By Homer Scarborough from the Checkerboard Gang
There is a video of the murder of most of the victims of the barbaric beheading of the non-combatants murdered by ISIS making the rounds on the internet. That the actions of ISIS to these young men were abhorrent goes without saying. However, I consider videos of this type to be “snuff films” and will not show it here or place a link to one of them. Whether we place political or military clothing on them or not, they are still an obscenity of the most base kind. You can find them elsewhere and see for yourself, but I feel that it will serve no useful purpose to repeat any of them here or even provide a link to them.
Let’s look back. Some of this was covered some months ago, but it bears repeating.
Where did it all begin? There was justification for our going into Afghanistan, but we should never have invaded Iraq, and responsibility for that blunder should be placed on President George W. Bush and his gang of toughs who were willing to lie, cheat, and deceive to get their way on the question of whether to invade Iraq. However, once we found ourselves there, we had no choice other than to proceed. After a time, we then declared victory and basically left.
However, I feel that it was a mistake to have upped the ante recently with additional drone strikes after Iraq again had internal strife. For what purpose are we there now? When are we going to understand that the people in that part of the world are not really like us at all? Not in thought, and not in deed. They have not changed their way of doing things and solving their problems in thousands of years, and we feel that they are not planning to do so anytime soon.
Now this past week the President has announced the sending of even more “advisers.” If you believe that we are not on the road to providing ground troops before long, then I have a bridge at the end of Second Street in Macon crossing over the Ocmulgee River that I would like to sell you…cheap. Our troops are not fodder for the weapons aimed at them, many of which were originally given to those that are pointing them at us by the United States and/or our “allies!”
The lives and attitudes of leadership in the Muslim countries of that part of the world are based almost entirely on their religion, which can be harsh. This philosophy is completely foreign to our system of thought. Their way of doing things is actually inconceivable to us. We will never understand them, and they will never understand us. Our attitude of “we are right, and we will teach you the ‘right’ way, and the way to Democracy” has been to expensive to us both materially and in terms of lives. It has cost us the lives of far to many of our good men and women in uniform, not to mention the lives of civilian men, women and children on the Muslim side.
The struggle in the Muslim Middle East is not winnable. Let’s cut our losses, and get out. We have already lost this “war,” whether we succeed in battle or not, and despite the best of intentions on our part.
It is understood that we have to maintain communications and somewhat of a working relationship with that part of the world, perhaps even providing some economic aid, but otherwise, hands off. Perhaps, for a change, we need to work on solving some of our own problems and relieve some of the suffering of our own citizens. That would truly be the “AMERICA FIRST” that the TEA party and other ultra conservative and Republican groups speak and preach about.
However, I fear that the Military-Industrial complex which President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about when he left office has already become uncontrollable, and the United States will continue to be involved militarily in the affairs of others, whether we should be or not. They will feed us pablum as to the reasons, and it will even sound good. However, at the bottom line it will be about money, wealth and power for those who will never see a battlefield or ever hold an elected office, but who now are the ones really running our country and making the ultimate decisions.
It may be to late to stop it, but we can try.
