“We are not good at anything else anymore … can’t build a decent car or a television set, can’t give a good education to the kids or health care to the old, but we can bomb … any country.” – George Carlin back during the Gulf War
A fact: The U.S. has been in some 70 wars since our birth 234 years ago, 10 of them major conflicts.
Chidanand Raighatta, columnist and foreign editor for the Times of India, wrote a most provocative article entitled “Why America Cannot Live Without War.” He says the American economy is a war economy. “We are good at it. We love it. It is in our genes. We are not a manufacturing economy. Not an agricultural economy. Not a service economy. Not even a consumer economy.”
As our “crossing the red line in Syria” president ponders just how he is going to save face, massage his ego, pander to politics over peace, and try to bail himself out of the jail of laying down red lines, America is once again facing war and military action. And according to much of what I hear and read, there is a tremendous support for this from many of the power centers in Washington, DC.
Here we are with yet another event for which George Carlin would rub his hands with great delight as he once again prepared for one of his classic performances hitting at the core of things.
Maybe this is a time we should all sit back and reflect upon just what our nation is doing, how we are viewed around the world, and what the future holds with our attempts to change and control other nations’ cultural, economic, military, and political choices. It is one thing to respond to the attack on Pearl Harbor back in 1941, quite another to launch an attack upon another nation where we don’t even know what terrorist groups we might be aiding in our ignorance.
Bob McClellan
Polson