The only method of peace is to wage massive amounts of war!
If the OSS had been as bad at gathering intelligence against the Nazis as we are now about Al Qaida and government and military sources in Central Asia and the Arab Penninsula, well, I'd be writing this in German, if my ancestors hadn't fallen under the Final Solution. A not too pleasant thought, but that's not the point.
The point is this. US Military Intelligence dealing with the current Imperial Expansion, er excuse me, "War on Terror", is decidedly, well, bad. To focus on Afghanistan, people celebrating a wedding, or peasants picking up scrap metal, are targeted and killed, because the limit on US Intelligence seems to be "All Towel Heads look the same." We relying heavily on Afghan warlords, who didn't seem to care too much about Al Qaida and were more than happy to use American force to kill off their political adversaries. Kabul is an isolated city-state, and the rest of Afghanistan doesn't seem to different from when the Soviets first left the country in 1989. Even our original stated goal of the conflict was for naught, as Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and others got away and fell into obscurity, and likely most Al Qaida operatives fled to friendly ground in Pakistan, who are still our "allies" in the "War on Terror."
And in the midst of this complete derth of intelligence, the Army expels 7 Arabic translators-in-training while the Pentagon makes pleas for people who understand Arabic to come help them out, since they have no idea if a random guy speaking in Arabic is planning a massive attack on the US or divulging a recipe for a cake.
Why would they do this? The answer is simple, they don't need intelligence. If you need to get somewhere, and there's a thin plaster wall in your way, and by your side you have a huge ass bazooka, you don't need to do any physics equations to figure out what is the weakest point, how can you get the optimum amount of damage to help get you to the other side. You just randomly aim your bazooka, and problem solved. Sure, maybe you'll get hurt by the blowback, or you'll cause irreparable damage to some thing or other, but you don't care. Your problem was the wall, the wall is destroyed, problem solved.
And it's the same thing with this "War on Terror." Bush's purpose is not to stop terrorism, it's to use terrorism as an excuse to expand his empire. And quite frankly, all you need to do in empire building is conquer. And it may be costly, it may be messy, but we're the most advanced military in the World and we're up against countries whose militaries still have a foot in the middle ages. Put enough force there, and they will fall.
The problem is that in the meanwhile, Bush is letting everyone else take the blunt of his actions. We're the ones who have to worry about being killed by terrorists as blowback for these attacks. The Arabs have to worry about getting decimated by US bombs. Bush is only worried about re-election. That is if we even have an election.
But this is America, we're supposed to be better than this. We're not supposed to be the tool of some crazy, power-hungry monarch bent on world domination. But let's face it, we got too powerful. This is why Jefferson said that we should have a revolution every 20 years. Because power corrupts, and good intentions go awry when you no longer need to fight for them.
I really have nothing interesting to say on this, merely observations, I'm sure plenty of people have made them. But dammit, it still should be said.
If the OSS had been as bad at gathering intelligence against the Nazis as we are now about Al Qaida and government and military sources in Central Asia and the Arab Penninsula, well, I'd be writing this in German, if my ancestors hadn't fallen under the Final Solution. A not too pleasant thought, but that's not the point.
The point is this. US Military Intelligence dealing with the current Imperial Expansion, er excuse me, "War on Terror", is decidedly, well, bad. To focus on Afghanistan, people celebrating a wedding, or peasants picking up scrap metal, are targeted and killed, because the limit on US Intelligence seems to be "All Towel Heads look the same." We relying heavily on Afghan warlords, who didn't seem to care too much about Al Qaida and were more than happy to use American force to kill off their political adversaries. Kabul is an isolated city-state, and the rest of Afghanistan doesn't seem to different from when the Soviets first left the country in 1989. Even our original stated goal of the conflict was for naught, as Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and others got away and fell into obscurity, and likely most Al Qaida operatives fled to friendly ground in Pakistan, who are still our "allies" in the "War on Terror."
And in the midst of this complete derth of intelligence, the Army expels 7 Arabic translators-in-training while the Pentagon makes pleas for people who understand Arabic to come help them out, since they have no idea if a random guy speaking in Arabic is planning a massive attack on the US or divulging a recipe for a cake.
Why would they do this? The answer is simple, they don't need intelligence. If you need to get somewhere, and there's a thin plaster wall in your way, and by your side you have a huge ass bazooka, you don't need to do any physics equations to figure out what is the weakest point, how can you get the optimum amount of damage to help get you to the other side. You just randomly aim your bazooka, and problem solved. Sure, maybe you'll get hurt by the blowback, or you'll cause irreparable damage to some thing or other, but you don't care. Your problem was the wall, the wall is destroyed, problem solved.
And it's the same thing with this "War on Terror." Bush's purpose is not to stop terrorism, it's to use terrorism as an excuse to expand his empire. And quite frankly, all you need to do in empire building is conquer. And it may be costly, it may be messy, but we're the most advanced military in the World and we're up against countries whose militaries still have a foot in the middle ages. Put enough force there, and they will fall.
The problem is that in the meanwhile, Bush is letting everyone else take the blunt of his actions. We're the ones who have to worry about being killed by terrorists as blowback for these attacks. The Arabs have to worry about getting decimated by US bombs. Bush is only worried about re-election. That is if we even have an election.
But this is America, we're supposed to be better than this. We're not supposed to be the tool of some crazy, power-hungry monarch bent on world domination. But let's face it, we got too powerful. This is why Jefferson said that we should have a revolution every 20 years. Because power corrupts, and good intentions go awry when you no longer need to fight for them.
I really have nothing interesting to say on this, merely observations, I'm sure plenty of people have made them. But dammit, it still should be said.
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