Uncle Sam soldiers on

"We can’t let go," says Pat Buchanan, referring to this country's unnecessary wars and military interventions, "because we don’t know what else to do. We live in yesterday — and our rivals look to tomorrow."

This country's "patriotic" Anglo-Euro men, who love so much to fight, live in the past, and will go to war and stay at war for anyone who comes along and pulls their "USA!" chain. Throw in some sentimental jargon about "God," and you've got them hooked. As one soldier recently indicated, all a recognized "leader" has to do is point said soldier in the direction of a so-called enemy, and he becomes a willing killer. So what if it was all a mistake? No questions asked. At least it keeps unemployed men like him occupied.

This warrior has been a willing tool to fight and die a worthless death for the safety of Israel, like a good goy boy. Now we learn that Saudis, Arabs, mind you, are calling on this eager American soldier to risk his life by attacking Iran. No doubt, Mr. Tough Marine will be just as willing to die or be maimed and deformed for the benefit of A-rabs. And next will come the Koreans -- again. Just give him a weapon and point him in the direction . . . . No questions asked.

For how much longer will the world tolerate this imperial behavior on the part of these self-indulgent American "patriots?" Here are excerpts from Buchanan's latest column, Why Are We Still in Korea?:
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Fifty-seven years after that armistice [in Korea, June 1953], a U.S. carrier task force is steaming toward the Yellow Sea in a show of force after the North fired 80 shells into a South Korean village. We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama. And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why, 60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be the first to die in a second Korean War?

Unlike 1950, South Korea is not an impoverished ex-colony of Japan. She is the largest of all the “Asian tigers,” a nation with twice the population and 40 times the economy of the North. Seoul just hosted the G-20. And there is no Maoist China or Stalinist Soviet Union equipping Pyongyang’s armies. The planes, guns, tanks and ships of the South are far superior in quality.

Why, then, are we still in South Korea? Why is this quarrel our quarrel? Why is this war, should it come, America’s war?

High among the reasons we fought in Korea was Japan, then a nation rising from the ashes after half its cities had been reduced to rubble. But, for 50 years now, Japan has had the second largest economy and is among the most advanced nations on earth. Why cannot Japan defend herself? Why does this remain our responsibility, 65 years after MacArthur took the surrender in Tokyo Bay? ...

Why, when the Cold War has been over for 20 years, do all these Cold War alliances still exist?

Obama has just returned from a Lisbon summit of NATO, an alliance formed in 1949 to defend Western Europe from Soviet tank armies on the other side of the Iron Curtain that threatened to roll to the Channel. Today, that Red Army no longer exists, the captive nations are free, and Russia’s president was in Lisbon as an honored guest of NATO.

Yet we still have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the same bases they were in when Gen. Eisenhower became supreme allied commander more than 60 years ago. Across Europe, our NATO allies are slashing defense to maintain social safety nets. But Uncle Sam, he soldiers on.

We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from Japan and China to defend Japan from China. We borrow from the Gulf Arabs to defend the Gulf Arabs. ...

How to explain why America behaves as she does? ... Like an aging athlete, we keep trying to relive the glory days when all the world looked with awe upon us. We can’t let go, because we don’t know what else to do. We live in yesterday — and our rivals look to tomorrow.
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What might have been

On September 10, 2001, I announced on the Issues & Views website the formation of a unique coalition whose aim would be to make war on the "War on Drugs." This was on September 10, just one day before Doomsday. September 11, of course, would force the postponement and outright termination of so many prospective events and potential good works.

The new organization that did not get to breathe life was to be part of the Free Congress Foundation's "Coalition for Constitutional Liberties," and was initiated by an array of conservative thinkers and activists. It had the blessings of such stalwarts as Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum. Eagle Forum chapters in Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Tennessee were to play leading roles in helping to expand the Coalition's reach. Among the more than two dozen groups allied with the Coalition were the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, and the Republican Leadership Council.

On September 10, Weyrich released this statement, which was sent directly to Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We are part of a broad coalition of groups concerned that the war on drugs has degraded our privacy and civil liberties. We respectfully ask that the members of Committee consider raising the following privacy and civil liberties issues in connection with the nomination of John Walters to be the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (Office of the White House).

