AMERICA, THE FEARFUL

Left or right, Democrat or Republican, each of us must ask ourselves, "What have we done?" What has the overthrow and execution of one man, and his tyrannical regime cost? In lives alone, we have sent 4000 young American women and men to die in Iraq.
Most credible estimates put the number of Iraqis killed since the American invasion at 1,300,000. We have made Saddam Hussein look like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, compared to the blood bath we put into motion and pursued. It's not over yet, even though American troops are now hunkered down in a defensive mode, protected by multi-million dollar fortresses built by private contractors.

The worst is yet to come in Afghanistan. I think we are there to find and kill Osama bin Laden. One man. Time will reveal the nature of the mission of our 100,000 troops. I don't believe this insane military adventurism will accomplish anything more than the deterioration of the American armed forces, and the soldiers who fight in our conflicts of moral desolation. The ever quickening disintegration of our short lived opportunity to do any better for our own people, or anyone else, than any preceding empire is rapidly becoming evident.

The total number of American troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be about 200,000. If we add our contractors and paramilitaries from the CIA, FBI, DEA, and DoE, we'll be at about 500,000 people in an area of South Asia that was no more of a threat to us on 8 September 2001 than it is today. Yet today, South Asia is far more dangerous to American national security than ever before in American history.

Sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan is Iran. To the north of Iran and Afghanistan are Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. These countries sit at the back door of both China and Russia. It is from the ‘stans, countries that we have bought and bribed our way to the platforms for war, that the next wave of anti-Americanism will arise. We have access to airstrips, huge fuel and ammo depots, and the all the trappings that will supply, support, bring death, and destruction to Afghanistan. If we take one step back, and ask ourselves how we got here, we have no choice but to answer because of a steady stream of lies, from both the Bush and Obama administrations. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Afghanistan’s civil war in the wake of the Russian withdrawal in 1980 allowed the Pakistanis to create and support the Taliban, with the assistance of the Saudi’s and the Egyptians.

Today, a wild chaotic mix of anti-Americans, religious fanatics, jihadis, thugs, criminals, and tribes who don’t like their traditional areas of control to be invaded, are living out their most luxuriant dreams. Caught in the middle of this bloody maelstrom are the innocents who simply want to live their lives in a modicum of peace, love their children, and awaken in the morning without wondering if this will be the last day of their lives.

The latest attempted bombing by the alleged underwear bomber has set off a panicked stew of fear mongers and pointing fingers. Our reaction is to investigate how we let one person to slip through our Berlin Wall of security. Hundreds of millions will be spent on new technology at airports and air travel will become so onerous no one will want to fly. The truth is that someone will always ‘get through.’ Live with it. Since 9/11 about 4000 American non-combatants have died in terrorist murders world-wide.

What will happen when someone bombs an Amtrak? Eventually, will we abandon all modes of transit except one? The one of monumental physical, emotional, and environmental carnage caused by the drivers of a car. Between 9/11 and 31 December 2008, 300,330 Americans were killed in automobile accidents. Now that’s what I call blood and guts, not some penny ante 4000 during the same period of time. Since 1974, when statistics began to be collected, an average of 42,800 people have been killed every year on our highways.

Who shall we blame? The bloated federal bureaucracy, who funded the nation-wide network of high speed roads? How about the automobile industry for making cars that have been death traps? How about our failure to ‘connect the dots’? The failure of American technology to use our vaunted imagination in order to create safe, fast, mass transit? How about The presidents who allowed this carnage to go on during their watch? Now, here’s a rogues gallery: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GWH Bush, Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama.

Anyone who believes the expansion of our war into Afghanistan is a good idea, should either go [if they meet the qualifications], or urge every eligible young man and women to join, and go. Be a hero. Be a proud American. To do any less is to be a fraud.

This war will blow up in our faces, and we won’t be able to hide from war’s brutal face any longer. The ‘stans will blow up, Afghanistan will descend into a nightmare of blood and famine, Pakistan will crumble, and a regional nuclear war will teeter on the brink.

We have failed as a nation and as a people. We have lulled ourselves into believing we are something special, when the opposite is true. We have no national or personal sense of honor. We have accepted the mean and brutal notion of Darwinian Capitalism, and we will be impaled upon its bitter fruit.

Obama will be left holding a pinwheel in the gale, looking for common ground, dreaming of slapping the fat cat bankers around, and wondering what might have been.

Me? I’m done with war.

This blog will turn, and leave geo-politics behind. There are stories to tell, and entertainment to be enjoyed. January is a good time to change directions and explore new lives and the spaces that are still unseen.

In the meantime, I’ll be riding my new bicycle. Sphere: Related Content