Last night, the President of United States explained the steps that he intends to take to deal with the threat from ISIL.
I did not hear him mention just who, exactly, he thinks will do this work, or how, now he's shipping Americans over there, he plans to keep them out of harm's way, much less combat.
And I heard absolutely nothing about just how he intends to pay for this.
The president, and the spineless neocons in Congress who are in favor of this, and the gutless Democrats who are all too afraid of losing their non-combat, good paying jobs, to oppose this ought to be beneath contempt.
We provided the necessary preconditions for ISIL thrive. It needed a big, bad enemy, one which had demonstrably done bad things, to gin up the fervor of hate
Now, we're about to hand it all to them on a silver platter. Again.
Congress and the President draw support from polling that seems to show that Americans are frightened by having to Americans beheaded. They will shortly draw support, in the Congress, from the fact that they were re-elected.
Planet earth is a dangerous place, and we are making it worse. We manufactured the pre-conditions for ISIL to thrive by standing by, idly, while those unindicted war criminals, George Bush and Dick Cheney, along with all the rest of the neocons, stuck their noses into an area of the world dominated by religion which we do not understand. Those who pointed out flaws in the plan (General Eric Shinseki) were fired. Those who pointed out the outright lies (former ambassador Wilson, of "there is no yellow cake" memory) were fired or saw members of their families destroyed. Those of us who thought going into Iraq was the wrong war were called traitors.
People who talk about eliminating ISIL are delusional. Most of them had absolutely no contribution to make to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and complain about their taxes. We put the whole thing on a credit card, including the trauma, bleeding and dying, which the neocons now want to renege on paying
I am the proud mother of a USMC combat veteran of the Iraq war. He came home permanently 40% disabled from that mad adventure. And just what exactly do we have to show for this?
The American military, despite its best efforts, has already demonstrated that it is inot capable of cleaning up this mess. This is not our fight. The fight properly belongs to the European members of NATO, and European nations. I don't see them willing to send their men and women to fight, or to even pressure those in the Middle East. And as for the so-called "civilized states" In the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia? Keep in mind that they still cut the heads off of adulterers. But only if they are female.
Congress, always quick on the uptake and properly terrified of the voters, but seemingly secure in its belief that we are all morons, with memory problems, seems to draw support from those polls.
The reason the polling favorable is because the pollsters are asking the wrong questions, of a public which neither contributed to nor suffered the consequences from the last, egregious, and ultimately futile war. Talk is cheap when it doesn't cost you a dime.
We need a new poll, two questions only.
1. Are you willing to have every American (including every entity that files paperwork with the IRS or SEC) pay a 10 percent surcharge on every dime, including wages, food, stock and bond purchases and sales, property purchases and sales, corporate earnings--every dime that changes hands in our economy, and on both ends of the transaction-- to fund this effort?
2. Are you willing to institute a 100 percent, no deferral, no exemption draft of every American aged 18-35, including women, except existing veterans, to staff this? That means your son or daughter will either go and fight, or toil here at home at the slightly better than minimum wage to rebuild our infrastructure?
Anyone? I thought not.