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The United States is a peculiar sort of empire. As a start, Americans have been in what might be called imperial denial since the Spanish-American War of 1898, if not before. Empire — us? We denied its existence even while our soldiers were administering “water cures” (aka waterboarding) to recalcitrant Filipinos more than a century ago. Heck, we even told ourselves we were liberating those same Filipinos, which leads to a second point: the U.S. not only denies its imperial ambitions, but shrouds them in a curiously American brand of Christianized liberation theology. In it, American troops are never seen as conquerors or oppressors, always as liberators and freedom-bringers, or at least helpers and trainers. There’s just enough substance to this myth (World War II and the Marshall Plan, for example) to hide uglier imperial realities.
Denying that we’re an empire while cloaking its ugly side in missionary-speak are two enduring aspects of the American brand of imperialism, and there’s a third as well, even if it’s seldom noted. As the U.S. military garrisons the planet and its special operations forces alone visit more than 140 countries a year, American troops have effectively become the imperial equivalent of globetrotting tourists. Overloaded with technical gear and gadgets (deadly weapons, intrusive sensors), largely ignorant of foreign cultures, they arrive eager to help and spoiling for action, but never (individually) staying long. Think of them as the twenty-first-century version of the ugly American of Vietnam-era fame.
The ugliest of Americans these days may no longer be the meddling CIA operative of yesteryear; “he” may not even be human but a “made in America” drone. Think of such drones as especially unwelcome American tourists, cruising the exotic and picturesque backlands of the planet loaded with cameras and weaponry, ready to intervene in deadly ways in matters its operators, possibly thousands of miles away, don’t fully understand. Like normal flesh-and-blood tourists, the drone “sees” the local terrain, “senses” local activity, “detects” patterns among the inhabitants that appear threatening, and then blasts away. The drone and its operators, of course, don’t live in the land or grasp the nuances of local life, just as real tourists don’t. They are literally above it all, detached from it all, and even as they kill, often wrongfully, they’re winging their way back home to safety.
Imperial Tourism Syndrome
Call it Imperial Tourist Syndrome, a bizarre American affliction that creates its own self-sustaining dynamic. To a local, it might look something like this: U.S. forces come to your country, shoot some stuff up (liberation!), take some selfies, and then, if you’re lucky, leave (at least for a while). If you’re unlucky, they overstay their “welcome,” surge around a bit and generate chaos until, sooner or later (in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, much, much later), they exit, not always gracefully (witness Saigon 1975 or Iraq 2011).
And here’s the weirdest thing about this distinctly American version of the imperial: a persistent short-time mentality seems only to feed its opposite, wars that persist without end. In those wars, many of the country’s heavily armed imperial tourists find themselves sent back again and again for one abbreviated tour of duty after another, until it seems less like an adventure and more like a jail sentence.
The paradox of short-timers prosecuting such long-term wars is irresolvable because, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in the twenty-first century, those wars can’t be won. Military experts criticize the Obama administration for lacking an overall strategy, whether in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere. They miss the point. Imperial tourists don’t have a strategy: they have an itinerary. If it’s Tuesday, this must be Yemen; if it’s Wednesday, Libya; if it’s Thursday, Iraq.
In this way, America’s combat tourists keep cycling in and out of foreign hotspots, sometimes on yearly tours, often on much shorter ones. They are well-armed, as you’d expect in active war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan. Like regular tourists, however, they carry cameras as well as other sensors and remain alert for exotic photo-shoots to share with their friends or the folks back home. (Look here, a naked human pyramid in Abu Ghraib Prison!)
As tourists, they’re also alert to the possibility that on this particular imperial safari some exotic people may need shooting. There’s a quip that’s guaranteed to win knowing chuckles within military circles: “Join the Army, travel to exotic lands, meet interesting people — and kill them.” Originally an anti-war slogan from the Vietnam era, it’s become somewhat of a joke in a post-9/11 militarized America, one that quickly pales when you consider the magnitude of foreign body counts in these years, made more real (for us, at least) when accompanied by discomforting trophy photos of U.S. troops urinating on enemy corpses or posing with enemy body parts.
Here’s the bedrock reality of Washington’s twenty-first-century conflicts, though: no matter what “strategy” is concocted to fight them, we’ll always remain short-time tourists in long-term wars.
