Marching to Persepolis
"The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness; and the end of his talk is mischievous madness." —Ecclesiastes 10:13
I do not know whether Chief Magistrate Bush will start an offensive war against the Persians, as is expected by many observers. I am inclined to think that even so irresponsible and morally trivial a man as Bush will draw back from the unpredictable consequences of such an action.
However, I know that history is replete with catastrophes brought on by the folly of foolish and reckless rulers. I know that Bush is an arrested adolescent who has little experience in suffering the consequences of his bad actions and choices and seems unable to admit a mistake. That he has never in his life experienced the discipline in reality involved in having to do an actual honest day’s work. Further, that he is catastrophically ignorant of history—the little that he knows is wrong—and his view of the world is that of a corporate vice-president for public relations, and not a very good one. Also, that he usually strives to please his friends among the Likudniks and the oil sheiks.
I am also pretty certain that other parts of the ruling establishment do not have sufficient integrity and patriotism to prevent Bush from launching another war of aggression if he grabs at that option.
I know with certainty that the U.S. government is in such actions in contempt of the Constitution that established it. I am fairly certain that the wars Bush has made or will make in the Mideast qualify as war crimes by the Nuremberg standard, i.e., legally they are indistinguishable from Hitler’s invasion of Poland. I am convinced that Americans risking their lives in Iraq (or Iran) are badly mistaken if they think they are somehow fighting for their country.
Americans in general are giving a vivid exhibition of the folly of putting trust in Power. That they are doing so means that the wisdom of our Founding Fathers is now forgotten, as irrelevant and alien to us as the laws of Hammurabi.
"For the leaders of the people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed." —Isaiah 9:16
Entries(RSS)
Dr. Wilson,
For the sakes of Americans, Iranians and others who would be caught up in the horrors of the expansion of the war into Persia, it is my hope that President Bush and his handlers are thwarted in their apparent plan to attack Parthia. Hope, it would seem, hangs by a thread as no less than three carrier battle groups move into the region.
Hitler had, for his preemptive war, a better cover than does Bush, for there were at least a number of ethnic Germans left in Poland which Hitler could claim to be protecting. Compared to Bush, the Japanese had an even better case, placing their strike on Pearl Harbor in the gray area between a preemptive strike and a preventive strike, that case being Roosevelt's oil embargo. Yet, we were able, after the shooting was over, to hang a few Germans and Japanese for overplaying their hands in hubris and arrogance.
We will, however, give our modern counterparts a pension, a speaking circuit, a library somewhere and perhaps even elect another one of their clan to some high office.
The war in Iraq is inexplicable and inexcusable. We have no valid reason or rationale for being there. However, would any of you like to see Iran obtain a nuclear weapon?
"... The war in Iraq is inexplicable and inexcusable. We have no valid reason or rationale for being there. However, would any of you like to see Iran obtain a nuclear weapon? ..."
There would be nothing scarier than seeing Israel and Pakistan obtain nuclear weapons - one genocidal another Muslim country. But they both already have!...
Iran is surrounded by Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and a U.S. fleet, all nuclear-armed. There is no real evidence of nuclear weapons in Iran---only the possibility some years in the future; nor any indication that such weapons would be used against the U.S. or that they could in fact be delivered on the U.S. Does this justify a "preventive" war that might have serious unforeseen consequences. This war by the same U.S. government that has settled a reported one million Iranians in the U.S.? We must stop allowing the phony reality projected by politicians and media to describe the world for us.
I don't have a problem with fighting the Asiatic hordes called Muslim. But let's be fair, Jews are also underminers of Christian civilization with their liberal secular humanism and strong radical beliefs in phoney human rights.
Lets cleanse ourselves of both of these anti-christian elements before we all fall under the heel of Satan!!
I am asking this honestly: Is there never a time for pre-emptive war?
Dr Wilson,
"I know that Bush is an arrested adolescent who has little experience in suffering the consequences of his bad actions and choices and seems unable to admit a mistake. That he has never in his life experienced the discipline in reality involved in having to do an actual honest day’s work. Further, that he is catastrophically ignorant of history—the little that he knows is wrong—and his view of the world is that of a corporate vice-president for public relations, and not a very good one. Also, that he usually strives to please his friends among the Likudniks and the oil sheiks.
