committed atrocities of their own, on a considerable scale. I don't champion them, and can't see any compelling reason why I should. I'm sorry if it seems callous, but we're in a rather serious predicament over here, a predicament that renders these calamitous armed adventures more glaringly inappropriate than ever. We need the money to shore up our anemic economic "recovery." It's as if Barack Obama and the more militaristic members of Congress have determined that "We do war." That is, we here in the United States, having outsourced millions of decent jobs, now have no meaningful civilian manufacturing sector, and all we're left with as a significant economic stimulant is the war machine, with its obviously wasteful and profligate spending on items of death and destruction that are obsolete the moment they are produced. We in this country are beholden to a bankrupt social order, in multiple ways. To wit: The way our president and most of Congress insist military intervention is a perennial "must," always understood as something indispensable in the matter of relations between nations. Yes, we do have those 800 or so military bases in about 140 countries world-wide. Yes, the most dynamic manufacturing sector here in Wisconsin appears to be the US Navy's shipbuilding facility along Lake Michigan. But this is NOT the way things SHOULD be, and we desperately need an administration that is willing to "grab the bull by the horns." We need, but will probably never have, a president who is willing to contravene the status quo. Of course it's true that a person can only be elected to the highest office if he/she acquiesces to each and every insane foreign policy imperative dictated by those who pull the president's strings. But we must at least TRY to return to that long-forgotten era when we made things for human use, intended to enhance human dignity. You know - things like washing machines and computer hardware, lol. Until Americans get passed the idiotic notion that we must ceaselessly promote human obliteration, we'll be stuck in this terrible rut. Americans need jobs, schools and housing. But alas, it seems there's always another convenient pretext for launching airstrikes. Isn't it the case that each and every cruise missile costs one million dollars? Even one million dollars could buy a lot of hot lunches for low income kids in say, the Milwaukee Public School System. But every airstrike we launch robs those same kids, in effect. Every shipment of lethal equipment to Syria represents a wasted opportunity to get our own messed-up house in order. Tough choices are required, to be sure. But I have no major problem asserting America's own infrastructure and social welfare needs have to come first.