Sunday, September 14, 2014

More dumb war



This blog was born in response to this country's vengeful, foolish, militarized reaction to the atrocity that was the 9/11 attacks. So why have I not even commented on President Obama's pronouncements on IS/ISIS/ISIL made last Wednesday?

I find our current trajectory toward ever more ill-considered and ever less limited war in the Near West inspires as much sadness as outrage. The Prez has occasionally propounded some genuinely sharp policy principles: "no dumb wars" and/or "don't do stupid stuff" come to mind. But we won't allow our leaders the latitude to use what common sense God gave them. The more common sense they allow to leak through the pretensions of office, the more they are punished in their polling ratings when many of us get into a howling jingoistic rage.

Once again, we are allowing ourselves to be stampeded by the clever authors of violent made-for-TV movies. The 9/11 attacks were at least horribly successful theater on a massive scale. Now we are spooked into stupidity by some YouTube videos? Apparently yes.

Timothy Egan nails our national mood.

That’s it in a nutshell: public policy driven by visceral reaction to videos. ... “The world has always been messy,” said Obama, a smart man, making a smart observation to a public that doesn’t reward that trait. “In part we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.”

The President hopes to wage "a nuanced war," explains David Corn. The phrase alerts anyone in their senses to trouble ahead. War is not nuanced.

Current polling
says we the people want some cleansing violence. We're not in a mood for common sense.
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For a genuinely informative discussion of our latest wars and rumors of more wars, try reading Phyllis Bennis at the link.

1 comment:

Hattie said...

I think this is all about protecting American interests in the middle east,esp.oil interests.