Imperial Tourism: A Surefire Recipe for Defeat
It’s all so tragically predictable. When it’s imperial tourists against foreign “terrorists,” guess who wins? No knock on American troops. They have no shortage of can-do spirit. They fight to win. But when their imperial vacations (military interventions/invasions) morph into neocolonial staycations (endless exercises in nation-building, troop training, security assistance, and the like), they have already lost, no matter how many “having a great time” letters — or rather glowing progress reports to Congress — are sent to the folks back home.
By definition, tourists, imperial or otherwise, always want to go home in the end. The enemy, from the beginning, is generally already home. And no clever tactics, no COIN (or counterinsurgency) handbook, no fancy, high-tech weapons or robotic man-hunters are ever going to change that fundamental reality.
It was a dynamic already obvious five decades ago in Vietnam: a ticket-punching mentality that involved the constant rotation of units and commanders; a process of needless reinvention of the most basic knowledge as units deployed, bugged out, and were then replaced by new units; and the use of all kinds of grim, newfangled weapons and sensors, everything from Agent Orange and napalm to the electronic battlefield and the latest fighter planes and bombers — all for naught. Under such conditions, even the U.S. superpower lacked staying power, precisely because it never intended to stay. The “staying” aspect of the Vietnam War was often referred to in the U.S. as a “quagmire.” For the Vietnamese, of course, their country was no “big muddy” that sucked you down. It was home. They had little choice in the matter; they stayed — and fought.
Combine a military with a tourist-like itinerary and a mentality to match, a high command that in its own rotating responsibilities lacks all accountability for mistakes, and a byzantine, top-heavy bureaucracy, and you turn out to have a surefire recipe for defeat. And once again, in the twenty-first century, whether among the rank and file or at the very top, there’s little continuity or accountability involved in America’s military presence in foreign lands. Commanders are constantly rotated in and out of war zones. There’s often a new one every year. (I count 17 commanders for the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition, since December 2001.) U.S. troops may serve multiple overseas tours, yet they are rarely sent back to the same area. Tours are sequential, not cumulative, and so the learning curve exhibited is flat.
There’s a scene at the beginning of season four of “Homeland” in which ex-CIA chief Saul Berenson is talking with some four-star generals. He says: “If we’d known in 2001 we were staying in Afghanistan this long, we’d have made some very different choices. Right? Instead, our planning cycles rarely looked more than 12 months ahead. So it hasn’t been a 14-year war we’ve been waging, but a one-year war waged 14 times.”
True enough. In Afghanistan and Iraq as well, the U.S. has fought sequentially rather than cumulatively. Not surprisingly, such sequential efforts, no matter how massive and costly, simply haven’t added up. It’s just one damn tour after another.
But the fictional Saul’s tagline on Afghanistan is more suspect: “I think we’re walking away with the job half done.” For him, as well as for the Washington establishment of this moment, the U.S. needs to stay the course (at least until 2017, according to President Obama’s recent announcement), during which time assumedly we’ll at long last stumble upon the El-Dorado-like long-term strategy in which America actually prevails.
Of course, the option that’s never on Washington’s table is the obvious and logical one: simply to end imperial tourism. With apologies to Elton John, “sorry” is only the second hardest word for U.S. officials. The first is “farewell.”
A big defeat (Vietnam, 1975) might keep imperial tourism fever in check for a while. But give us a decade or three and Americans are back at it, humping foreign hills again, hoping against hope that this year’s trip will be better than the previous year’s disaster.
In other words, a sustainable long-term strategy for Afghanistan is precisely what the U.S. government has failed to produce for 14 years! Why should 2015 or 2017 or 2024 be any different than 2002 or 2009 or indeed any other year of American involvement?
At some level, the U.S. military knows it’s screwed. That’s why its commanders tinker so much with weapons and training and technology and tactics. It’s the stuff they can control, the stuff that seems real in a way that foreign peoples aren’t (at least to us). Let’s face it: past as well as current events suggest that guns and how to use them are what Americans know best.
But foreign lands and peoples? We can’t control them. We don’t understand them. We can’t count on them. They’re just part of the landscape we’re eternally passing through — sometimes as people to help and places to rebuild, other times as people to kill and places to destroy. What they aren’t is truly real. They are the tourist attractions of American war making, sometimes exotic, sometimes deadly, but (for us) strangely lacking in substance.
