GET READY … TO PAY
By FITSNEWS || It’s popular these days to talk tough against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – an organization American politicians were not-so-secretly supporting as recently as last year.
“War fever” has gripped Washington, D.C. – and as a result the federal government is once again dropping bombs in the Middle East. Who benefits? Politicians desperate to appear “tough” in advance of upcoming elections, news media desperate to lift flagging ratings and of course defense contractors – whose stocks are soaring.
“Led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world,” Bloomberg reported this week. “Investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq.”
Somebody cue Wu-Tang …
“I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror,” wrote Glenn Greenwald for The Intercept. “On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.”
“But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror,” Greenwald added. “It was designed from the start to be endless.”
And expensive.
Over the last decade-and-a-half, U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost American taxpayers an estimated $6 trillion – contributing mightily to a debt that’s now approaching $18 trillion. And let’s not forget the thousands of dead soldiers, maimed soldiers or soldiers who come home with post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological ailments.
And let’s not forget our prior engagements in Iraq under former U.S. president George H.W. Bush – which date back to 1990.
We’ve been fighting this war for the last 25 years …
And for what? What has this massive investment in blood and treasure wrought? According to the politicians now clamoring for all-out war with ISIS, radical Islam is more dangerous today than it’s ever been – and Americans are more exposed to potential acts of terror than ever before.
In other words rather than making us safer, our warmongering leaders have achieved the opposite …
So what are we doing? Doubling down … literally.
According to Leon Panetta – the newly-minted warmonger-in-chief for the upcoming presidential campaign of newly-minted warmonger Hillary Clinton – defeating ISIS will require a “thirty-year war.”
“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” Panetta said recently, adding the current conflict “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.”
Wow …
No barriers, no boundaries … just endless, limitless war.
Oh, and in addition to doubling down on the failed “War on Terror,” the war machine in Washington is also spoiling for a second Cold War with Russia (as evidenced by its ongoing meddling in Ukraine).
Enough is enough …
The United States has an obligation to protect its borders – and the lives and property of those citizens therein – via a well-trained, well-equipped fighting force. It also has an obligation to eradicate clear and present threats to the national security – and to do so via overwhelming force.
It does not, however, have an obligation to provide security to wealthy European nations. Or security for Israel. Or to make any region of the world (other than its own homeland) “safe for democracy.”
These missions are distortions of America’s role in the world … and our constant pursuit of them isn’t just making us less safe, it is eroding our place in the world.
In the 1991 movie JFK – released around the time America’s latest Middle Eastern misadventures ramped up – a mysterious composite character known as “X” (portrayed masterfully by Donald Sutherland) offered up a simple truth.
“The organizing principle of any society … is for war,” he said. “The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers.”
Until such states collapse, anyway … or are overthrown by those forced to subsidize them.
31 comments
OBL may have lost his life, but he certainly accomplished and continues to accomplish(from his grave) all of his goals.
So did Lenin and Marx for a while.
Marx?
oh, you mean selling books.
No you dummy. Lenin sold albums and Marx sold movie tickets.
That was Linen!
Kumbayah my Lord, kumbayah
Kumbayah my Lord, kumbayah
Kumbayah my Lord, kumbayah
Oh Lord, kumbayah
That is Will’s method of calming down the Islamic extremists. I wonder if Will has striped pants like Chamberlain’s?
Have they enlisted Krupp to build their tanks yet?
“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” Panetta said recently, adding the current conflict “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.”
Same shit that Dubya was spouting after 9-11. By no means should we let our troops go in and kick ass and take names and get this shit over with. Instead, let’s just drag this shit out, get as many of our men and women maimed, mutilated, psychologically destroyed, and killed as possible, while making the registers at the Military Industrial Complex go “ka-ching”.
If we fought to win a decisive victory and get it over with, perhaps I could support such an effort, but this talk of “thirty year” wars tells us all a thinking person should need to know. The appropriate response is “not no but HELL NO”.
Are with at war with Eastasia or Eurasia this week?
Fantasia?
***BREAKING NEWS*** PLAN UNVEILED TO REDUCE 30 YEAR WAR TO 30 DAY WAR ***
Send in the B-52s and the B-1s. Carpet bomb everything. Take out bridges, buildings, power plants, water treatment plants, dams, weapons plants, food depots, hospitals, and anything else that the idiot terrorists can use. Continue this for one week then stop. Give them 12 hours to surrender unconditionally if they do not repeat. Continue this pattern until they surrender and we can send in troops to occupy the place and start rebuilding or until their is nothing of value left. War over with in 30 days, rebuilding begins, install friendly western governments in the same manner we did after WWII in Japan and Germany.
