On Thursday's Veterans Day at noon, the weekly peace vigil, which began in the fall of 2001, continued in front of the Golden Gate Avenue Federal Building even though the place was closed for the holiday.
As the United States falls deeper into debt, we are still giving away billions of dollars to defense contractors in order to murder and terrorize people halfway around the world. As General Smedley Butler told us in the early 1930s, "War is a racket," and as the peace workers are pointing out, we're all paying for it. Remember that the next time the leaders of our nation start talking about cutting Social Security. Eisenhower's warning of a "military industrial complex" is looking more prescient and less paranoid every day.
For pertinent information on the issues, I'd recommend the newly redesigned, smartly written "War Times/Tiempo de Guerras" site (click here). Their Veterans Day post by Clare Bayard and Maryam Roberts starts with this observation:
There was an eerie silence at the center of the recent U.S. elections. No one mentioned the fact that the country is at war. Writer and commentator Charles Grodin did notice. He appeared on the NBC Today Show three days after Election Day and said, “What was missing from the dialogue in the elections was the discussion of the two wars. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan drained the economy, and that’s a major reason why we’re in this trouble. We’ve spent a fortune on these wars.” Candidates, campaigns, and the media intentionally kept the wars off the table. No one wanted to touch them.
It's a good point. Besides the worst economic mess since 1929, Bush handed Obama two wars he never had any idea of how to win or even end. If humans in large groups had one lick of sense, The War To End All Wars (World War I) really would have been the last large scale war.
ReplyDeleteConclusion: Humans in large groups do not have a lick of sense.