And that is precisely why we fail.
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular. He edits the blog the Contrary Perspective.
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Firstly, the Marshal Plan was not all it is cracked up to be. It may not have happened if not for the cold war and the profit opportunity in the obliterated Europe with highly qualified work-force. In other words, as much good the Marshal Plan did for Europe, it did even better for the US.
Secondly, I see no big distinction between the colonial “white-men’s burden” and the US post-colonial colonial imperialism.
Thirdly, the Jesuit Christian missionaries were as missionary as the US “liberators” are. Nothing original there either.
Fourthly, the drones are worse than the US tourists, because the US tourists at least breath the dust from the ground between the bus and the hotel, whilst drone operators breath airconditioned air only. Therefore, the drone operators have no clue at all what is really going on, none. Bird-eye bird-brains with dangerous weapons at their disposal.
Mr Astore, sorry to crush your enthusiasm for your peculiar form of American Exceptionalism, but knowing history I do not think that the US has invented any new or special kind of colonialism or imperialism. Same old, same old.
But there is one unique feature of the US imperialism – chaos left behind when the US imperialists leave. Never in known history was there been anything like this. Also, I have never seen a hotel room smashed up by tourists like Libya has been smashed up by the US.
I like your article, thank you.
I Battle for Blair Mountain am a Native Born White American Racial Patriot
I have 0 allegiance to the Democratic Party
I have 0 allegiance to the Republican Party
I have 0 allegiance to Jew Pure Israel
I have 0 allegiance to the Greedy Cheating MEGA-CEOs
I will not be canon fodder for any of the above
And I do not play Fantasy Football
In case there were any doubts: “Syrian Rebels Pick U.S. Citizen to Lead Interim Government”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/world/middleeast/syria-warplanes-hit-lebanon-for-first-time.html?_r=0
“By choosing Ghassan Hitto, 50, an information technology executive who lived in Texas until recently, the Syrian opposition coalition concluded months of contentious efforts to unite behind a leader, under pressure from the United States and its allies, which demanded that the opposition set up clear chains of command as a condition of increasing aid to the rebels.”
In short, the jihadi terrorists in Syria are led by the US citizen.
Brilliant! I’ve never seen it put so well. The only aspect left out is the fact that this phenomenon has been made possible by the advances of high speed transportation in the 20th century. Even in the 19th century, imperial Britain did not have the option of moving people, individually or en masse, quickly from one part of the world to another. So commitments had to be long term; this meant that the imperial enforcers gained a lot of experience even if they were not well trained and it paid off to train them well.
My older cousin just retired from the Marines Corp…rank of Colonel. I attended his retirement party. He is a very very devout Irish-German Catholic. He wants to go to war against Iran.
I consider the Catholic Church…Liberal Mainline Protestant Churches…The Mormons…and the very loathsome Evangelical Christians…all of them, to be a vile,repellant Christian Heresy.
And I write this as someone who is socially and culturally ultra-Conservative Christian…..
The Marshall Plan was to rebuild markets for trade. It assisted our defeated enemies; it ignored our faithful allies especially USSR. Excepting Granada & Panama, our vaunted military has prevailed only in the Pacific War in WWll. USSR broke the back of Hitler’s army well before D Day.
One last point…before I try to get a glimpse of breaching Humpback Whales in Derbyshires’ neck of the woods…..
The Democratic Party over the past year has murdered in Cold Blood three thousand Conservative Orthodox Christian Russian Speaking Ukranians including young pregnant Women hung from street lights in the name of legalized homo-filth marriage…This is a monumental War Crime!!!!!..An offering to Lucifer itself!!!
Are breaching humpback whales in the Sound an omen for nuclear War World Three?…When the F have Humpback Whales…dozens of them…ever gathered and breached in the Sound?…Are they signaling to Captain Kirk and Mr Spock? There be Humpback Whales Captain Kirk!!!!!!!
“Lincoln Land: invade the world…invite the world.”
Hello Mr. Astore,
Interesting article, and you make some very good points. However..
You don’t seem to see any distinction between the psychotic, psychopathic and murderous US government vs. the lied to, deliberately dumbed down, remnants of the solid American people who have sent their sons (and more recently daughters) to die in these contrived wars based on lies for the fun and profit of a very few assorted scumbags who often are not even putatively American.