I am also pretty certain that other parts of the ruling establishment do not have sufficient integrity and patriotism to prevent Bush from launching another war of aggression if he grabs at that option. "
I agree with you entirely. These simple truths make the rest irrelevent. George Washington Carver was a wiser human being than W. will ever be and any American who can read, knows the newspapers in Israel are far more accurate and informative about the Middle East than the Grey Lady in New York or The Washington Post in D.C.. The old determinate number of civilized, cultivated, fearless, Americans in the halls of power no longer exists-- Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Gentile or otherwise. Our country, like our
debates, conversations and history have been taken over by chit -- chatting, talking heads, bean counters, poll takers and noisy, hucksters and confidence men. Media names like Karl Rove, David Frum, Billy Kristol and Chris Mathews come to mind, but there are more, many more. Like ants, when one dies there are thousands just like him attending the funeral. As my old professor once said, it is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
"... I am asking this honestly: Is there never a time for pre-emptive war? ..."
Only one, to destroy the genocidal state of Israel.
If there were no "Israel" with its brazen Fifth Column in the U.S., there would have been no 9/11, no Iraqi war disaster, no neocon grip of D.C., to plan more disastrous proxy wars, sending our own country to the dogs.
Why should the idea of a nuclear armed Iran terrify anyone outside of Israel? Nuclear armed Israel is a bigger danger to the US than Iran could ever be. The morally retarded US politicians who armed Israel with nuclear weapons committed the highest treason.
What is terrifying about nuclear weapons is that they would actually be unleashed on human populations.
It is a tragic yet undeniable historical fact that only one nation has ever proven itself worthy of such fear.
The decision to use those weapons saved millions of lives.
No, it didn't. Not with Japanese diplomats seeking terms of surrender well prior to their use...not when a blockade of the island of Japan would have brought the lone belligerent to its knees...not when Japan's airforce was virtually non-existent and bombers could have eliminated military targets much more precisely and virtually unopposed...not when the weapons were dropped where more civilians were killed than any designated military target could possibly justify.
I wonder, if Pakistan decided that the United States were on an imperialistic and religiously driven war...would she have much trouble convincing her citizens that releasing hellfire on Washington, D.C. or New York or wherever would "save millions of lives"? I wonder if we would feel so confident if it were our wives and children incinerated like shadows into the city sidewalk?
I believe America is the greatest country on Earth. I believe there is still a glimmer of hope for us to be a real republic. And I believe we committed a huge crime at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Simply not true. The bombs saved millions of lives for several reasons:
A:) Pacifists in Japan have since acknowledged that the bombs were the only way to shock the Imperial Guard into surrendering. With conventional warfare, they would have fought to the last man, killing several hundred thousand Americans and Japanese.
B:) The Imperial Guard had taken to hiding munitions and soldiers in hospitals/schools, etc. A bloody, door to door battle throughout all the major cities in Japan would have killed far more civilians.
C:) Most importantly, when the US dropped those bombs it showed the whole world the awesome destructive force of nuclear weapons. This created in the minds of sane world leaders the idea of M.A.D. or mutually assured destruction. Without first-hand eveidence of what actually happens when a city is nuked it is likely that the US and Russia would have been cavalier in their use of nukes and the Cold War would have ended in nuclear armageddon.
There are many more reasons, but these are the greatest.
Mr. Droney,
The argument that the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved American lives is not a valid one for a few reasons. We refused to accept Japan's surrender because it was not the "unconditional surrender" that Truman and his cabinet desired. The Japanese were willing to surrender as long as their Emperor was not harmed and allowed to be restored, but we arrogantly refused to accept this. A huge majority of military commanders and generals, including Mr. Eisenhower, opposed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. Secondly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets, meaning that we deliberately vaporized innocent civilians. Please tell me how or ever this could be justified. Third, why did Truman wait only three days after the first one to drop the second? There is a lot of speculation that Truman simply wanted to warn the Soviets of our might.
