It's bad enough that war, deemed by those who have experienced it as an unmitigated horror, is much harder to turn off than to start; and always involves unexpected consequences. We are frankly, in what Southerners call a "fix" and all the chest-thumping jingoism in the world won't change that.
My question today is simple – isn't one war at a time enough? Hitler and Napoleon learned the hard way that the only answer to that question is a resounding "Yes!" Let's discuss our current war, the pending war, and where we are headed as a country.
Remember this, war is the result of foolishness, hubris, and sin. Very rarely have we actually faced a threat to our national borders. Not until very recently, in fact. It took all the elements of mismanagement, venality, and spiritual sloth to get us in this mess – the war becomes obvious when you consider its genesis.
What about War Number One? In the wake of the recent killings outside Washington, DC, Americans have a right to ask "Who or what will protect us from terrorism?" Apparently, our only defense is the stupidity of the terrorists. Consider that our "protectors" were quite unable to conceive that we might be under attack by a Muslim. Given that we are in the middle of a ongoing war against Islamic fanatics, one can only gasp in astonishment that our folks were unable to figure that out.
“Since September 11, Americans have been reminded that the safety of many depends on the courage and skill of a few,” Mr. Bush said recently. He should be ashamed for making such an outrageous comment to Americans who still, perhaps mistakenly, consider themselves a free people. Unfortunately however, the War Leader is trying to turn his lie into truth and the facts are there – many if not most Americans are either disarmed or forbidden to carry weapons and are thus unable (and in some cases, unwilling) to defend themselves. We must depend upon such worthies as the FBI and the ATF to defend us. We've seen how well they did against the Beltway sniper.
They are however, quite good at covering up terrorist acts – but I wonder if we should consider that a virtue? Flight 800, anyone? What about that airliner that "just fell apart" over New York right after 9/11? Everyone in the country except the FBI knew that was terrorism! They started covering up the LAX shootings even before the dead bodies had cooled.
This is more than just silly – it is dangerous. Their concerns for political correctness cost several lives at least, and delayed capture of the Beltway sniper rather than admit that the culprit might be someone other than a white "gun nut." Jorge Bush reminds me of the government flunkies in some fifties sci-fi movie who refuses to warn the public that a giant lizard is about to devour their city because "it may cause panic." On the other hand, it sometimes pays to panic – God gave us a "fight or flight" reaction for a very good reason. Personally, I'd prefer to panic any day than be devoured by Godzilla or shot by a crazed Muslim gunman.
Yet here we are, unable to intelligently deal with the war we have, and contemplating yet another war, against an adversary who has not attacked us. Iraq has the bad luck to sit upon a great deal of oil and to not have nuclear weapons. As all those little "rogue" states have ascertained, nuclear weapons are the only thing that will keep Sam off their back. What a great message we are sending – soon the world will be one big nuclear shooting gallery.
If the government were telling the truth about an al-Qaeda connection to Iraq, which seems ludicrous given their mutual hostility; where is the evidence? For just this once, suspend disbelief and say, "maybe it's true…why would they lie?" A better question is why should we believe them? Based on what track record? They owe us the evidence, if there is any, because of their long history of mendacity and venality. My late father taught me to never trust a liar. Will the Lord bless our efforts if we are waging aggressive war? I wonder.
Will the Lord, Who denounces witchcraft in His Holy Bible, bless the arms of a military saddled by its political "leaders" with Wiccan "chaplains"? Dare we shout "God bless America," while violating His commandment that we shall have no other gods before Him? As a nation, we are quite literally playing with fire.
To paraphrase the old saying, "War is far too serious to trust to these idiots!" Without the blessing of God on our arms it will hardly matter how much firepower we have – preemptive war violates even the civilian laws on self defense. How can it then be in accordance with the principal of the "just war"? Deadly force in self-defense must be based upon an "imminent" threat of attack, which is hardly the case with Iraq, a country whose military has been reduced to a husk and whose threat to the United States is minimal. Without any irony it can be said that there is far more justification for attacking Mexico than there is for attacking Iraq.
