The Drums of War

I'm not old enough to have been around for Vietnam. I don't really remember desert storm or anything about Kuwait, and I rarely paid attention to politics during the Clinton years. I can't be sure whether it is my "awakening" (as it is called in Ron Paul circles, or for those who have visited the last vestige of sanity) that has shown me the militaristic nature of America today, or whether the stench of war fever has always hung over our heads. I imagine that our coming to accept mass murder as a legitimate means to an end had something to do with our becoming a superpower, as well as the recent hysteria created by the lies of 9/11.

If you really examine the issues around all of this war fever, you can see how blatantly ridiculous it is. In effect, Bush and Cheney intentionally deceived Americans and didn't even allow us to have an input through Congress. Then they sacrifice our people, make us pay for it, put us in debt to foreign nations, destroy our currency by hitting us with a hidden inflation tax, obliterate our economy, and soil our once respected name. How is this madness possibly legitimized? How do they get away with this? People can be cruel, but that usually surfaces and takes hold of those in power. We know they are insane.

But how do the masses legitimize this war? The media certainly doesn't help. But even then, everyone knows Bush and Cheney lied. Everyone has a looming question in the back of their mind regarding 9/11. Why hasn't the war gotten more scrutiny? Why aren't people harping on this at the debates?

Of course the media usually neglects anti-war protests, and they definitely ignore Ron Paul and his devoted followers. They generally refrain from asking candidates about the war, and when they do they are always softballs. They mention "surges" and sometimes death tolls, but they never question the underlying reasoning behind the madness. And before Ron Paul, the economic and foreign policy issues were totally unrelated.

But, I still often hear people arguing the token "liberal" and "conservative" viewpoints I hear on TV. From the token conservative's viewpoint, the world is a dark and evil place, that's just how it is. It takes a real man to accept that fact, and to have the balls to watch on TV while Iraq gets bombed. We've got to battle our arch enemies on unto the end of the ages, and crush them while they cower in "shock and awe" at the might of the American war machine. We must, at all costs, work against those idiot tree-hugging hippies who think the world is ready to hold hands and dance around. We must defeat their ideology of cowering in the face of the greatest enemy we have ever known. The token conservative is tough. They are manly. They are so hardcore that they are unfazed by the death of innocents in the face of such ominous evil. They also want to make sure they don't get accused of being gay, weak, or girly. Hey, I'm not claiming that I have a special compassionate connection with people halfway around the world, but I do ascribe to this thing called basic human decency.

Pretty sad, these people. But is the token liberal any better? The token liberal can't tell the difference between capitalism and fascism. We should save all that $3 trillion dollars from the war and put it toward something "useful", like the environment, welfare, or energy. We hate Bush and love Bill without seeing any conflict in that. We think that "peacekeeping forces" are good, and military by any other name is bad. We believe that the military-industrial complex owned professional liars named Obama and Hillary will "start a plan for withdrawal," which doesn't really mean, "start more wars elsewhere." We stand at their rallies and slap our flippers together every time we hear "change". YES WE CAN! Can what? What are we supposed to be doing again? Did I miss something? Obama's non-stop rhetoric about "Not pandering for votes, not taking money from lobbyists, not telling people just what they want to hear" struck me as very odd. Was he really just going to stand up their on stage and call himself out? But the token liberals kept cheering. Unbelievable.

These are the same people who are not outraged when Hillary says something like this. Let me see if I am getting this right. It is okay to nuke a country and murder hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of innocent people on account of the ignorance and hubris of a handful of people in their government? Two nukes don't make a right. The media constantly will say "Iran" does this, or "Iraq" does that, as if the whole population of the country were acting in unison. Of course, every single person in Iran is a West-hating crazy who would love nothing more than to see the downfall of freedom and goodness. According to the neocons, they are all "radical Islamic extremists". Really? At least be a little more subtle in your propagandizing. Anyone can sandwich a religion between buzzwords.

Let's face it though, John McCain got one thing right. There will be more wars. The think tanks will always come up with more excuses, and no matter who we elect (unless of course America somehow regains her sanity), they will be beating the drums of war. Whether it is for Darfur, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, or even China, more American blood will be needlessly shed. Americans will continue to watch on television as if the death and torture of endless innocent people is some kind of reality show, oblivious to the fact that this war is putting the final nail in the American coffin. Total economic collapse is just around the corner. Americans perhaps deserve some blame for being so uninformed, but there is no sense in being angry about inevitability. The masses have been largely uninformed since the beginning of civilization, and we cannot place our blame on the deceived. After all, they are the ones who create the peace and prosperity through the free market which holds fast against the intrusions of government. They are the last line of defense, the last chance to restore freedom and dignity to America. My only hope is that we have reached the critical number of "awakened" people so that, when the collapse does come, the rEVOLution spreads like wildfire and people know where to place the blame. I would take an anarcho-capitalistic society any day over a Republic, but the first step towards true freedom is to throttle the ship back to Constitutional levels before it sinks into the abyss.