Lastly, the atomic bombings of Japan has been debated, but other massacres are swept under the radar. Dresden, Germany, and Tokyo, both civilian cities, had been firebombed into desolution by the allies, with deaths reaching the amount lost by the atomic bombings. Yet only the Japanese and Germans get tried for war crimes. It's simply more proof, as well as Mr. Lincoln's "victory," that winners write the history books.
Humans have never posessed a weapon that they did not use. We simply were the first to use it. Had we not, it would have been used by some other army, probably the Soviets. Secondly, I don't believe that we should have nuked Japan. As Curtis LeMay, who saw the big picture and the looming threat of communism that was so much greater than the Nazis or Imperial Japanese, argued, it would have been much effective for us to nuke the Soviets.
Nuke the Soviets? Now I agree that we shouldn't have allied ourselves with Soviet Russia, but what good purpose could nuking the Soviets possibly have? If we had nuked the Soviets before they acquired their own nukes, which I assume you are suggesting, then the generations after that would harbor some pretty bad bones to pick with us. Although we made a lot of mistakes during the Cold War, including giving them a blank check to enslave Eastern Europe, in the end we used prudence, diplomacy, and "peace through strength" to finally wear down the Russian Bear.
We bear irreparable scars from communist infiltration into every level of our government, culture, educational system, legal system, etc. The US and the Soviet Union both lost the cold War. There were no winners.
We had a ten year nuclear advantage on the Soviets. If we would have acted preemptively and destroyed communist strongholds in the late 1940s, worldwide how many lives would have been saved? Certainly, we would not have lost men in Korea and Vietnam. More importantly, it has been increasingly clear, with the release of documents over the past decade that the “Civil Rights,” “peace,” “women’s liberation,“ “integration,” and “black power” movements were nothing more than vehicles orchestrated and funded by Moscow to cause chaos and disorder in our country and weaken us internally. If we would have followed LeMay, and Patton’s advice and obliterated the communists in the 1940s, would these communists have infiltrated our courts, schools, colleges, media, and government agencies, and destroyed our country from the inside? Maybe, if we acted preemptively, we could have staved off the supposed “civil rights” movement and other communist shams that destroyed much of our culture and many of our communities.
Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were doing the bidding of the Soviets. They were not patriots. Knowingly or unknowingly, they were traitors, or "useful idiots". Read Sam Francis’s account of this if you don’t believe me.
The Japanese seem to have forgiven us. We are certainly on better terms with them than we are with the Russians.
I completely agree with you on the patriotic status of the civil rights leaders that are continually hailed as saints. Yes, maybe all of the things listed may have been prevented by lack of communist infiltration, but it is a little bit of wishful thinking that this culd have been avoided entirely. 550 7346 You could make the argument that if Britain had not foolishly declared war on Germany after they invaded Poland and let Russia and Germany go at it, then both could have been weakened and/or destroyed. However desirable this goal would have been, I believe the inflictions that affected America that you recall would still have happened.
The West has travelled down a secular, collectivist past for the last 200 years (with the decline of Christianity and the rise of industrial-capitalism), and would've had little strength left in its weakened backbone to prevent against a cultural onslaught that Marxism coomes with. I commend you on recognizing the communist threat that existed in FDR's cabinet and linking it to all the "movements" that followed; however, I believe these would've happened eventually, albeit a bit slower, regardless of Soviet expansion and influence.
The decision to use those weapons saved millions of lives.
That is imbecilic and ridiculous. Killing innocent civilians does not save lives, it is always murder. The fact that we can pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for a job well done shows the immorality and despicable, inhuman, frankly satanic attribute of American Culture. The use of those weapons was at least as bad as anything Hitler did. Furthermore, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, being Catholic cities (mysteriously the only ones targeted for an atomic bomb drop, hmmmm.....), was full of Churches praying for the end of the war. Within seconds of the bomb blast, the microwave like effect on the people burst their skin off leaving it hanging like strips of cloth. These red skinless victims slithered to dirty puddles crying for water to cool their ravaged bodies. Their voices were barely human. Those instantly killed left carbonized corpses poised in their last act. Victims in the center did not even leave an ash. Men who had nothing to do with either the war nor with the government whose business was teaching children, conducting medical research or saving lives never went home to see their wives and children again. After all this interminable suffering, a nice little message came from the Americans to tell everyone in the city that it was to be bombed. A little too late.