The American people were lied into the world wars. We were lied into Viet Nam with a lie called the Gulf of Tonkin affair. We were lied into Iraq with lies about baby incubators and we were lied into all the recent wars of aggression for the benefit of Israel by a controlled and treasonous fecal government and their propaganda arm the MSM. Lies about what happened on 911. Lies about WMD. Lies, lies and more lies.
Sure, it would be something if the American people were motivated to bomb and mass- murder and destroy people’s countries all because they were brown or Muslim or dressed funny or ate odd foods, but that isn’t why the systematically dumbed down American people were willing to do those things, were/are they? They went into WWI because of German soldiers tossing Belgian babies in the air and catching them on bayonets. Because of German submarines sinking ships full of civilian passengers that were not filled with war munitions. (all lies). They went into WWII because their American president forced a conflict with Japan who bombed Pearl Harbor and sucker punched those American sailors on a Sunday, and they dropped bombs on German civilians because the war propaganda told them those Germans were less then human, just like they do to all the people that our elites want the American young man to kill for them, or die trying.
When you unleash the wrath of the beast lingering in the depths of most average men (and women), it isn’t just the American soldier that can and does behave like a monster. So too did the Japanese soldiers, the Turkish soldiers, the Russian soldiers, the German soldiers, the Polish soldiers, the Serbian soldiers, the African soldiers and the Jewish soldiers and all too many others. They’ve been told that the men and women who they’re cutting to pieces and setting on fire did terrible things to them and their country and their families. Often (always) they’ve been lied to. When looking for someone to blame when America (or any of the rest) go on murderous rampages across the globe it is silly and wrong-headed to blame the average man on the street who’s been relentlessly lied to by experts. He suits up his only daughter in a uniform who wants to go avenge some of those poor people who were murdered by those cowardly bastards who attacked on 911 because she’s fill with a righteous desire to fight evil in her youth. And it’s hard to argue that the men who did that act on the morning of 911 were and are some of the most stone-cold evil men who’ve ever slithered on this planet. But because she was lied to, (like Pat Tillman or average American girls like Jessica Lynch who went because of lies and then once they were there the stories of their fates were all lies and when they’re caught lying, they tell more lies). It isn’t these idealistic young Americans that we should be excoriating to the world. No. It isn’t their fault. They were lied to and they’re lied to every day by virtually every single American media outlet by the Zionists who own them and are the people who actually do want all these wars, from WWI to especially these wars in the Middle East. It’s the Zionists and the arms manufactures and their bought and paid for stooges in congress who are guilty of all of these war crimes and atrocities and whose necks ought to be in a nice noose right now. They’re the ones ordering drone strikes. Vile and sickening assassinations like the ones they perpetrated against heroic journalist and American Michael Hastings. Like the one they likely did on Pat Tillman once he too figured out who the real demonic fiends on the world’s stage were.
The similarities between the psychopaths who make up the kill lists for those drone strikes vs. the average American who’s working two jobs to pay his bills is nearly non-existent. Same passport, other than that nothing. The American janitors and school teachers and bartenders are far more like the Syrian civilians who were going about their daily lives than each of them are like the demons in human skin who plot wars on innocents and send young, lied to, poor and dumbed down Americans to go kill other simple people very much like themselves to suit the agenda of wealthy scum the world over. There’s just as many rotten war mongers in London and Tel Aviv and Paris as there are in America. And if the American people knew the truth about who did what to whom, especially on 911- you can bet that it would be some men in thirty thousand dollar suits that would feel the wrath of the average American far more so than any poor Muslim.
If you want to take to pen to point out the monsters and bastards on the world’s stage who’re causing unimaginable suffering today, I’d just suggest you look a little higher up the food chain than the average American dupe, whose increasingly as likely to be on the target end of one of those militarized police-state high-powered rifles. Pat Tillman’s head was blown off with an American fifty caliber machine gun. He’s just as dead as one of those Pakistani wedding party attendees who the average American could no more harm than they could their neighbor. But the psychopaths that are running America today, for them to kill and murder and torture people is nothing, be their victims Syrians, Libyans, Iraqis, Americans or anyone else. (except of course those precious settlers for whom all of this madness is being perpetrated- and at the cost of blood and treasure to the average working and middle class American for whom you seem to want to place all the blame).
