WHERE THE AMERICAN EMPIRE DIES

AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: WHERE THE AMERICAN EMPIRE DIES

By Frosty Wooldridge
June 23, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

History clearly shows that all empires collapse. They fail. They die. They cease to exist because they overextend themselves in wars, in debt, in borrowing and in loss of a comprehension of reality.

Today, the United States embroils itself in three wars that sap and bleed the life blood out of its people, its financial foundation and its understanding of reality. Who created the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Was it 9/11? Was it bin Laden who demanded we leave Muslims lands long before 9/11 or was it the Military Industrial Complex that continues to maintain a strangle hold on Congress and the last two presidents?

What on earth gave George Bush the right to attack a sovereign nation like Iraq with no evidence whatsoever of a threat to the United States? How did he maneuver the American people to support such insane violence of his famous, “Shock and Awe” campaign? Why is it after 10 years and nothing but death to show for it—the current president continues to spend $12 billion a month of borrowed money to carry on such death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Why do they pretend success is just around the corner? Why do they want our troops to stay because they don’t want all those deaths to be in vain? Have they ever thought about adding more deaths in vain such as what happened in Vietnam?

Now that bin Laden suffered a head shot…why didn’t they kill him five, six, seven or eight years ago? Is it possible that Congress wanted a “reason” to remain in Afghanistan? Why do we continue in Afghanistan, a backward tribal country that defeated the British, the Russians and now, the Americans with little more than guerilla warfare? Why do we waste one more single American young man or woman? What’s the point?

Somebody or some entity or some corporation holding unlimited financial power that avoids rational thinking and ignores the will of the American people-----continues the wars in the Middle East. It dupes the American people into compliance. It may be the Military Industrial Complex. It may be this president that enjoyed the Nobel Peace Prize shoved into his pocket by a world crying for peace.

But the war continues with no end in sight! Moms and dads offer their children up to the war machine like sheep to the slaughter, like human sacrifices like so much unwanted chattel. You see 99 percent of Americans going about their daily lives without even a mention of the war—but it continues killing human beings on both sides—all for nothing.

Henry Kissinger, a man I despise from the Vietnam War era (along with Robert McNamara) said, “Soldiers are dumb pawns. Military men are just dumb, stupid, animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” Henry Kissinger was Secretary of state under Nixon and Chinese trade negotiator while American soldiers were dying in Vietnam.

Senator John McCain said in his stump speeches when he ran for the presidency, “We must fight on toward final victory in Afghanistan.” What a bunch of verbal garbage.

Nixon and Johnson killed over two million people in Vietnam and slaughtered 58,000 young American kids. The “Silent Majority” remained silent throughout all that killing for 10 years. Finally, the college kids of my generations screamed, “Hell no, we won’t go!”

President James Madison said: "If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these precede debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad."

Our country bleeds to death daily on a thousand fronts because powerful men in Congress and this president refuse to look at reality. Instead of correcting our educational systems that fail our children, they choose war. Instead of stopping mass immigration that’s buckling the fabric of our civilization, they choose war. Instead of undertaking solutions to solve our ominous energy crisis, they choose war. Instead of giving the truth to the American people, they do everything to obfuscate and cloud the “why” of remaining in three wars. Instead of serving and honoring our finest young men and women who chose to serve their country, our Congress and this president do not serve our young men and women. Instead of honoring their service, the members of Congress use those kids as pawns as mentioned by Kissinger.

The American empire cannot continue and it will not continue. We failed the world and we failed ourselves by allowing our Congress and the past two presidents to act in the most reprehensible manner to bring about so much death and destruction 10,000 miles away.

We have killed tens of thousands, we have bombed their lands, we have created 2.5 million refugees, we have polluted their soils and we have left them in chaos.

Cost to us? After the Vietnam War, a veteran MD wrote a book showing that 175,000 to 200,000 American combat troops came home with their minds scrambled and committed suicide. The projections for the two current wars show 100,000 suicides will be committed by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn’t count the endless stream of drug use, alcoholism and ruined marriages along with horribly emotionally damaged children.

How can so much human misery on such a scale be tolerated and accepted by Americans?