The Cowardice of America at War

[JohnyCanuck]

By Richard Reeves

They were paying the locals, sipping tea with them, giving them weapons and advice. The locals killed them. What hit me was listening to Spc. Robert Criss, who said Meari was his best friend: "I don’t trust anyone out there. They just seem shady all the time. ... They duck around corners and out at us."

"We were making inroads," said Capt. Nick Stout, Meari’s company commander.

No we weren’t. We were occupying their country—and they hate us. I was not crying for Meari, though God knows, he and his family deserve our tears. I was crying for my country, for the cowardice of our leaders who continue to send the same brave young men out again and again to die rather than admit they have no chance as strangers in a strange land.

They, the cowards in Washington, know what they are doing. If they don’t, they can read the reports of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, which analyzed each of more than 2,200 suicide attacks around the world since 1980. Their conclusion, obvious if you read history, is that extremist religion is not the motivation for such terrorism. The reason, above all, is military occupation of other countries.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cowardice_of_america_at_war_20101115/?ln

[CrispyQ]

1. K&R

snip...

Our soldiers fight for each other, for their friends, as soldiers have fought and died for each other through the centuries. They are certainly not fighting, this small band of volunteer brothers, for the ideas or ambitions of George Bush or Barack Obama, or Donald Rumsfeld or David Petraeus.

They are not even fighting for the rest of us, the American people. We just had a national election for the Congress, that half-dead body which is supposed to declare wars, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were barely mentioned by candidates. And why should they be? Except for the fact that it is draining our treasury, the wars are barely affecting the overwhelming majority of Americans. We have a volunteer army, the National Football League with guns, and we are spectators. Did we even notice when the troops abandoned the Korengal Valley in defeat three months ago? Are we noticing that Congress, the White House and the Pentagon are now planning to hold off on major troop withdrawal from Afghanistan until 2014, four years from now?

So, cry the beloved country. Shed tears for the brave. And for the cowards, too, the men and women in Washington who refuse to admit we cannot impose our will on the world—and certainly never will unless we are in a struggle where we are all engaged and all at risk. The band of brothers out there are alone. We have already abandoned them in a bloody fog of empty words about national security.

[The Doctor.]

2. The cycle of violence must be maintained to keep the Military Corporate Complex fed.

It only becomes more ravenous every year. The more sated it becomes, the more it grows, the more ravenous it becomes.

The war-monging entities have the weapons, intelligence, and will to get their way. So they will until we get rid of them, or they finally wipe out humanity.