I know the average American. He was seriously pissed off about what happened on 911, and understandably so. But he was lied to. With all of these wars the American people have been lied to. Why not hold the liars to account? Why take aim at the dumbed down, ignorant, simple truck drivers and farmers? It is the government and the treasonous politicians and arms manufacturers and assorted neocons who are to blame. It is the rotten media who lie to us every day. It is the bankers and Zionists for whom these wars are being fought. It’s the psychopaths like Bill Kristol and Rupert Murdoch and Sheldon Adelson and their stooges like Obama and Bush and so many others like the gorgon Hillary or God damn it, so many others. Why blame the uneducated dupe when there Bibi laughing his blood stained Yakama off?
Thanks for bringing up first Gulf War, Desert Storm, usually ignored, also orchestrated.
Now Papa Bush, in his authorized biography, slams Cheney and Rumsfeld — a pretense of his own goodness and cold attempt to exonerate his son. Evil dynasty from way back.
Video Link
Prescott Bush – How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to Power
And with apologies to Harry Nilsson and Three Dog Night, one is the loneliest number. Now there’s a foreign policy anthem for the ages.
Felix Cavaliere, who wrote and sang “People Got to Be Free” for the Rascals, said he was surprised the song sold especially well in West Berlin and Hong Kong. Good heavens, those were the most obvious places for it to be a hit! How clueless can you get?
I mean, outside the upper reaches of the State Department. They should really call it “Foggy Top.
Background music for William Astore’s post:”Oliver’s Army” by Elvis Costello……
OT: For an analysis of similar economic imperialism mindset read http://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Americans-Cowboys-Markets-Millions/dp/0060575018/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446913210&sr=1-1&keywords=Ugly+Americans
Unfortunately, after Y2K, the cowboys attacked homeland with gusto and the homeland died.
Video Link
rotten, treasonous, lying scum
he told Saddam through his ambassador April Glaspie that America had ‘no concern about inter-Arab conflicts’, thereby giving Saddam the green light to attack Kuwait.
A POS of the highest order, just like his feculent spawn, they all eagerly serve the Zio-Beast
some people would have us blame these guys
for the treason and war crimes of the men and women who really are responsible
men like these sacks of pus
Why take aim at the often poor, young American vets and their families when it’s the demonic wealthy scum who tell lies to send these young people into harms way to slaughter innocent people for the agenda of the wealthy? Why not blame the wealthy scumbags like the bankers and Zionists?
Why do they get a pass while we heap scorn on her?
her man is dead in the ground because of the lies told by evil men
as long as we give the liars a pass, and excoriate the victims of their lies, they’ll continue to tell lies to get innocents killed, for their own fun and profit, and gloat about how they ‘came and saw and he died’
while Libya is in ruins and Syria too, and so many other places like Ukraine where these mass-murdering monsters are never held to account!
The people who believe this: American troops are never seen as conquerors or oppressors, always as liberators and freedom-bringers, or at least helpers and trainers.
Do not believe this: A big defeat (Vietnam, 1975)
I seem to constantly doing this, but someone has to. The US did not suffer “a big defeat” in 1975. US combat troops had already been withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973. Two years later the Communists broke the treaty they had signed and invaded the South. How in heaven’s name is it a “big defeat” if American troops aren’t even in country?
I’ve always said that our system where asshats in Washington can order wars with absolutely zero risk to themselves is evil. None of them, congressmen, senators, presidents, advisors, has any personal exposure. They do not fight, their brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, all continue to enjoy the same or even enhanced standard of living. Yet they “bravely” order wars and books are written by or about them lauding their heroism.
Kings used to at least accompany their armies if not actually “leading” them to battle. Today abject cowards order naive young men and women to slaughter innocents half a world away in places nobody had ever heard of where the real objective is just enrichment of the coward and his cronies. If two tribes of people in a desert want to fight one another over whose book of fairy tales is best, leave us out of it. How many Americans and other third parties must be sacrificed?
And what kind of parent allows his children to die defending Grimm’s versus Hans Christian Andersen? The children themselves, again, are young and naive. But the parents who proudly send them off to their sandy deaths??
Cheer up.
