Now that the horror of the ISIS attacks is sinking in, the spastic little children in the GOP and the media are demanding "Do Something!!!". The fact that these people don't have the slightest idea about what to do does not stop them from screaming. All they want is to send the US Military out to kill people and blow things up. Doesn't matter what or where as long as it's Muslim. It is horribly and sadly predictable how this is all going to play out. First, wise people asking for restraint will be mocked as wimpy, unpatriotic appeasers. Then to appease these babies, the US will bomb something or invade something Islamic. This will accomplish nothing except help ISIS recruit more terrorists, kill innocent people, and finally get American soldiers killed. Oh yes, and give people like Marco Rubio a cheap bounce in the polls. When the body bags start coming home, General Marco will nowhere be found. And when the next terrorist attack happens, liberals will be blamed. Or hippies. Or Peaceniks. Or Jane Fonda. Or anyone except the assholes who demanded war. Who will be screaming, once again...do something!!!......
Any shrink can tell you a working definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again even if it doesn't work. By that definition, the United States of America is insane. We keep asking the Pentagon to get US out of these messes. And it has been proven that the Pentagon is only good at two things 1) Blowing things up 2) Fucking up.
Why hasn't it been reported that, since the end of World War II whenever the enemy decides not to cave in and, you know. actually fire back, the Pentagon loses the war? Korea was a tie once the Chinese got involved. Vietnam was a disaster. In this century both Iraq and Afghanistan were bloody, pointless slogs. The Marines were blown out of Beirut in the 80's when Reagan decided to Do Something about Libyan terrorism. The only time the Pentagon wins is if the enemy is so weak it cant resist (Grenada, Panama), can be subdued by just bombing (the Balkans) , or when the enemy essentially leaves the battlefield (the first Gulf War). All the rest have been defeats of the United States. This despite the fact that one half of the world military expenditures are borne by the United States. This despite the fact that the US has the world's only functioning blue water navy. This despite the fact that the US spends so much on national defense that nobody can tell exactly how much is being spent! I guess it would be unpatriotic to subject the Pentagon, to, you know, an audit. Finally, this despite the fact that the average American soldier nowadays is of consistently high quality. ( they are not "troops" they are soldiers). So we blame our defeats on Jane Fonda. Or that we didn't let MacArthur cross the Yalu or let John Rambo win the war in Vietnam. Or we just didn't have enough troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or they didn't give us enough time. Hey, if they would only give us 20 years, we could complete our "nation building" , whatever the hell that is. Its always the fault of someone else. Never because of the possibility that the generals, the desk jockeys, and the politicians might be incompetent. Oh no!
Maybe I'm being too hard on the Pentagon. After all, they work for a public that has essentially abdicated the responsibilities of citizenship and national defense. The volunteer army lets us dump all the responsibility of our safety on a small strata of people who are overstressed due to the demands made on them. Many in the military did not want to follow up on Bush's harebrained scheme in Iraq. What is sadly apparent is that a combination of an ignorant public, mindless politicians, and a Pentagon so bloated that it cannot get out of its own way will only get people killed while doing little to stop the evil of ISIS.
Before we start another war, maybe we can demand that Saudi Arabia and other petro-dictatorships stop funding terrorists just to save their own corrupt skins. Remember when Jimmy Carter was laughed out of the White House when he called the energy crisis "the moral equivalent of war?" Well it is war when the money we pay for gas winds up in the hands of ISIS thanks to our "allies". We could cut down our dependence on foreign oil, leaving the sheiks no option but to drink it. Finally, those of us who call ourselves "Christians", followers of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. can stand in the forefront, demanding accountability from those who would get us in another pointless war.
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