Operation Enduring Idiocyby
Eric Peters Recently
by Eric Peters: Are
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Here we go … again. Another “fight fer freedom” … I’ve lost count at this point. We just can’t get our fill, can we? It’s not enough that we’re already bogged down in two Middle Eastern wars/occupations – and tottering on the edge of a currency default and possibly a complete collapse of our economy here in the Homeland. We need to jump into a third Middle Eastern war. Halliburton, Kellog Root & Brown require it. Obama – the latest sock puppet/front man for the corporate state – is implementing it. America the Psychotic ought to be our new national anthem. We’d go ape if some other country decided to “intervene” in our affairs after, say, Katrina. But we can just dive right on into other countries’ internal paroxysms at our whim – attacking whomever we wish – just because we can. So long as they’re low-rent enough that we can attack them with relative impunity, that is. We never hit anyone who can hit back. I suspect that is going to change. And we will have deserved every bit of it. Or maybe the new anthem ought to be America the stupid. Because we just never learn. The poltroons (a great word; look it up) and other species of Chickenhawkus Americanus now orchestrating the bombing of Libya are the same know-it-all donkeys who turgidly demanded that “we” (that is, cannon fodder 19-year-olds from StumpJump, West Virginia) clear out Saddam because there was an Islamic Thomas Jefferson – hell, a whole slew of Iraqi founding fathers, faithful democrats all – waiting to take his place. Just like in Afghanistan. They love freedom, you see. Democracy, too. Except when they don’t and we find out we have to prop up another puppet, usually as brutal as the one just deposed – with the billy stick of “the troops” – endlessly, forever.
There’s no money for America’s falling apart roads; none to help the millions of regular people egregiously and deliberately, criminally screwed over by Wall Street shysters – looking at a home note that’s 40 percent higher than the current market value of their place. But there’s no end to the money available to fund the fights for freedom, wherever they may be – even though they’re as much about “freedom” as being a Republican these days means you are conservative. We’ll fight ‘em anyhow because after all, who gives a damn about the rugheads – or (let’s be even more honest) the Cannon Fodder Kids from StumpJump West by God Virginia whom we like to call “the troops” because it has a nice saccharine ring to it and also because it’s easier to think in general terms instead of individually maimed for life or just plain dead soldiers. The premise offered up by the American Jihadis (cough, “world community”) now attacking Libya is that we’re helping the good guys. Really? What the heck do we actually know about what’s going on in Libya? Who the people on either side really are? It’s like Iraq, where we naively thought – more accurately, were told – the anti-Saddam guys were good guys with almost cartoon-like childish propaganda when it turns out they are really just a different type of bad guy. We had to pay them off – are still paying them off – to keep them from shooting our “troops” through the heay-ud. The formerly secular Iraq is now a seething cauldron of radical Islamic thuggishness. But they do have electricity – sometimes. And other freedoms besides, too. Or how about when we helped the (cough) “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan against the Russians back in the ’80s? Those “freedom fighters” used us – and hated us as much as the Russians. Because, in their eyes we both were interlopers in their affairs, messing with their countries for our own greedy economic and geopolitical purposes. Which of course is 100 proof Troof. Which is why we don’t like to think about it much. Just wave the flag and feel good about the “freedom” that (cough) “we” are fighting for… But have you ever wondered why we never fight fer freedom where there’s no oil? Or other strategic interest? You may recall that among the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan back in The Day could be found a young Saudi prince named Osama. His “freedom fighters” became the germ cell for what became al Qaeda and eventually, 9/11. To a very great extent, we made Osama – and created al Qaeda. Chalmers Johnson – a genuinely smart guy who therefore is universally ignored – calls the result of all this, of our almost fetishistic need to bat at hornet’s nests like a retarded teenager, blowback. His point (and mine too) is simply this: We don’t know what’s going on in these countries; not really – and besides, we have no more business involving ourselves in these distant lands, trying to regiment the societies of foreign peoples, than foreign peoples have business in our land, force-feeding us whatever it is they think is the right way to organize our society. We’d resent the hell out of it – and them – yet we can’t imagine that they might just resent us for precisely the same reason. America is not The Messiah and its deeply flawed, deeply hypocritical – and now, nearly broke – government needs to quit looking for (supposed) dragons to slay abroad. We can’t afford it, we don’t have any right to do it – and we have no clue what we are doing in these pestholes anyhow. We really should have re-elected The Chimp to a third term. The latest Decider is no different – and much less entertaining. Reprinted with permission from EricPetersAutos.com. March 22, 2011 Eric Peters [send him mail] is an automotive columnist and author of Automotive Atrocities and Road Hogs (2011). Visit his website. Copyright © 2011 Eric Peters
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