Although horrible on a personal level, militaries do not nearly kill enough people to even make a dent in population growth.
Just today another 220.000 humans have been added.
The trillions of dollars spend on killing my militaries is easily countered by a few billion of Bill Gates donations.
Because the US regime had wanted to preserve the Saigon regime and had tried to, but had been forced to give up that objective by persistent enemy action leading to domestic political resistance. The treaty was just a figleaf for America’s amour proper.
Is it really that hard to understand? If patriotism is getting in your way, think of it this way; barring a few details, it’s much the same as the defeat suffered by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, even though the Soviet military still dominated that country (though you could argue there was less political need for the Soviets to pull out and it was just Gorbachev’s attempt at a new approach that triggered their withdrawal).
“The American people were lied into” believing things they wanted to believe.
America is a large number of low function psychopaths ruled by a small number of high function psychopaths.
Such is the nature of man.
Exactly.
Rulers have ‘evolved’ from physical savages to psychological savages. Pathetic sissy psychopaths with tens of millions of voting followers.
War is not about blowing stuff up or killing lots of enemy soldiers. Wars are fought to achieve political objectives. If you fail utterly to achieve your political objectives then you’ve been defeated. As the US was defeated in 1975.
Not rotating the soldiers means to leave them in the desired country for long time.
Than they will understand what the pentagon and the US industrial killing complex do. To them and others. If they survive they return with that knowledge. And then?
Rotation is inevitable for the wars the US criminals fight.
And by the way, i am German. I know what the burden of collective guilt is, over generations. Can you or any other US citizen say “he didn’t know that” like our grandfathers and -mothers did? In Internet times where the censorship and monopoles like “Völkischer Beobachter” is history.
Wow! Absolutely GREAT post, Rurik! You have truly said it all, my friend. All just pawns in their sick and twisted game. Blame the liars and hold them to account. Right on, Brother! Right on!
“From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoofbeats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ‘neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game”
– Bob Dylan ~ Only A Pawn In Their Game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkgk9U3zEOQ
Video Link
Or how about that’s just how human societies work. No one wants to hear your long winded individualistic christian rhetoric.
“They do not fight, their brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, all continue to enjoy the same or even enhanced standard of living. Yet they “bravely” order wars and books are written by or about them lauding their heroism.”
This is a relatively recent phenomenon. One may find at elite prep schools and universities, typically somewhere in their chapels, plaques or other memorials to alumni killed in the two World Wars. The names listed are numerous. Such memorials are not found in those places for persons killed in the wars in Viet Nam or later theatres of conflict. The old elite, largely WASP, did send their sons to war at one time; the successor elite quit doing so in the 1960s.
This is one hell of a treatise!
Hello Drape,
The American people elected president Wilson and FDR specifically to stay out of the world wars. They didn’t want to send their young men to die in wars for the vanity and wealth of some rich old men of Europe. They had to be tricked and lied into them. Just like they had to be lied into Viet Nam. Just like they had to be lied into all the rest of them. How is it that you call these simple and honorable people “low function psychopaths” when they didn’t want to harm anyone, let alone send their sons off to get killed or worse. But they went into these wars when, having been lied to, they believed that they were sacrificing for the greater good of people they didn’t even know. people thousands of miles away, who they were willing to die for, to fight the “war to end all wars”, or to stop Hitler, only to be betrayed by those same Europeans at Versailles when Wilson’s Fourteen Points were laughed at. Or at Yalta when half of Europe was handed over the blood spattered Stalin and his Orwellian communist nightmare.
The American people were betrayed in Viet Nam by their government too, just as they’ve been betrayed in every war, but their motivation for fighting them was never to conquer or to plunder (in spite of what the behind-the-scenes corporations were up to), but to protect others and for noble ideals. And you call that the acts of “low function psychopaths”?!
Gullible they have been and are, but trying to blame the average American people for the wars their criminal government has foisted on them is stupid and specious and perhaps worse.
Dismissing mass-murder and torture and assorted unspeakable atrocities and war crimes as man’s “nature”- sounds a little to me like giving it all a pass. Like ‘what’s the big deal?’, it’s ‘mans nature’. Well for me, what the wealthy war pig/men did to the poor men (and so many uncounted scores of millions of women and children too) of the last century is hard for me to dismiss, especially as I see them attempting the very same thing, if not worse for this century.