If that is the price of freedom give me Stalin or give me Hitler, give me the Caesars, because at least they were honest. At least they didn't pretend to be freedom loving men when really they were murders, as the government is in this country. The dropping of the atomic bomb was inhumane, it didn't save any of the innocent lives of the men in Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
"...
"The decision to use those weapons saved millions of lives."
That is imbecilic and ridiculous.
..."
Imbecilic and ridiculous indeed.
Philip and Johan,
I guess humanity would have been better served had the Nazis been victorious in WWII. If that is the claim you would like to make, then stick with it. I'd love to hear you describe it in more detail.
Vividly describing death by atomic weapons in detail is certainly gruesome, but is it better to have your head lopped off by a rusty sword? Or walk into what appears to be a shower only to have hydrogen cyanide pumped in the room? Or be fed feet first into a wood chipper? Or be dipped feet first into scalding oil and watch your lower extremities disappear? It reminds me of an all in the family where Stivic says "Archie did you know that over 5,000 people were killed in the US last year by handguns?" and Archie thinks for a minute and replies "Would it make you feel any better if they was hanged?"
Philip,
I had to re-read your astonishing post. I almost choked on my dinner as I did so. Did you really say "give me Stalin, or give me Hitler... at least they were honest?" I'm just checking to make sure I read that correctly.
Exactly correct. Basically I see little difference between King Bush sending men to die for the New World Order, or Hitler creating the master race or Stalin establishing international Communism. If we are going to drop atomic bombs on innocents and call it good, well, how are we different from them? We aren't. Hitler said yeah, we're going to make a master race. We are going to massacre Jews. In fact, he said it before the National Socialist Worker party ran him as their candidate. He basically said "we think that is good." He was out in the open with it. Lenin and Stalin were both out in the open with the fact that you couldn't create a perfect Communist society without breaking eggs, (and to a lesser extent so was Marx) and hence it was perfectly okay to exterminate undesirables for the state's goals. We do the same thing, we just pretend it is something other than what it is. We are "spreading democracy" by blowing up villages in Iraq or Serbia and incinerating innocent life in Nagasaki.
Second, what in the world are you talking about? Your Archie Bunker point has little bearing on anything we're talking about, and it was "Would it make you feel better if they were pushed out of windows" not hanged. Anyway, so what? Wouldn't it be better that they didn't die at all? And I don't mean to naively suggest we are going to have world peace, I mean can't we limit military action to military targets? When we killed innocent people, Stalin killed innocent people and Tojo killed innocent people it was all evil. Are you trying to say it is okay if the plane which drops the bomb has an American flag on it but not a Soviet one? If the target is innocent civilians, it is not and cannot be justified, unless you are going to use the same rationale that animated Stalin and Hitler.
Lastly, the Archie Bunker quote is talking about the lunacy of gun control. War is a different thing. It was once upon a time that men waged war with honor, they did not kill the weak, or the defenseless. In WWII we decided that was great policy. In fact it seems that everyone decided that was a great policy. Human beings have dignity, they are not "collateral damage" as you seem to think, expendable for the aims of a bunch of bureaucrats, whether they are in Washington, Berlin or Moscow. Incidentally, the Japanese never launched an offensive against American civilians, all their targets were military.
You have incredibly naive ideas that there are actually distinct lines drawn between "innocent civillians" and the military. I have a friend who is a Marine in Iraq. He was leading a caravan of Humvees when an IED exploded and killed three of his men. Luckily, he surviced. Do you know who deonated the bomb? An 11 year old boy.
