The Road to War

The Right wing press and some of the Left is up in arms about Obama’s reaction and speech after the Paris attacks, The attacks are based on his reluctance to put American troops on the ground to fight yet another war that effects other people who have no desire to defend themselves.

Joe Scarborough, in one of his usual rants, spoke to the concept that Obama wasn’t racing ahead or ramping up for war. His example; George Bush certainly didn’t waver when we were attacked on 911. No he certainly didn’t. He jumped right in with both feet and the alligator bit off both his nuts. He invaded two countries, neither of which, it turned out had anything to do with the attacks and he killed some five thousand American kids, chopped up another twenty five thousand and killed hundreds of thousands of local citizens in the invaded countries. And, oh, by the way, those countries are now the basis for the problem facing the world.

Does Scarborough want Obama to react the same idiotic way that Bush did? Are we to get involved in another useless war, this time because ISIS attacked our favorite vacation spot? I don’t remember France attacking Iraq after 911. They sat back, watched what was happening and said, “This doesn’t make sense.” Well, it doesn’t make sense to put forty or fifty thousand of our kids in a battle because the Right and Joe Scarborough are in a hurry to do something, anything, just to get off the pot.

Both the US and France are members of NATO. If that practically non-functional organization is to have any value, now is the time to prove it. Fifty thousand troops from 28 countries is nothing for each country. Let them all put up or get out. There is no value to being in NATO if we are the only ones willing to defend the organization. And why the hell do the Joe Scarborough’s of the Right think it’s okay to send our kids to war when the countries that are actually involved or endangered by that war are doing nothing but asking for our money?

Right at this moment, Obama has made the only intelligent choice available. Many of us want him to put together a coalition of the Arab states to fight for themselves but realistically that will not happen, not as long as those people are in the thrall of religious fanatics, who are strong enough to keep even their governments from fighting the Sunni ISIS. Iran, the Kurds and possibly Turkey if they can get over their desire to own the Kurds, are the only real allies we have in that area and by real allies I mean groups that are willing to fight on our side. I know that we have been calling the Saudi’s our friends for fifty years but they are anything but. Sure they have taken our money and our weapons and sure they have sold us their oil at highly inflated process but if they are really our friends, we have no need of enemies.

It’s time for all the political hacks like Scarborough, to understand and admit that attacking ISIS with an American force just isn’t the way to do it. If we can put together a coalition of NATO, Iran, Russia and the Kurds, it could be quickly accomplished but that’s not a job for bomb throwers like Bush/Cheney or those who have taken over as today’s neo cons, like McCaul, King, McCain or Graham.

Right after listening to Scarborough and his sycophants pound the political drum I watched Obama speak and was uplifted by hearing him speak to the fact that all those who had something to say would be worth listening to if only they had a plan instead of just a complaint. That is of course, the problem. No one really has a plan. Many like to make ugly noises but that doesn’t get anyone anywhere. It just makes the other party feel like they are getting it off their chest.

Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer prize winning journalist for the Washington Post, puts the lie to Scarborough by pointing out that what Obama is doing is on the right track

Mark Halpern, one of Scarborough’s most imbedded sycophants speaks to the concept that Obama doesn’t have the contacts around the world to put together a coalition; that he doesn’t have a way to involve Turkey or Saudi Arabia. If that’s true, it’s because, those roads to coalition were all closed by George Bush and his arrogant policies.

We have never really gotten along with Turkey mainly because they are a distrustful, underhanded nation that has never really gotten along with anyone. The only reason that they have not long ago been overrun is that they are positioned directly between the East and the West and as such have been able to encourage succor from countries on both sides that think they need them. The American landing fields currently in Turkey are a perfect example. By using them we save time and fuel but we have to listen to the Turks lament about the Kurds, who want and deserve independence.

The Saudi’s have never really been allied with anyone and it is only because of oil that anyone has paid attention to that feudal dictatorship. Now that the world is overflowing with oil and new technologies are making inroads into its profitability, it’s time for the world to turn its back on those cowardly, duplicitous backstabbers and allow them to fend for themselves. We gave them a head start with money and weapons. Let their kids die defending the crazed Wahhabi sect that runs this, bad excuse for a nation.

Maybe if a couple of the Right Wing hardliners who want to jump into a fight, without knowing how to get out of it would just take a few hours and go visit the wounded vets at Walter Reed and see the kids without arms, legs, eyes, whatever; they might be a little more reticent about wanting to pull the trigger on another war, a war that will gain us nothing, a war that should be fought by others. We have always been the ones to put our kids lives on the line. Isn’t it time for the rest of the world to step up and do some small share of what we have been doing almost alone for the last 70 years?

And while we’re tearing our hair and wailing to the skies about the latest attack and how it’s the greatest blow to freedom in the history of man, understand that those 125 deaths in Paris amount to about one days gun deaths in this gun crazy country, so let’s try to get a grip on reality.