Atrocious civilian casualty news has come in yet again from one of our wars in the Middle East, this time from our proxy border war in Pakistan. A drone that has never known fear or caution, so easily sent forth to kill with no human to risk, got bad instructions from its sheltered human operators and heinously blew away a traditional jirga council of Pakistan elders. At least 40—that’s correct, 40—were killed with an unknown number wounded yesterday.
Many detached or historical observers would emphatically state after the no-fly implementation on Libya yesterday (prelude to falling bombs near oil resources) that of course the United States military is out of control. We have occupation divisions in Iraq after a disastrous war for nothing, a horrendously futile and endless war of something in Afghanistan, a proxy war spawned with Pakistan from that futility, while of course all these disastrous fountains of blood and pain cost stupendous amounts of money and treasure. Out of control.
Is that why the American public support for the Afghanistan has recently plummeted to nothing, the Founders great fear of a standing army creating a government of endless blood? Is it the horrendous lies and falsehoods? The coffins at Andrews never stopping, our Army and Marine Corps ground to nothing?
Probably not, little Hoovers in the States have started a vicious war against public unions and spending, while the Feds—with a stupidity Sarah Palin admires—have made a deity of Hoover this year with an appalling game of sickening budget chicken, see how much we can cut without really meaning it! The sick, the hungry, the cops, firefighters and teachers, all thrown to the street while the bombs endlessly fall, the horrendous cost of endless stupid war for nothing have slapped Americans in the face when they see their own little people thrown into the abyss for it.
I do not and will never believe this is an indictment to the intelligence and moral character of the American people, held in so much contempt by Washington DC. Humans organized into governments overwhelmingly respond to leadership, it’s the way we’re tribally wired. American Presidential leadership has not placed a high value on life or fiscal prudence, if Bush and Obama had the American people would have responded and the wars ended. Many segments of America have been vociferously sickened by all the useless wars for years, but without leadership their efforts for peace were and are totally doomed.
“We never forgive our enemy,” a Pakistani survivor of our drone proxy war vehemently swore yesterday. Oh yes, that enemy is America, and he totally means it, if it takes 100 years a price will be paid by our little people for this atrocity of stupidity and evil.
Here’s where the out of control judgment so easily springs forth for our military, the wars have backfired horrendously while we throw Americans into the street and chuck our children’s future to the wind, the public overwhelmingly hates it but still the wars endlessly careen out of control anyway, Obama and Congress have no intention of stopping it. Sickening my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours tribal patriarchy politics and an iron grip of military spending guarantee it.
What to do? Continue to voice outrage at this stupidity and atrocity wherever possible. Never, ever vote for a candidate who says he or she is going to fix a failed war again, or lie about continuing it. Demand leadership that values life and the future of our children. Know that starting wars is a terrible, horrendous choice we should rarely make.
The American people are stupid, but not that stupid, the incomparable Digby recently wrote on the idiocy of federal spending cuts and the horrible screwing the little people are getting out of all this insanity. She’s absolutely right, and that’s my final message for our awful politicians in all this tragedy: we are not stupid.
You can put on that American flag lapel pin and strut shit about terrorism abroad while our own politicians and doctors get shot, you can blather bullshit about security while you slaughter Afghan and Pakistan civilians, you can so stupidly embrace a totally failed energy paradigm and then have CNN and ABC embrace all of it every night with nary a mention of costs, but we are not fooled. This is all total failure, and when you decide to lead the wars will end.