If America ever is going to stop making aggressive war, Americans will first have to get into contact with reality. That's because U.S. administrations for the past century have periodically frightened the public out of their collective wits. And a frightened nation is a malleable nation, one whose people are susceptible to being led into any struggle.

There's usually been some evil outside force lurking to take away what we have. There was the "Red Scare" during the Wilson administration and Joe McCarthy's terror during the Truman and Eisenhower years. President George W. Bush gave fear a new twist with his "War on Terror" in which innocent nations were illegally invaded and tens of thousands imprisoned and hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed. In his speech of September 20, 2001, Bush claimed terrorists attacked America because they "hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

Those who believe this whopper will never deal with the reality that we might just be hated throughout the Middle East because the CIA at Eisenhower's behest overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953. Or that we might be hated for taking Israel's side in its ongoing efforts to displace the Palestinians. Or for taking Iraq's side in its war of aggression against Iran and supplying it with poison gas. Or for subsequently waging an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The idea that Muslim extremists attacked America out of envy lacks any connection to reality, especially when much of the Arab world has long made known its vehement opposition to U.S. support of Israel.

The Bush regime fanned the fears of Islamic terrorism in the American mind by making it appear the 2001 anthrax attacks that shut down Congress were staged by Muslims. One anthrax envelope read "Death to America! Death to Israel!" Bush press agents leaked stories that the attack emanated from the Middle East when, in fact, it originated at a U.S. biowarfare complex in Maryland under management of George W. Bush, commander-in-chief. This lie helped rush through the Patriot Act and opened the door to a $50 billion spending spree to develop new bioweapons, although experts say the U.S. is under no threat of such attack. Meanwhile, we have real influenza epidemics that kill thousands every year that must be prevented and scientists who tell us they no longer are getting the money to fight. What do you call a country that ignores realities and arms itself against fantasies? Try lunatic asylum.

Down through the years our politicians have shamelessly advanced themselves by playing on the public's fears. George W. Bush is only the most recent culprit. Presidential campaigner Jack Kennedy, for example, in 1960 falsely warned Americans of a "missile gap," i.e., that we lagged behind the Soviets in our ability to deliver nuclear weapons. These fears were encouraged by the military-industrial complex to pump up spending on atomic bombs and their delivery systems. Late in his life, the eloquent General Douglas MacArthur came to this realization: "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear---kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of a grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded."

In the past eight years, the Big Lies have flown thick and fast. Americans today suffer from a "master race" delusion akin to what Germans believed in the 1930s. The Neocon's "New American Century" philosophy posits the U.S. is ordained (Bush believed by god) to provide leadership and spread democracy around the globe. In this vision, America is the self-appointed policeman for the planet. Delegates to Republican National Conventions only have had to hear the phrase "United Nations" to jeer. This poisoning of the public mind could make it difficult for President Obama to use the UN effectively just as it made it easy for Bush to sell his "preventive war" doctrine.

Americans have been conditioned to think the U.S. is always in the right and its enemies are always in the wrong. A prime example: the POW/MIA flags that flutter over public buildings everywhere. Americans believe the Vietnamese held hundreds of U.S. prisoners after the war ended. If so, why couldn't the Pentagon with its spy satellites that can spot a wooden nickel from 60,000 feet ever find and rescue them? By claiming they refused to live up to its obligations, the Vietnamese are made to look like the bad guys even though we waged a war of aggression in their country and bombed their cities, not the other way around.

I'm not saying there were no POWs being held illegally, only that the issue has been framed to inflame the public out of all proportion to reality. Today, it's the U.S. that imprisons "ghost" POW/MIAs. Only the victims are Arabs and Muslims. General Paul Kern, who headed an Army inquiry, told the Senate in 2004 the CIA may be keeping up to 100 "ghost detainees" at Baghdad's infamous Abu Ghraib. And it has been disclosed that the U.S. under Bush/Cheney operated a string of secret prisons where the Red Cross is denied entry. Isn't that illegally holding POW/MIAs? To accuse others of crimes you are committing raises the suspicion that your own charges may not be true. It also suggests you might be deluded.

Again, there's our rationale for every defeat. They'll tell you at any veteran's post we lost in Viet Nam only because "our boys fought with one hand tied behind their backs" and not because their foes were worthy---when we dumped more tons of bombs on Viet Nam than we did on all of Europe in WWII. Such myths are dangerous.