Philip,
You have lost all perspective. Certainly, in past US wars, individual soldiers or groups of soldiers have engaged in killing or torturing civilians. The Calley incident comes to mind. However, this is far different from an overall policy of genocide. The Nazis interred and killed millions. We interred Japanese Americans, but we did not kill them and we actually paid them for their incarceration. Stalin had a policy of starving those who were undesirable. He killed millions. The last time I checked, FDR didn't initiate a policy of starving midwesterners because they didn't vote for him. Understand the difference. This country is far from perfect, but to say that what we have done is equal to or worse than what Stalin and Hitler did is lunacy.
Mickey Droney is a 4.0, exhibit A for American public education. He has been thoroughly propagandized and ideologized. He has never learned to think, he wouldn't recognize the truth if he tripped over it, and he wouldn't accept it even if he knew it.
Mickey Droney,
if Bush is forging a new world order and nuking or otherwise obliterating those who would vote against or otherwise oppose it, then there is a parallel.
Anyway, our nuking Japan was unchristian. Whether it was better or worse than what Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot did, I don't know nor do I care. It was wrong.
I don't actually have a problem with the Japanese internment anymore though. They were a threat.
You have incredibly naive ideas that there are actually distinct lines drawn between “innocent civillians” and the military. I have a friend who is a Marine in Iraq. He was leading a caravan of Humvees when an IED exploded and killed three of his men. Luckily, he surviced. Do you know who deonated the bomb? An 11 year old boy.
Then what do you do to stop it, intern all 11 year old children? What you have here is quite the opposite of anything I'm talking about, you have an 11 year old boy functioning as a combatant, not sitting at home praying for the end of a futile war and for one's parents, spouses, and siblings to come home when all of the sudden they are microwaved by a bomb dropped without warning by American planes.
It sounds to me as if King Bush is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis based on that. In fact, the former interim prime minister Alawi was on Dennis Prager's radio show a month ago, and he said if you took a vote today, 80% of Iraqis would want America to leave. Perhaps 11 year olds are detonating IEDs because they truly believe in a cause, or because they are brainwashed. Now if a soldier saw him and shot him before he detonated the bomb, I would say that was horrible, but not that the soldier was evil, or murderous, or that it was unjustified. It would be horrible because of the circumstance. But let us say the soldier would shoot the boy who was walking down the street because he might blow up an IED, that would be unquestionably evil. Of all the thousands of civilians that have been murdered in Iraq, how many have been killed while minding their own business, in their own homes or walking down the street when a bomb blows up, having come freshly from an American plane? How many boys have been killed who were not blowing up IEDs? The innocent Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were involved in what offense against American troops?
If I am naive for that, it is good, it means I'm still human and not a brainwashed tool of the atheistic industrial-military-capitalist state of today, nor of the socialist state of tomorrow.
Disregarding Bush's globalism, would Bush not initiate such a policy if granted the power and such a policy seemed to further his goals? Bush does terrible things to Iraqis and wishes for the world to immigrate into the US. What then prevents him from doing similarly terrible things to the American people? His limited power. The American people would resist.
All I'm saying is that to an American nationalist, doing harm to a fellow American is worse than doing the same to an alien. But to a globalist, doing harm to a fellow human is equally wrong. Bush is a globalist and one who has proven himself unbound by Christian morality. He cannot be trusted any more than can Ahmadinejad or Khamenei.
We interred Japanese Americans, but we did not kill them and we actually paid them for their incarceration.
Hah, we DESTROYED their lives. Fathers were split up from their children, they didn't have water nearby in the form of a pump or hose and had to walk a mile for water, yet they committed no crime. People died of illnesses and relatives were never told and never found them again. Obviously you don't have to put them up in a Hilton, but these people were living in tin shacks. Maybe we weren't gassing them, but we weren't that humane either. Now, in principle I accept the policy of internment, but not when it includes inhumane treatment. On top of that, there are many Japanese Americans that are still fighting to get compensation for their grandparent's property, which was taken right up and given to FDR's banking buddies to develop.
This country is far from perfect, but to say that what we have done is equal to or worse than what Stalin and Hitler did is lunacy.
