shirt and bumpersticker not big enough

[substitute]

Maybe it could be a series of billboards and skywriters, or sound trucks blaring, or a daily TV spot, but it's necessary. People in my country are arguing about the most ridiculous things right now — particularly in an election year, but just generally — and while we all have this big food fight there's a ghost at the party.

It's the war. Nothing comes before stopping it. Please remember that.

Comments

when did which war start?

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

The absurdity is that the folks who want to beleive that we are more at war than we had been under clinton, do not want to look at the authorization process that they want to believe indicated that the nation went to war....

So clearly the first problem is establishing 'what war?" and how would we know we were in it, or out of it...

Re: when did which war start?

[substitute.livejournal.com]

When I say "end the current wars," you know perfectly well what I mean. End our bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know. The current ones. The hot wars. With all the blood.

The first problem isn't arguing the niceties of which war we're philosophically opposed to, or drawing the elegant historical lines that demonstrate that the entire system is rotten. The first problem is the nauseating thing right in front of our faces. Don't finesse it!

I agree that we've been in a constant state of war since at least 1941. That's not the immediate issue at hand.

Re: when did which war start?

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

no, actually I do not.

That we have forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, The Phillipines, Bosnia, et al, and some of those contacts are getting varying death tolls sort of complicates the simplistic rhetoric that the nation is in one or more 'wars'.

Especially since we have that small legal problem here in america about the minor constitutionality...

You may like to limit the warring to 1941, but then that would mean you were dissing guys like Gen. Smedley Butler who was honest enough as a Medal Of Honor Winner that he was a hired gun for United Fruit.

So it may help the nation IF we would first resolve whether we want to put combat troops in harms way ONLY when the Nation is 'at war', and not when it is cool enough for the current partisan domestic political agenda.

Re: when did which war start?

[substitute.livejournal.com]

It does indeed complicate the simplistic rhetoric, at a time when some good simplistic rhetoric would do us a world of good. Bigger death tolls are worse than smaller ones, and totally wrecked countries are worse than occupied ones. Stopping the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures would not result in a pre-1898 U.S. free of empire, nor would it solve the problems of unconstitutional private wars by the Executive Branch.

Saying that we should solve our constitutional issues, reverse our century plus of imperial swagger, and rein in the Executive branch before we stop the slaughter is another way of saying it's okay that nothing changes. Because that would be the result.

I do not think the Iraqi and Afghan people would be much impressed with our purity of purpose and ideological consistency in this case.

Once again we're disagreeing about things we agree on. The point of disagreement is whether ending our current hot war would be worth it if we didn't get the entire social revolution we want. I think it would be, and would be a fine start at the rest of the project.

Finally, please don't put words in my mouth in order to make a point I've already made. When I said "at least since 1941" I was, in fact, saying the opposite of "may like to limit the warring to 1941."

Re: when did which war start?

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Hum....

Restore law and order in america....

Why not start with that as a part of the issue. A mere 200,000+ dead in iraq, about that much in afghanistan... these are still managable numbers on anyone's time scale.

Getting americans to understand the value of law and order would probably help them understand it's importance, and from there that there is no great gain in having imperial troops around the planet, with or without a 'legally declared war' doing what gets done.

Why not start there, rather than some majikal hope that some majikal change in the majikal perception of 'the war' in WhichEver, got Whatevered...

Then we could have real words, and real americans would know if we were 'in a war' - or was this just the unpleasantry of mere imperial maintenance....

Why gosh, then folks would understand that war crimes were a bad thing, and legally obliged, whether or not the nation was 'in a time of war'...

So why not try the simple solution of getting americans back to a set of words that really mean something, and are not merely marketting hype to be tossed around when it is politically expedient.

Re: when did which war start?

[substitute.livejournal.com]

As before, we inhabit different planets.

Re: when did which war start?

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

yes, but that is a part of why there are dialogs.

Try to remember that if the 'liberals' had addressed these issues under clinton, it would be a very different ballgame altogether...

If anyone had shown a Lick of Courage after the berlin wall came down....

That it was time to give up the whole 'cold war gamboling' - and find a way to move the nation away from it's imperial desires.... but too many of us came CONUS and went into the whole new hot wave of high tech opportunities, hoping that would offer the communication mechanisms, gosh, like this, that would allow divergent opinions to be expressed by means other than small arms fire and explosives.

Who knows, that too could still happen.