“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, August 27, 2012

War just for the sake of fighting


Over the weekend, a deranged Afghan soldier shot and killed two US troops....again. And also this weekend, the Taliban, to show their disapproval of dancing and even having a good time in general, slaughtered and beheaded 17 people who were dancing at a party.

If somebody would like to offer a coherent, thoughtful argument as to why we are bothering with an absolute lost cause of a country like Afghanistan, I'd be happy to listen.

As little sense as the war on terrorism in Afghanistan makes and though I'm not a conspiracy nut, I'm beginning to believe that this 1984-ish, continuous state of war on the part of the US is not simply political.

In the same way that the EPA passes pointless regulations simply because they are regulators, the Pentagon encourages and counsels Presidents to go to war, over issues that are only distantly related to American interests, simply because they are warriors.

More cynically, I think the US likes to attack some country every 10 years or so, just to test new weaponry in the battlefield and to purge our stockpiles of older stuff so that weapons contractors can get new lucrative contracts to supply us with new stuff. As an ex-military guy myself, I hate to think like that, but doesn't it have the ring of truth to it?

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