If you can accept dropping a horrible weapon on innocent people and make them die horribly who have done nothing to anyone, and are not combatants for a cause identified as good, how can you not justify gassing and starving people whose deaths are at least as agonizing, albeit not as quick, as nuclear annihilation, for a cause? We just didn't do it as often. That is the only difference morally speaking. Until America atones in some way and acknowledges the evil and reverses its policy of murdering civilians I fail to see any way I can draw a distinction between what we did or are doing and Hitler and Stalin. It is all based on the same moral principles, that killing non combatants is okay if it fits in with the goals of the state.
I'm glad the United States was on the victorious side of WWII. I still believe there were other, more humane ways to end it with a single beaten combatant on the other side.
Saying to communists, "Don't mess with us...see how many of you we can incinerate at one time?" doesn't justify the murder of women and children.
It is, in fact, naive to think that those normally outside the Western/Christian notion of belligerence won't get involved when their heritage doesn't value them...so you treat those who engage in manly combat as men and you seek to eliminate them. (Hopefully, still with regret.) But, you don't say "Well, women and kids might fight, too...so lets burn them away." I think anyone with sense would tell a marine in Iraq to be wary of the civilian population as it might not be civilian - I don't think anyone with sense would tell a marine "Gun down all civilians, some of them are killers."
I'm hoping Mr. Droney is desirous of living in a virtuous society that does fight evil at its doorstep and that is why he wants to believe in a larger, cultural purpose behind past wars. I just don't think we do that with spurs that go jingo jangle jingle.
In the face of destruction we seem to want to rain down upon ourselves, may Christ protect us from those within AND without.
Wow, there is really some astonishingly ill-reasoned and ill-informed commentary here--both by the author of the article and the respondents. I'm trying to put this gently. But my God.
For the sake of fairness, for the sake of intellectual integrity, try to go outside the echo chamber every now and then and hear some other voices. Then try to enter into their viewpoint imaginatively and charitably. If we are going to restore political discourse in this country, we need to stop the balkanization of political viewpoints. Lefties need to read the best of righties, righties need to read the best of lefties, and we need to acknowledge that neither side has a monopoly on good ideas and good intentions.
Do this today: Take one of your most cherished viewpoints, find the best representative of the opposing viewpoint, and read what he/she has to say as carefully and fairly as possible. And try to lower your blood pressure a little.
Tim,
Do you have time to bless us with your knowledge of the truth?
Philip Candido writes in post 24: "We are 'spreading democracy' by blowing up villages in Iraq or Serbia and incinerating innocent life in Nagasaki."
Since I do not have time to comment on Iraq and Nagasaki, I have only a quick question to Mr. Candido: What is the connection between Serbia on the one hand and Iraq or Nagasaki on the other?
To make "the connection" clear to the other readers who have posted comments on this article, I woud recommend to clink on the link below and take a look at the Serb crimes against the Albanian civilian population in Kosova. Prevention of more attrocities by the Serb ultra nacionalists now turned democrats was the main reason that NATO, not only the United States, started the air strikes against Serbia.
http://www.alb-net.com/warcrimes-img/warcrimes.htm
Wow, there is really some astonishingly ill-reasoned and ill-informed commentary here–both by the author of the article and the respondents. I’m trying to put this gently. But my God.
Santa Maria! You're as bad as the liberals. "there's ill informed commentary here!" What might it be? Give us examples?
I'm tired of people who lambast everything with some general word "ill-informed", or "ill-reasoned" without identifying what is ill reasoned and what is ill-informed. Perhaps you'll be so good as to show us? And I though the Italian commies I grew up with were kings of double speak.
28 Mr. Frank,
I agree. Our enemies do not set our moral standards. Whether or not we were as bad as or worse than Hitler, Stalin or Pot is beside the point. In too many instances, we were immoral and un-Christian. That is enough said.
Phillip,
I surely agree with you. Perhaps Tim would have liked to contribute, but did not know what.
Incidentally ... do we hear some garbled Turkish stable boy noise here? They are famed globally for selling women & drugs (and locally for plotting to kill American GIs in N.J.) ... are they looking for business _here_?... What has this world come to...