There is that other factor we keep ignoring as well. Our military is comparatively very small – Gulf War I required most of the real hitting power available to us, and much of that hitting power, in the form of our heavy divisions (tanks, self-propelled guns, and mechanized infantry), was stood down upon conclusion.
Now the talk is of "asymmetrical" warfare – small groups of elite troops calling in computerized frightfulness. Unfortunately for our defense profile – these Special Forces troops we rely upon are very thin on the ground these days and it takes years to produce such men. Our much increased firepower depends upon weapons that exist in rather small quantities as was demonstrated when Billy Jeff Clinton pretty much cleaned the shelves murdering Christians in Serbia to support his al-Qaeda buddies. (The drug trade makes for strange bedfellows – as the CIA could [but won't] tell you.)
Now our few remaining factories are working overtime trying to restock the gadgetry we need to make the President's dream a reality. Our tank guns are German, our pistols Italian, and our light machine guns Belgian – the list goes on. Don't even ask where we get our all-important technical components. Can we really depend upon China, Taiwan, and other "allies" to supply us with strategic materials such as computer chips and manufactured items in time of war? It seems that we are.
Then there is North Korea. Personally, I don't care if they have atom bombs or not – that is a problem for South Korea, Japan, and China. But to the "strategic thinkers" in Washington this was a very nasty awakening from a Clinton/Carter induced opium dream – that giving nuclear power plants to a communist dictatorship would somehow cause them to stop wanting atomic weapons. Whew, I can barely write that line without gasping in disbelief.
Perhaps we should refer to Clinton and Carter as the "axis of stupidity"!
India and Pakistan, both "allies" of the United States, are staring at each other over their primitive radar screens with their not so primitive nuclear weapons armed and ready to go. Africa is sinking back into the abyss in which we originally found it. The Middle East – pick a spot – is about to blow. Russia and China have formed an alliance due to the threat of the American hegemony, and the Islamic storm that is brewing within their borders.
Can we then assume that it is safe to focus all or most of our available military force on paying off the Bush family's grudge accounts? Remember, just to confront al-Qaeda we had to call up reserves! Apparently a rather significant majority of Americans think that is just fine. Most of the opposition comes from collectivists who merely object because they prefer to use our money to finish binding upon us the chains they have been forging for the last 70 years. Either way, we lose.
So I'm suggesting that before we send our children off to fight Iraq we splash some cold water on our faces and ask ourselves, "Who benefits?" Hint – it ain't you, buddy.
If Iraq was really a threat to us with their oft-lamented Weapons of Mass Destruction – you know, the ones our government gave them – we could have and would have simply wiped them off the map. This is about something different, about a long-term culture of war and madness and I urge you to reject it before it gets out of hand.
Remember this, even if the immorality of waging aggressive war doesn't bother you, even if you believe that Iraq is somehow a threat; overextending our military is inherently dangerous. So dangerous that I'm willing to predict that despite all his rhetoric, President Bush has no better than a fifty percent change of pulling off this Iraqi war before some new crisis, terrorist attack, or bad news from the "axis of evil" occurs to distract him.
Korea may not be the tip of the iceberg, but it certainly pays to assume the worst – engineers do that, unlike "diplomats" who tend to believe their own press releases. Of course, engineers build things that either work or they are held accountable. Diplomats simply shrug their shoulders and move from one blunder to the next.
Whenever you are about to take the easy way out and trust Sam, just think again about how he handled the recent sniper business. In the middle of a terror war against Islamic Jihadists, Sam was looking at you, Mr. White American Christian, and totaling ignoring the obvious. Look at who gets hassled at the airport. Look at who gets mocked by the mainstream (i.e., pro government) media, look at who is described as the enemy in your public schools, and look who the FBI considers most dangerous. Again – it's you.
So just suspend disbelief, turn off common sense and jump on the war wagon. It feels good in a primitive, simian sort of way, to just shout "Sieg Heil" when everyone else is doing it. Besides, much like the Jews in pre-war Germany, American Christians prefer to believe what they want to believe and simply ignore the evidence that they are in the cross hairs of the government's gun sights.
November 1, 2002