Recall Hitler told Germans they didn't lose WWI because they were outfought but because they were "sold out by Jews and the Communists" that made peace behind their backs. So they should fight a new war. Millions of people the world over saw through Bush's lies about Iraq being in league with 9/11 terrorists and possessing WMD. The war was condemned by the Vatican and termed "illegal" by the UN Secretary-General. But Congress bought the lie that Saddam Hussein, with his $5 billion military budget, threatened America with its $300 billion military budget, and voted to attack. Why could the rest of the world see reality when Americans could not?

Americans have repeatedly subscribed to policies of aggressive war based on lies and delusions engineered by their own chief executives. An Obama presidency will not restore peace unless such falsehoods are first exposed and expunged from the American psyche. Time to open the asylum's doors and windows and let in the fresh air and sunshine.
_______


About author
Sherwood Ross is an American reporter who has worked for major American newspapers and magazines as well as international wire services. To comment on this article or arrange for speaking engagements: sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19940

War is good business.....

Why do you think Eisenhower was so bothered by the Military Industrial Complex?

Oh geez...and there are no terrorists. Please find a hobby already.... !!!!

Some here definately need a reality check.

So educate me then, what causes terrorism?

Stone aged thinking...

And blissful theocratic and religious ignorance!

You are aware that mankind is not as evolved as people would like to think.
Ultimately there are bad people doing bad things to others for a host of reasons.

Strong arm robbery is a form of terrorism. "Terrorism" is the new name for attacks aimed at Civilian and otherwise 'Non-Military' targets. For example, Pearl Harbor. The Japanese did not attack the City, just the harbor. A tremendous bulk of casualties were military.

9-11-01 was an attack using civilians and on civilians and had a greater death toll than Pearl Harbor by double that.

Both were considered unprovoked attacks but both have distinct differences. One was perpetrated by a government for military reasons and the other was perpetrated by by a religious fringe group of radicals.

Our blood lust that you appear to perceive is not without its merits. Our willingness to get into wars is a way of deterring other nations from getting into them with us. Being willing to fight makes it an uneconomical and undesirable proposition for hostiles to attack us.

It is better to be the d*cks in this world because no one likes getting fu*ked by the world!

Watch Team America for some illustration of this concept!



FU*K YEAH!

LOL...Team America was a great movie. I think they should show it to high schoolers. ...and probly brainwashed college kids. It showed what a bunch of jerks the hollywood left are too. Like the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight...they kiss the butts of our enemies every time.

Good grief.. They had a lot of nice things to say about Hitler in the beginning, too. Took about 10 yrs. of the US watching from a distance as hundreds of thousands died before we finally stepped in, and I think we made a difference. How long should we have waited on Saddam (he needed a little longer, b/c of resources in that land compared to Germans, but I'm sure the anti-war movement would have freely given it)...We're supposed to learn from mistakes in history, not repeat them.

We were to busy suporting saddam to notice what a bad guy he was. Exactly what did america do when he gassed the Kurds with the gas we sold him? We increased our aid to him. That is a fact. Then when we needed to make him into a bogey man we pulled it out of the pages of history as if it happened yesterday.

Are you really expecting much from those who don't live in reality????

There's nothing plausible to that tho. Why would we have needed to make him into a boogey man? What did we gain from that, other than the satisfaction of at least helping those people get on with a normal life? Mistakes should be called out, no doubt, and you're right in that, but to say that Saddam shouldn't have been taken out of power when looking at the entire picture has no merit. And we had no other motive than to make the world a better place. If there is one, I would love to see it.

Its so hard to discuss a topic with the uninformed. Saddam was our "guy" for decades.



When Saddam Gassed the Kurds
What did the U.S. Do?August 24th, 2006 – 1:01 AM by Eric Black
The trial of Saddam Hussein has now moved to consideration of his biggest, most despicable crime, the Anfal, or the massacre of the Kurds. It was a major genocide, tens of thousands of victims, perhaps a hundred thousand, mostly civilian, whole villages wiped out.

Dropping chemical weapons from aircraft was only one of many methods of Kurd-killing between 1986 and 1989, but it became the shorthand for the whole contemptible campaign, even for Saddam’s whole quarter-century of savagery.

“Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people,” Pres. George W. Bush said on March 22, 2002, as he built the case for regime change by means of war.

Most of us, I suspect, would like to believe that our great nation is a moral force in the world, spreader of democracy, friend to the oppressed, scourge of the genocidal dictator. There are serious historical problems in applying this fairy tale, to this case, starting with this fact, which is seldom mentioned in the coverage of the trial:


Saddam Hussein was an ally of the United States before, during and after the Anfal.


Saddam started a war with Iran in 1980. Because of U.S. emnity with Iran, the Reagan Administration “tilted” toward Iraq in 1981. In 1982, the State Department removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

In December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then a special presidential envoy, met with Saddam in Baghdad and told him that the United States wanted to resume full diplomatic relations. Saddam agreed. During the Iran-Iraq war, the United States provided Saddam with military and economic aid. Some of the forms of aid are summarized in this Star Tribune story by your future Big Questioner, which ran on the eve of the current war.

It was still the middle of the Iran-Iraq war, and the heyday of the U.S.-Iraq alliance, that Saddam began systematically slaughtering the Iraqi Kurds to punish them for their rebellions against his rule. The most famous attack was the gassing of Halabja, a mostly Kurdish city near the Iranian border, on March 16, 1988. Rebel Kurds, working with Iranian troops, had taken the town a few days earlier. The gassing, which killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds, was part of the successful Iraqi counterattack.

The genocide continued after the war with Iran had ended. The United States publicly condemned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, but never suspended its aid programs to Saddam.

http://politicalblogs.startribune.com/bigquestionblog/?p=192

because Madison is so well informed from all the blogs he reads..

do yo ever write anything yourself or do you just enjoy copying and pasting so much you don't have time for it?

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs report, more commonly known as the Reigle report, says we last shipped a pathogen to Iraq on Nov. 28, 1989.

However, as BusinessWeek reported last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director sent former Sen. Donald Reigle a list of "all biological materials, including viruses, retroviruses, bacteria and fungi, which CDC provided to the government of Iraq from October 1, 1984, through October 13, 1993." The letter also reveals that the original list sent to Reigle's office failed to identify at least one other additional shipment.

But whether or not we stopped sending Saddam this stuff just before or just after the Gulf War is really beside the point. The fact remains that even after Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988, the Bush administration thought it proper to keep sending these materials until at least a year after what is now Saddam's most infamous atrocity (though not his most heinous act).

http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/cra0919.htm

Both Bush's did way more than Clinton ever dreamed of doing, tho. You have to agree with that.

Bush, Sr. started the campaign (which takes time and cooperation from Congress--nothing in WA is overnight), Clinton did nothing, and Bush, Jr. followed up when the terrorism campaign led us to flush out potential problem countries in the Middle East.

If Saddam could have accounted for destroying the weapons we had documented during Bush, Sr.'s presidency, as the UN declared needed to be done, we would have never gone to war there. End of story. Do the crime, you do the time.

Even our prisoners here sometimes get put off for years. On a much larger scale (a world scale), I can imagine it taking even more time. Especially when you go thru 8 yrs. of standing around about the issue.

I agree both Bush's decimated middle class america, Clinton didnt. we had a good economy.

We had an inflated tech stock economy.. ;p

We supported and aided Saddam because of Iran plain and simple. We could not let Iran control the Persian Gulf and The Straights of Hormuz. They would have control of the worlds oil supply then. Iraq would have become a stepping stone into Saudi Arabia! WE WERE PROTECTING THE SAUDIAS!!!!!!

Funny when Saddam was serving his purpose we could have cared less about what he was doing..What did we accomplished by going back into Iraq. They had no military left. Hell we walked right into Baghdad! So tell me how we can leave!!! WE CREATED THE SAME THING WE WERE TOLD TO FEAR FOR 20 years. A unstable Iraq!! We cant pull out. Iraq could only fight Iran to a stand off when they were fully armed and had our support. Do you think they could now defend themselves without us? Could the control their own country without us? WE DIDNT WIN ANYTHING!!!!!!

PS...I was in the Persian Gulf for 6 years. 79-85..I saw first hand the support we gave Saddam and had a pretty good view of the Iran-Iraq war!!!

So, you're saying that he shouldn't have been getting the aid all those years. Can't say that I disagree with you)