We intend by issuing this letter to signal neither support nor opposition to Mr. Walters' nomination. Rather, we are issuing this letter to urge members of the Committee to explore these issues in connection with Mr. Walters' nomination. As we set forth below, these issues include the use of new surveillance and investigative technologies, including the Carnivore/DCS1000 and Echelon systems, the "Know Your Customer" proposal of the Financial Action Task Force, asset forfeiture abuses, wiretaps and the drug war's sometimes corrupting influence on law enforcement itself.

Little did these concerned citizens know what was on the horizon, as they expressed alarm over the potential of everyone becoming a "drug suspect" due to heavy-handed government intrusions into privacy. Given what the American people are now experiencing, how quaint seem the members of this Coalition, as they complained about Amtrak giving DEA officials access to its ticketing database, along with passengers' last names, destinations, method of payment, and data on whether they were going one-way or round trip. Would any of these worthy patriots back then ever have conceived of airport body scanners?

In concluding my article on the activities planned by the Coalition, I asked, "Is it too much to hope that some day there might be a light at the end of this dark tunnel now ruled over by the DEA, BATF, FBI, and sundry other bureaucracies?" Well, yes, it was too much to hope for, as the tunnel has grown darker than ever.
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Seven years of hell

The warnings were there early on. Think whatever you wish about Saddam Hussein, yet those with an understanding of the Middle East warned back in 2003, that it was his strong-arm policies that prevented Iraq's diverse religious groups from harming one another. Hussein himself told his executioners that they would be sorry when they dispensed with him due to the social disorder that inevitably would prevail upon his death.

In The Murderers of Christianity, Pat Buchanan tells us who is really responsible for the November 1 massacre of Iraqi Christians. Following are excerpts:
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It was the worst massacre of Christians yet. For Assyrian Catholics known as Chaldeans, whose ancestors were converted by St. Thomas the Apostle, the U.S. war of liberation has been seven years of hell. Estimates of the number of Christians in Iraq in 2003 vary from 800,000 to 1.5 million. But hundreds of thousands have fled since the invasion. Seven of the 14 churches in Baghdad have closed, and two-thirds of the city’s 500,000 Christians are gone.

While Saddam Hussein, a secularist, had protected religious minorities, Muslim vigilantes — Shia, Sunni and Kurd, as well as al-Qaida — have attacked the Christians who have endured kidnappings, pillage, rapes, beheadings and assassinations.

And what has happened to this Christian community, which had lived peacefully alongside Muslim neighbors for centuries, must be marked down as one of the predictable and predicted consequences of America’s war in Iraq. In editor Tom Fleming’s Chronicles, just days before President Bush ordered the invasion, columnist Wayne Allensworth warned pointedly:

“Iraqi Christians fear they will be the first victims of a war that might dismember their country, unleashing ethnic and religious conflicts that Baghdad had previously suppressed. ... The Shiite uprising in southern Iraq during the first Gulf War — encouraged and then abandoned by Washington — targeted Christians. Many Christians had supported Saddam’s regime, in spite of creeping Islamicization, as their best hope of survival in the Islamic Middle East.”

Why is Christianity being murdered in its cradle by Muslim fanatics?

Multiple reasons. A return of Islamic militancy. The rise of ethnic nationalism that conflates tribal and religious identity. Hatred of America for its domination of the region, for our war on terror that they see as a war on Islam and for our support of Israel in its suppression of the Palestinians.

Christians across the Middle East are now seen as both members of an alien religion and a fifth column of the Crusaders inside their camp. Paul Marshall of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom warns that we may be in another great wave of persecution, “as Christians flee the Palestinian areas, Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt.” Christians are gone from Jerusalem, gone from Nazareth, gone from Bethlehem. From Egypt to Iran, the Vatican counts 17 million left. ...

America remains the most Christianized of the Western nations. Yet, the protests of the White House, State Department and major media over the eradication of Christianity in the Middle East is muted. ...

Of what worth these wars for democracy if we end up freeing fanatics to annihilate communities or expel populations of our own Christian brothers and sisters across the Middle East?