Ben
(Typo, that was Philip, not "Phillip", sorry.)
You're forgiven. It's actually Filippo on my passport, but since its too expensive to live and work in Italy, I'm content to keep it Philip.
#33 Tim
Your words:
"Lefties need to read the best of righties, righties need to read the best of lefties, and we need to acknowledge that neither side has a monopoly on good ideas and good intentions."
The very nature of the premise around which I order my life compels me to reject the notion reflected in your words rendered supra, for I do not order my life around a premise which I do not consider to be universally applicable.
Within the penumbra of my premise there is room for discourse, compromise and consensus. (There is something suspect and leftish about that last word.)
There is naught to be gained through a "dialogue" (another one of those words) with Jacobins and left-wing Hegelians: Marxists of all ilks including Leninists, Stalintists, Trotskyites, socialists, Fabian socialists, etc.; fascists of various persuasions, including corporatists and Nazis; and social democrats, including the Wilsonians, the New Dealers. The forms that these plagues take today include the New Left (Frankfurt School) well ensconced within academia (an "intellectual" faction within the Democratic Party); the neo-cons with the fascist version thereof represented by the Straussians and the Marxist (Trotskyite) version thereof represented by the likes of the Kristols (well placed within the Republican Party); and, of course, the run of the mill social democrats who are the glue of both political parties.
There is absolutely naught which I can learn FROM them that I should be mindful of. There remain some things which I could learn ABOUT them, for the more one learns of one's enemies the better the chance of defeating them. Make no mistake about it, given the premise around which I order my life, "these people" are my enemies.
Gentlemen, almost everything has been discussed here except the subject of the article---the tyranny of the present moment. I fear this means we have all accepted that there is nothing we can do about it, so we debate events of 60 years ago instead.
Dr. Wilson,
From my little farm in the uplands of Louisiana, I am well aware of the tyranny of the present moment; and that tyranny has like Sauron fixed its eye on Iran even as it degrades this once happy land into the image of Mordor. For the moment at least, there appears to be no Gandolf out of the midst of literary myth, no Washington or Davis out of our own past and not even a Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a hero hidden among the ranks of our former enemy.
"... we debate events of 60 years ago instead ..."
Patience, patience ... you see, we are doing it really thoroughly, from the very beginnings of time, should miss nothing, as all the past influences the future... What, a timetable for ending it? ... That would endanger the valuable lives of all the disputants ... defeatist ... unpatriotic ...
Seriously, concerning Iran
"... we have all accepted that there is nothing we can do about it ..."
We (most) are good at analyzing, and cannot say we do not have an ample advance warning.
However, so was the case with Iraq!
Something like a bad dream, aware what is coming but can "do" nothing about it. Such is the structure of actual power and "our" corrupt government.
Civility please, Mr. Ben (Full name ?)! Personal abuse and ethnic slurs are symptoms of a sick mind.
Clyde Wilson (42) is right. What can you expect from barren minds, poisoned hearts and sick minds?
Gentlemen, almost everything has been discussed here except the subject of the article—the tyranny of the present moment. I fear this means we have all accepted that there is nothing we can do about it, so we debate events of 60 years ago instead.
Sad to say it may be so. The democrats were put back in power to stop the war, but they failed in that. Of course I didn't vote for them, I voted Libertarian even though it is against my economic principles.
However I would suggest that the events of 60 years ago have much to do with your current post.
It was during WWII that we decided actions like night bombing which were thought wrong because it puts civilians at risk were okay, or targeting civilians the way we did in Berlin, and in Japan, not only with the two atomic bombs but with Napalm bombs in every city in Japan. With that in place it became accepted that wars can be fought in theory with few men on the ground to do the work. Just drop the bombs, and if some people happen to die, oh well. As warfare has evolved, that has been more applicable, so that something what we saw in Iraq, and are seeing is more possible. The case was made that we could reduce all of Iraq to nothing and rebuild it in no time, and people were sold on that idea based on the concept of indiscriminate bombing. It won't cost that many lives, it won't take that long.
