Posted on 09/17/2003 8:43:40 AM PDT by u-89
Excerpt: many Americans take pleasure in "kicking ass," and they do not much care whose ass is being kicked or why. So long as Americans are dishing out death and destruction to a plausible foreign enemy, the red-white-and-blue jingos are happy. Visit a barbershop, stand in line at the post office or have a drink at your neighborhood tavern and listen to the conversations going on around you. The sheer bellicosity of many ordinary people is as undeniable as it is shocking...
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further excerpts:
...In view of the evident futility, and worse, of nearly every war the United States has fought during the past century, how does the War Party manage to propel this nation into one catastrophe after another, each of them clearly foreseen by at least a substantial minority who failed to dissuade their fellow citizens from still another march into calamity?
An adequate answer might fill a volume, but some elements of that answer can be sketched briefly. The essential components are autocratic government, favorably disposed mass culture, public ignorance and misplaced trust, compliant mass media and political exploitation for personal and institutional advantage.
By "autocratic government" I refer to the reality of how foreign policy is made in the United States. Notwithstanding the trappings of our political system's democratic procedures, the making of foreign policy involves only a handful of people acting decisively.
When the president and his coterie of top advisers decide to go to war, they just go, and nobody can stop them. The "intelligence" agencies, the diplomatic corps and the armed forces do as they are told. Members of Congress cower and speak in mealy-mouthed phrases framed to ensure that no matter how the war turns out, they can share any credit and deny any blame. No one has effective capacity to block the president, and few officials care to do so in any event, even if they object. Rarely does anyone display the minimal decency of resigning his military commission or his appointment in the bureaucracy.
In short, in our system the president has come to hold the power of war and peace exclusively in his hands, notwithstanding anything to the contrary written in the Constitution or the laws. He might as well be Caesar.
In the late 1930s, Congress considered the Ludlow Resolution, which would have amended the Constitution to require approval in a national referendum before Congress could declare war, unless U.S. territory had been invaded. Franklin D. Roosevelt vigorously opposed such an amendment, writing to the speaker of the House on Jan. 6, 1938, that its adoption "would cripple any President in his conduct of our foreign relations." The resolution was voted down 209-188 in the House.
Of course, eventually the president who propels the country into war may have to stand for re-election, and he, or at least his party, may be repudiated. That occurred in 1920, 1952, 1968 and, perhaps, in 1992. Although on such occasions some observers always conclude that "the system worked," nothing could be further from the truth, because by the time the voters repudiate the leader responsible for plunging the nation into a senseless war, the damage has been done.
Wilson gained re-election in 1916 as the candidate who had "kept us out of war," then immediately reversed himself. Four years later, his party was turned out of the presidency. Too late.
President Lyndon Johnson campaigned against sending "American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do," then immediately reversed himself. Four years later his party was turned out of the presidency. Too late again.
Presidents decide to go to war in the context of a favorably disposed mass culture. Painful as it is for members of the Peace Party to admit, many Americans take pleasure in "kicking ass," and they do not much care whose ass is being kicked or why. So long as Americans are dishing out death and destruction to a plausible foreign enemy, the red-white-and-blue jingos are happy.
Visit a barbershop, stand in line at the post office or have a drink at your neighborhood tavern and listen to the conversations going on around you. The sheer bellicosity of many ordinary people is as undeniable as it is shocking. Something in their diet seems to be causing a remarkable volume of murderous, barely suppressed rage.
An eagerness to spill blood and guts extends, however, well beyond the rednecks. Highly literate, albeit sophistic, expressions of this proclivity appear nearly every day on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, a Likud Party megaphone whose motto might well be "all wars all the time." Establishment think tanks, most notably the American Enterprise Institute, trot out well-spoken intellectuals in squads to trumpet the necessity of wreaking global death and destruction.
Public ignorance compounds the inclinations fostered by the mass culture. Study after study and poll after poll confirm that most Americans know next to nothing about public affairs. The intricacies of foreign policy are as alien to them as the dark side of the moon, but their ignorance runs much deeper.
They can't explain the simplest elements of the political system, they don't know what the Constitution says or means and they can't identify their political representatives or what those persons ostensibly stand for. They know scarcely anything about history, and what they think they know is usually incorrect. People so densely ignorant that they have no inkling of how their forebears were bamboozled and sacrificed on the altar of Mars the last time around are easily bamboozled and readily sacrificed the next time around.
Forming a snowcap on this mountain of ignorance is a widespread willingness to trust governing authorities, especially the president. Thus, if President Bush tells the people that Iraq poses a serious threat to the United States, many believe him. Presidents and their lieutenants exploit this misplaced trust to gain popular approval for bellicose foreign policies, knowing that even if every somewhat educated or skeptical person in the country opposes the policy, it nevertheless will receive substantial support in the polls.
So long as war is something that happens "out there" somewhere, most likely in a place that few Americans have ever visited and most can't even locate on a map, and not too many body bags are delivered with sons and husbands inside, then the masses tend to find sufficient bliss in their ignorance and childlike trust in their rulers. Flag-waving and other symbolic displays bring them a cheap identification with the great nation-state, but few have any immediate contact with events in the empire. As an issue, war remains foreign to them in the literal sense -- always somebody else's problem.
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>Machiavelli said that war cannot be avoided
There is a big difference between European and Asian nations known to Machiavelli and us. That difference is a land surrounded by two vast oceans, east and west and two week countries, north and south. We are most fortunate and unique in our circumstances. Please note that all of our 20th century wars came once we went out in the world to be a great power in the European mode and project force.
And I don't trust anyone that can't properly use or identify the word bellicosity. I find them to be a bit belligerent.
As far as Korea goes one could blame Clinton to a point. We have been at war with that country since 1950 - there has never been an official peace. We are stationed right on their border and feel obligated to protect the region. The Koreans use our value of life and our commitments against us. They extorted money from Clinton. Granted they can not be trusted like Carter thought we could do at the time but I don't believe Clinton ever trusted them. He just bought enough time so any blow up would happen on someone else's watch. The China bit was part of a long term bipartisan strategy to build up that nation. I believe the "spying" was official technology transfers carried out by backdoor means but that is beyond the scope of this debate.
You mention the muslims coming over here to attack us and I ask you why would they do that. Because they hate our freedoms and democracy as the president claims? Please. Like they care how we live half way around the world. They stated the reasons themselves if we care to listen. The problem is we are over there, actively over there. Buying oil from them was not on their list of grievances so that rules out peacefull commerse as leading to this war.
This article is full of crap right from the first sentence above. They act like people for the war are taking pleasure in beating up little old ladies in the streets. These vermin are our country's sworn enemies, period.
Being attacked on American soil has a way of doing that.
The left's indifference to the very future existence of this country is shocking to me. The "do it if it feels good" crowd is living for the moment only. They care nothing about what happens after they're dead. They don't care if their children and grandchildren are living in concentration camps and being buried in mass graves after they're too weak to continue as slave-laborers. They're like the Europeans who will be remembered in history for how easily they were led to the slaughterhouses.
Sheer lunacy.
That's the best I can offer on what you are selling.
Good one Metesky!
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