Read complete article here.
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The joy of killing, and Don't ask treasonous questions

Power corrupts, but does the military corrupt absolutely? Former military man (Vietnam veteran) Fred Reed offers his observations on a General's recent comments. With this new head of Central Command for a leader, what's to become of the young soldiers? Is this to be their model as they prepare to invade all those other Middle East and African countries that are sorely in need of Liberation -- Yemen, Iran, Somalia, etc? (Did I leave out a few?)

In Psychopathy Legitimized, Reed, who is no pansy, nor antiwar, expresses the view of many current and former soldiers -- at least, those who have not yet gone over to the Dark Side. Following are excerpts:

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On Antiwar.com, I find a loutish American general, James Mattis, martial feminist, talking about the fun he has killing Afghans. Yes, fun, wheeee-oooo! and ooo-rah! too. He says, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” adding “guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyways. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” What must he do with prisoners?

A joyous killer, possibly orgasmic. Note mandatory flagly background, pickle suit, and stupid colorful gewgaws so he looks like a goddam stamp collection. Stern gaze is necessary to become a general. From defending the Constitution to the pleasure of watching Afghans die: The military has come a long way.

I’ll guess he fell just shy of graduating from third grade. He sure ain’t much of a general, no ways, I reckon. Just the fellow I want representing me in the world.

Does General Dworkin-Mattis speak of manhood? Odd, since his military is being badly outfought by the unmanly Afghans that are fun to kill. By the Pentagon’s figures the US military outnumbers the resistance several to one. The US has complete control of the air, enjoying F16s, helicopter gun-ships, transport choppers, and Predator drones, as well as armor, body armor, night-vision gear, heavy weaponry, medevac, hospitals, good food, and PXs. The Afghans have only AKs, RPGs, C4, and balls. Yet they are winning, or at least holding their own. How glorious.

Man for man, weapon for weapon, the Taliban are clearly superior. They take far heavier casualties, but keep on fighting. Their politics are not mine, but they are formidable on the ground. If I were General Dworkin, I’d change my name and go into hiding. Maybe he could wear a veil.

Perhaps the US should recognize that it has a second-rate military at phenomenal cost – an enormous, largely useless national codpiece. It is embarrassing. The Pentagon’s preferred enemies are lightly armed, poorly equipped peasants, which makes for a long war and thus hundreds of billions of dollars in juicy contracts for military industries. Yet the greatest military in history (ask it) gets run out of Southeast Asia, blown up and run out of Lebanon, shot down and run out of Somalia, with Afghanistan a disaster in progress and Iraq claimed as an American victory rather than Shiite. Do the aircraft carriers intimidate North Korea? No. Iran? No. China? No. For this, a trillion dollars a year? ...

Now, it is regarded as treasonous to question that Our Boys are the best trained, best armed, toughest troops in the world, and I’ll probably get punched out in bars for pointing out the awful truth. Let’s imagine an experiment. We take Killing-is-Fun General Mattis-Abzug, and a thousand GIs, and a thousand Taliban, and let them fight it out in any patch of wretched barren mountains of your choosing. On equal terms. What you think? Same weapons.

Good idea, General? You eat what they eat, wear what they wear, they have no medical care, and neither do you. If they get lung-shot and die the hard way, you do too. It will come down to guts and motivation.

Motivation: It counts, general. I believe it was Bedford Forrest who said of some of his troops, “Them cane-brake boys jest plain likes to fight.” I guess there must be just a whole lot of cane in Afghanistan. The Taliban will go to any length to cut your freaking throat because you have been killing their wives and children, fathers and brothers, and you will fight for… for…well. Uh. Big oil, AIPAC, Ann Coulter. Or a promotion for General Mathis-Abzug. Anybody want to put odds on the outcome?

And General, killing them might be a tad less fun when you couldn’t do it from the safety of a gunship. Just a thought, General. ...

Funny how things look if you think about them. Patriots talk about the tragic deaths of young Americans in Afghanistan. Well, okay. Other things being equal, young guys getting shot to death in a pointless war is not a swell idea. I’m against it. In fact, the more you see of it, and I’ve seen a lot, the worse an idea it seems. Of course, a logician might point out that if you didn’t send them to Afghanistan, they wouldn’t die there – would they?

Read complete article here.

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