Corporate control of the MSM has led the cover-up. We should have these pictures in our faces 24/7 until we STOP IT!!
How can our Dept of Defense call itself that when it is totally the Dept of Offense, big big world-wide OFFENSE?

"I thought war was the one and only thing the Bipartisan Congressional Chickenhawk Caucus could agree on."
Posted by bluebell
Aren't they something else?
Billions for bombs and murder and NADA for health care?

And what would be your point other than to simply be an asshole as usual? Does it hurt to work as hard as you do to miss the obvious point? It is explicit in this post that ALL war is bad. And yes, all wars include the wars of the United States and particularly the imperial wars waged upon the innocent citizens of foreign lands by our government's armed forces.

In the case of the current wars I completely agree. And I find it hypocritical and ironic that we are willing to rush in to help countries hit by natural devastation while we effectively wreak devastation on others. Its nonsensical. The rationales are all Alice In Wonderland in my view.

What concerns me most is that they don't make us safer but in fact less safe and weaker...

And the old phrase what goes around comes around... also sends shivers down my spine.

Carl Sagan's book "Cosmos" has a chapter about war. He talks about a mathmatician who examined war using statistical systems used for weather forcasting. He found a direct predictive relationship between the incidence in a society of murder and the incidence of war.
Sagan also examines other predictors of war. Societies inclined to make war are likely to be mysogenistic, prohibit adolesents from engaging in sex, are averse to affectionate bodily contact, have a history of slavery. Sound familiar?
Sagan finishes the chapter prescribing that a noncontroversial start for America would be for us to hug our children.

I've been so wrapped up in domestic issues lately that I've been deliberately avoiding the conversations about war. It's not because I don't care; I care deeply. When I think about it at all, I can't help but think about it in terms of the humanity. Innocent people are dying and my country's leaders are sitting in a safe room making life or death decisions based on political arguments. I just can't stand it.

I came here this morning because it was your post, oleeb, and I looked at the pictures, and I'm remembering a powerful book I read when I was young: John Hersey's "Hiroshima". http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/

It started out as a long story in the New Yorker in 1946 and then became a best-selling book. I read it some time in the late 1950s, I think, when we were at peace for a change, and I was sure after reading it that we would never again allow ourselves to get wrapped up in war unless the issues were so pressing and so obvious we simply could not avoid it. I was naive enough to believe that, even then, even if that were the case, we would remember the humanity.

I was wrong.

Thank you for posting this.

We are an empire. We are a war mongering empire.

This will never stop. There will always be an excuse to keep on keepin' on in our never ending struggle to keep the world 'safe' for us.

U.S. against THEM.

And resources, and ethnic cleansing, and religion.
Nial Ferguson looks at the world at war with different eyes; I wish there could be a discussion on what he presents. I tend to be a bit gullible when watching a documentary.

http://wwarii.com/blog/archives/pbs-special-war-of-the-world

I will say I didn't buy into Ferguson's The History Of Money or whatever it was called, though.

Eugene Jarecki's fim Why We Fight was good, too.

Yes DD, but it's time for the common people to understand that the "us" doesn't include the common people of this country any more than it does the common people of Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else for that matter.

The "us" is the same class of people who destroyed our once mighty economic structure, gambled away the pensions of hundreds of millions of people along with their own fortunes and then stole the money they lost from the common folk leaving us with 15 million unemployed and climbing and no relief in sight. It has become clearer than ever these past few years that the interests of the common people here are not those of the "us" being served by the government we pay for, who own the defense industries our taxes enrich, whose international interests are protected and subsidized by the US military that the common folk pay for. It's time to rise up, restore the republic, and bring those forces that profit from perpetual war and inequality to heel once and for all.

The one constant element of war is that it's alway right when our side wages it. We battle nobly, against the forces of darkness, whether they be Japanese, Nazis, Confederates, counter-revolutionaries... or Palestinian children playing on their rooftops. Here's a post and story that sums it up for me.

Nahh...Always about money. Back in the hey days with the Goths and Visigoths and the Huns it was a bit more honest and above board. The reasons were spelled out pretty clear. "you have what we want and since we a bigger and stronger than your are...we're going to take it." Nice and to the point.

Now we try to cover it up with nationalism, patriotism, religion, morals...you name it. But it boils down to "You have what we want and since we are bigger and stronger than you...we're going to take it."

C

WW II was a just cause. When you are attacked, you must defend or it will be your family in those pictures.

Like when Mexico attacked the Alamo. Yeehaw, we showed them!!

Try to touch anyone in a corporate environment and the HR police will bring you into custody! I've always felt that prohibiting contact was a way to keep people separate. Watch all the managers shake hands and then slap yours if you gently squeeze someone on the shoulder having a rough day, after a nasty phone call, or being released from their own time in the HR.