Secondly there was the concept of spreading democracy by going to war and fighting big old bullies, which became truly palatable during WWII. It was ineffective after WWI, since we went back to the sane approach that what happens in Europe is Europe's problem. WWII set us in the mindset that it was normative for us to do that. We went over seas to stop Hitler, so we should also to stop Stalin and his satelites. The acceptence of this mentality has established state department policy since Korea. We can go to Asia, to the middle east, and if we stop those tyrants we are more safe in America. It doesn't matter that Hitler would have been defeated if we never touched down on European shores since he lost more than half his army in Russia, the acceptance of the principle of interventionism made both Iraq wars possible. It will also make acceptance of war in Iran possible. There is precedent to appeal to. We went to Korea, etc. As long as we are hellbent on this idea that toppling regimes with limited air and no navy capabilities half way around the world some how protects American lives, then Iran is possible. The only way to stop it is if we put in place a government which understands that protecting American lives comes from securing our borders and inspecting our ports, as well as following up on overstayed visas and deporting criminal aliens on the spot. It is high time to make business take a second place to American security.
However our leaders are too foolish to pick up on such an idea, because it is business first, and war first. They are too dumb to realize that if we can't secure ancient Babylon, which is a flat plateau and in theory easy since geography doesn't favor guerillas, how in the world can we occupy Persia which is a mountainous wreck full of caverns and hills, with many uninhabitable areas which we can't cross except by air? It is perfect for guerillas, and there will be many of them. But our leaders are as ignorant of geography as they are of history and of Islam.
Mr. Wilson:
It seems to me that events 60 years ago (and even more ancient) are quite relevant to understanding our present predicament; the ethical and civic malaise that is metastasizing, which will likely destroy us.
The same hubris and moral obtuseness that then led our leadership then to target civilians indiscriminately is on display now, here on this thread, in Mickey Droney's posts. His, and the Bush claque's apparent willingness to again use "WMD's" - say, tactical nuclear weapons to take out Iranian installations, for example - without regard for the moral and ultimate political consequences (and the two are linked, no matter what these so called "Machiavellian realists" say) is pathetically horrifying. Just as is Mr. Droney's (apt moniker) defense of Hiroshima, Dresden, etc.
Bush & Droney don't get it: a record of mercy, virtue, justice and fairness is worth a lot of military power. I'd take the Pope's divisions over Stalin's any day- in the end, the truth and the good are all that matter, and Stalin and all his men are dead for nothing. And all these "Staussian realists," these "neocon" weasels, are no better. They're piddling materialists, too. They worship whore power, and lie through their teeth in her service. They, just like Stalin, are materialist fools, with no greater ambition than to seize the fasces to themselves, and rule this passing dross without kindness, justice or mercy. They know nothing of, and care nothing for the Beatitudes.
And so too, most Americans, in the thrall of the usurers and pornographers, care nothing for tens and hundreds of thousands of the Iraqis dead from American violence since 1991. Or for the thousands of Iranians who would die in an attack on Iran.
I personally believe we deserve Boy George & the crew. Isaiah's prophecy is for us, I think. Tell it to Franklin Grahm, James Dobson and James Hagee. Their exegesis is false, and I very much doubt Anti Christ will be from Romania. Or Arabia. Like a babe in the hay, it is not as they expect. As with the Pharisees, so with them.
We've earned what's coming. This time, just no one ask why they hate us.
“... They are too dumb to realize that if we can’t secure ancient Babylon, which is a flat plateau and in theory easy since geography doesn’t favor guerrillas, how in the world can we occupy Persia which is a mountainous wreck full of caverns and hills, with many uninhabitable areas which we can’t cross except by air? It is perfect for guerrillas, and there will be many of them. But our leaders are as ignorant of geography as they are of history and of Islam. ...”
Right!... Just see the mess they are already in with the far less developed Afghanistan (vs. Iran: GPD 5.3%, pop. 44%, etc.).
Lee,
I have never attended a public school in my life. More importantly, I didn't know that public schools taught Sam Francis's work? Maybe you should read all of my posts before assuming that I'm some kind of neo-con.