Conservatives on War

Sometimes I read comments on articles. I find quite frequently a fierce hatred of Obama stemming from ordinary people (I think of them as some of my neighbors and people I trade with daily) who express conservative or right-wing opinions. Since they take the time to express themselves in this way, they might be a biased or extreme sample. However, I’ve talked with a neighbor or two who express similar opinions.

At any rate, there they are, and it seems that whenever the U.S. is losing a war, as in Afghanistan, to them it’s always because Obama did this or that or didn’t do this or that, and that instead the U.S. has to increase its armed forces or employ more force or nuke ’em, and the generals are never wrong. It’s always some politicians or liberals who are mucking up the war or not doing what the generals want to get that elusive “VICTORY!” They want more war and more escalation of war. It never occurs to them that the U.S. shouldn’t be there, or doesn’t even know what it’s doing, or cannot possibly accomplish what it’s trying to accomplish, or can lose a war against something like the Taliban, or that the U.S. is alienating the population by killing innocents. It never occurs to them that the U.S. can’t remake whole societies and can’t bring justice to every corner of the globe, even if that were its objective, rather than other imperialistic motives. It never occurs to them that the U.S. government cannot even supply justice within the borders it already enforces. What is it with these bloodthirsty, ignorant, and often prejudiced people?

This is an argument for vastly reduced government power. I don’t want to be lumped in with these people. I don’t want their thinking being taken up by ever more powerful government. They are welcome to their poisonous thoughts and expression of them, but they are not welcome to making them felt through action. This blog doesn’t get into the equally benighted thinking that comes from the other side of the political spectrum, or from the muddled and confused thinking in between these two. If you are concluding that I have a generally low opinion of the political thinking of my fellow Americans, you’d be correct. This to me is an argument for not throwing in with them in such a government as we have. Power assisted by ignorance simply amplifies the benighted thought into deed in directions where there is no necessity to go.

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7:40 am on September 17, 2012