"US Again'st Wars?" - We're Kidding Ourselves!

I watched Face the Nation on computer.  I watched the two short segments of Robert Gates and then the long “second half” segment.  The guy didn’t say much and made little sense.  He’s against going to war or intervening in Syria for the following reasons.  “Revolutions are bad and they almost never work out.”  And “wars we fight in seldom come out the way we expect them to” and also “Besides we’re just one country.  Why doesn’t some other nation like Turkey deal with the problem?  They have more of an interest”.   The thing is then he was asked about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  He says of the latter “Karzai told us he wanted us out in five years back in2009 and we’re trying to comply with that.  But I think it would be a disaster if we got completely out by the end of 2014 because Al Qaeda would re-emerge”.  And Gates said of Iraq that “We really can’t say if it was right to go to war there.  The US made an honest mistake about their being weapons of mass destruction there”.   No.  It wasn’t an “honest mistake”.  We knew all along there was never any evidence to their being “weapons of mass destruction” or yellow cake or aluminum rods or what have you?  I gleaned from the tone of Gate’s remarks his stance on war is akin to Neil Savedra’s stance on prayer.  Let me explain what the two have in common.  We like the idea of being “at war” because it’s a good “pose’ for the President of the United States.  We like to use war as a tool of economic profiteering.  But basically we don’t want the wars we want to mean anything.  We only get into wars where there is essentially nothing to win and nothing to lose.  So why do it?  Most people agree that the Mideast is anything less safe with Saddam Hussein gone.  As Pat Buchannon said “We had Saddam in a box”.  He wasn’t going anywhere.  Then I read George Washington’s blog and that was an eye opener that our country was involved in some sixty foreign conflicts.

Since President Barack Obama has been willing to give the go ahead to operations that President George W. Bush would not have approved, operations have been much more aggressive and, presumably, JSOC has been able to fan out and work in way more countries than ever expected.
Global assassinations have been embraced by the current administration, opening the door to night raids, drone strikes, missile attacks where cluster bombs are used, etc. Each of these operations, as witnessed or experienced by the civilian populations of countries, potentially inflame and increase the number of areas in the world where there are conflict zones.

Pat Buchannon threw a spaz on the immigration bill and doesn’t like Rubio’s denunciation of the Heritage Foundation report, which is completely bogus.  But Pat believes every word of it and says that we have to put a moratorium on immigration for thirty or forty years or so like we did after 1920 to “assimilate the people who are already here”.   All he sees is “another ten or twelve million coming in” if we sign this bill.  Pat’s fears have absolutely no foundation in fact and the best he can do is point to the fiasco that occurred under President Reagan.  No need to tell you these times are very different from then.  However Pat has a point when he says "Americans would pick those crops if we paid them a decent wage".  I'm glad Pat buys into my assertion that a loose aliens policy drives down the wage base.  If the wage base were higher, people would earn more and spend more- - and Pay More Taxes.  Ahh - Soo - !  There was some Atlantic trade bill that only two congressmen are for and hasn’t been in the news at all, so the program seems D O A.  Pat Buchannon is really afraid our “record trade deficets with all nations” will only get worse.  My impression was that trade deficets have come sharply down.  I still don’t this bill is a good idea given European instability.  Then of course the Bengazi thing made it as a topic this week.  Pat has very definite ideas about this one too, and is a notable spokesmen for those who say the Obama administration is guilty of a little hanky-panky. The next day on Meet the Press I hate to say it but Daryl Eisa was the guy who appeared to be talking straight.  That other guy was doing "government speak".  They always talk about how disorganized things are in the military and how bad communacation is and the meme seems to generally be "We just can't do that".  Gates actually had the gall to say "Too many Americans get their ideas of what the military should be like from watching the Movies".   I hardly see how it makes the Obama administration or ANY administration look better to say "You know- - we don't do all that much planning ahead"  (Selah)

BLAST FROM THE PAST 2010: 
The senate finally passed the final version of the Wall Street and banking reform bill that has been hanging in the balance.  The vote was 60 to 39.  They call it the most sweeping bill since the great depression.  It regulates derivatives and apparently sets up some whole new committee.  It gives the consumer further financial protection.  But the liberal opponents call it LINO for legislation in name only.  If that’s the case maybe according to Walter Martin and Neil Savedra, Jesus was a WINO, or wimp in name only since they say he didn’t oppose violence or war but taught self defense and encouraged people to sell their goods and buy weapons.  This bill will not “fix” the basic economic problems we have.  Banks will continue to sit on cash and starve out the little guy and small businesses.

Leo talked about old photos and referred to two hundred as a “small amount”.  Of course they had I Phones in the news because people replace them ever two & a half years.  They delete them but of course that material can be recovered, at the TV news crew demonstrated.   To me I’m wondering how much actual time people save in all these new files and lists and indexes and stuff, because they have to spend so much time going through and maintaining them.  That’s when they aren’t replacing either their smart phones, or their tablets, or what have you?   I guess I’ll do a new posting when I come up with a topic that won’t bore me to death.  People don’t invest time to read any more but they look at everything on the fly.  They are going to their underground parking lots, or they are in a subway line waiting to get on, or perhaps they are reading at the dinner and they are trying to screen out whatever their wives are nagging them about.   People don’t look at reading as a “serious pastime”.  And they have no sense of things being durable over time.  So many of these “tweets” are going to appear downright silly in less than five years.   Sometimes when I look at old postings looking for some new “insight” about “How I viewed the Bush administration at the time” I’m disappointed.   I think it’s because so MUCH of what makes that era different from now was all the things that were just Unknown to Exist - - at that time.  And it’s kind of hard to find reflections on not having things that didn’t even exist yet.