It may be man’s nature to slaughter and kill, to murder, maim and harm, but it’s also his nature to help those who need it and to seek and tell the truth. To repudiate the liars and hold to account the criminals and real psychopaths with the blood of innocents on their hands. That is also part of man’s nature, and it’s that part that I personally embrace. ; )
Hey Jr,.
It is great to see your words of encouragement. I read what I write and often wince at the lack of eloquence or even proper grammar for that matter, but if somehow some truth bleeds out through my efforts, then I’m heartened for sure.
Thanks for the video, he too understood the wrenching hypocrisy of it all. You can hear his sarcasm dripping
cheers!
Huh?
“Christian”
where’d you get that?
as for the ‘that’s just how societies work’ banality, is that how we should all feel about the Holocaust?
the untold numbers of innocent people slaughtered in contrived wars for the fun and profit of a few?
“that’s just how human societies work”
Stalin’s and Mao’s and Pol Pots’ blood lust?
“that’s just how human societies work”
What about Gandhi? MLK? Edward Snowden? Julian Assange? Should we mock these men for tilling against windmills, when they should just shut up and accept that “that’s just how human societies work”?
Eh?
Hey Orville,
Sometimes I guess I just get worked up ; )
The US was far from alone in Libya. In fact the Brits and French led off in Libya as Dumbo didn’t want to get involved. Until, that is, he thought scragging the daffy one was a good idea.
Killing Khadaffi was an act of utter stupidity, yet Dumbo, the Brits and Froggies thought it was just peachy.
Has the public learned anything? Given what you said about being deceived, one has to ask why, after a couple of centuries., the public is still a bunch of dupes incapable of improving. They are as pathetic as an abused housewife – except that they keep going back to the voting booth.
My take is that most people are inclined to trust government and also live vicarious political lives, getting thrills when their beliefs are represented by government. Like when someone’s favorite team wins. Once trust is involved, all bets are off and the reward system takes over.
As for low function psychopathy, it’s the rest of the bell curve outside the 2-4% who are high function psychopaths and maybe 2-4% asymptomatic. You know, the dupes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgenics
I agree that government has often become a sort of big daddy, like ‘God’ in many religions, there’s big daddy to take care of you if you just pledge your fealty. It’s a scam that charlatans take advantage of, both in government and religion. People are basically sheep and always have been.
Your definition of low function psychopathy is pretty inclusive don’t you think? What is that, some 90% of the population? If you wanted to make the argument that there are that many sheeple in the population, then I’d agree, but being sheeple does not to my mind make a person a psychopath. Not hardly. There is a big, big difference between people who are willing to countenance the slaughter millions of others when they believe that those others (Muslims) want to kill them because they hate freedom and are evil terrorists. That’s why the real, clinical psychopaths did 911 as a necessary pretext to get the otherwise bovine, apathetic cow-people to agree to their bloody intentions in the Middle East, because the cow-people specifically were not psychopathic fiends, and willing to slaughter innocent Muslims just to steal their land; like the Golan Heights. It is because the mass of people are basically good (if hopelessly sheep-like) that they were forced to come up with their “new Peal Harbor like event” to get American’s to agree to the Endless War.
“How Ukraine’s Finance Chief Got Rich”
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/10/how-ukraines-finance-chief-got-rich/
“Exactly which Western “values” Jaresko actually shares remains unclear because of the fog surrounding her actions at WNISEF and her unwillingness to reveal how much she made from her association with a U.S.–taxpayer funded project. However, if those Western “values” include putting citizens’ interests before self-interest and believing that transparency is critical for a democracy, Jaresko may need some remedial training.
Last December, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko named Jaresko Finance Minister after awarding her instant Ukrainian citizenship. At that point, she quit WNISEF and has since become the face of Ukrainian “reform,” representing the U.S.-backed government at international banking events at Davos, Switzerland, and elsewhere while appealing for billions of dollars in Western financial aid which she oversees. Jaresko’s standards for handling public moneys are relevant to judging whether the new regime is just a reshuffling of who gets to plunder Ukraine or a serious effort at reform. The overthrow of the previous Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych was largely justified in February 2014 because of allegations about corruption. The new regime has presented itself as committed to reform, even though some outside observers contend that corruption is as bad or worse than under the old government.