War without end - it's the American way

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2008/02/17/opinion/021708d.txt

War without end - it's the American way
By Randy Alcorn/Right on Target


Americans like to think of themselves as the crest of the human wave, the highest manifestation of human potential to organize society for the maximum benefit of all its members. The greatest nation in the history of mankind.

Yet, such high self-esteem seems shameful vanity when belied by our poor choice of leaders, and where we have allowed them to take us. snip

On average since 1776, America has had a war every 19 years - roughly one for each generation of Americans. Some wars have been justifiable and necessary. For example, the Revolutionary War and World War II.

But other conflicts, such as the Mexican American, Spanish American and Vietnam wars, have had questionable justifications and were provoked by selfish interests or by political and ideological follies.

Indeed, in several cases, our political leaders have manipulated the nation into war by employing deceit and appealing to the public's irrational emotions of fear and rage.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who used their congenital privilege to avoid combat in Vietnam, have employed artifice to push America into the ruinous Iraq war. They have not experienced the horror of war first hand - the dismembered bodies, the smell of burning flesh, the stomach-turning moans of the wounded and dying, the abject grief and despair of the survivors.

Shock and awe may be a powerful boast in a speech made thousands of miles from the war zone, but its reality is no source of pride.

[Wizard777]

1. Actually it's Trotsky. n/t

[no_hypocrisy]

2. It's part of the GDP.

[endarkenment]

3. My entire lifetime: endless war.

It really is discouraging.

[IDemo]

4. Arthur Silber writes of this at great length

in his Dominion Over the World series.

In the earlier parts of this series, I maintained that, contrary to what many people believe, the war on Iraq represents a continuation of U.S. foreign policy over the last century (and slightly longer). It is time to limn the broad outlines of that foreign policy, and some of its major roots.

For that purpose, I will set out here a few key excerpts from Christopher Layne's very valuable book, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. Although Layne's focus begins with World War II, I will take certain aspects of his thesis back still farther: to the Spanish-American War and the ensuing U.S. occupation of the Philippines, and even to the Mexican-American War. As I have argued, the central themes go back to our very early history as a nation.