Wouldn’t that make entirely too much sense?
And that’s why it will never happen.
Wars are not won by the country with the military advantage. They are won by the country with the political advantage.
ISIS would love if that strategy was taken by the US. One third of the fighters are foreign. They could care less if everything is destroyed. All they need is guns, ammo and Toyota trucks. They would just hunker down or hide in the desert until it was over and move into neighboring countries. They would gain support worldwide from sympathetic jihadists. They would have the political advantage.
That’s why you’re in SC, never give up your plan.
Thanks for the compliment and your incouragement. ;-)
***BREAKING NEWS***
There are more than 1 billion Muslims. Carpet bombing Muslim nations will just make more enemies. If they want to live in the dark ages LET THEM! Pull our troops out and leave the Muslims to settle the mess Bush and Cheney started for themselves.
They want to export the Dark Ages. See France, UK, etc.
I can’t wait until IRAQ is rebuilt, I want to bath and sun in the great nation !
If we must be a warmongering country I would rather be led by a cowboy boot wearing bad ass Texan than a wimpy lying ass bisexual community organizer any old day of the week. Now, will Jeb start wearing boots and working the ranch?
“If I must be the victim of a wife-beater, I want him to use brass knuckles, and a baseball bat – not simply throw me around like a rag-doll, threaten me with a gun and slap me.”
“Thirty Years War” is an apt comparison.
1. The people thought the war was about religion.
2. The war was about gaining power and the threating each other’s power.
3. The sides are confusing. Catholic France fought with the Protestants. Denmark-Norway and Bohemia fought with the Protestants then switched to the Catholic side. It is hard to tell which side Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are on.
4. There were no clear winners, but it was the last major religious war in Europe. In fact, since the seventeenth century, the only major Protestant – Catholic conflicts were in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The war in the middle east is another oil war, plain and simple. Now that ISIS has some of the precious juice, they can attack anyone they want … And of course the Kurds will defend their own oil rich low lying hills … and Iran will seek to get more from Iraq if give the chance … and the Saudi Royal Family doesn’t like the competition … and HamAss and Hesbulabula want what the Israelis are discovering the Mediterranean … And the Turks? And the Greeks? And the Cypriots and the Russians and the Ukrainians and the EU … and the USA.
You make it sound as if it’s a terrible thing.
Well, if you might be one of those one worlders who advocate population control, so having the stupid male Helots in the herd killed off in battle is a whole lot easier and quicker than castration.
But I’m being hugely cynical …
Our President and Commander-in Chief apparently does not want to win this one (either). If He did, our military would have (re)captured our military air base west of Baghdad and we would have a squadron of A-10s doing the dirty in the desert right now. The A-10s could and would easily knockout the ISIS command and control mullahs and thus would save thousands of lives on both sides.
No, Islamic State Militants Have Not Been Caught by U.S. Border Patrol
By Danny Vinik @dannyvinik Photo: Getty Images/Aris Messinis
Since the U.S. began airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State, Republicans have frequently connected the terrorist group to border security in the U.S. In August, Texas Governor Rick Perry called it a “very real possibility” that fighters from the Islamic State had already crossed into the U.S.
On Tuesday night, Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, took those comments even further. Appearing on “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” Hunter said, “At least ten ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the border in Texas.” When Van Susteren asked how he knew that, Hunter replied, “Because I’ve asked the border patrol, Greta.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReEsXCAlK0A
I asked the Department of Homeland Security if Hunter’s comments were true. They weren’t.
“The suggestion that individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the Southwest border is categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground,” said DHS spokesperson Marsha Catron. “DHS continues to have no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.”
UPDATE: Hunter isn’t backing off his comments, claiming they came from a “high-level source” at DHS.”The Congressman was conveying what he knows—and what he was told,” Hunter’s spokesperson told The Huffington Post. “And as for DHS’ statement, it makes sense that the left hand of DHS doesn’t know what the right hand is doing—it’s been that way for a long time and we don’t expect that to change. No surprise there.”
… I suppose one could agree with what g’ment tells us is the truth … Not!
Our government is continually calling our government a liar.. doesn’t engender great faith in what they are saying, does it?
… and they should know …
South Central could kick ISIS’ ass in an afternoon.