AND their kids. THEY are the ones agitating for more war, more war, more war, and more, more, more, more. The vast majority of the chickenhawks have NEVER served. They've NEVER enlisted. NEVER wore their country's uniform. NEVER saw combat. NEVER got their hands dirty. NEVER had ANY skin in the game. All they've ever done is sit in their nice air-conditioned offices and broadcast studios and the "Meet the Press" set every Sunday and pontificate about how we need endless war! We need a war HERE. We need a war THERE. We need a war in THAT other place over there, TOO! john mccain in his convention speech endorsing mitt romney in 2012 cited FIVE different places where we oughta be putting a LOT of boots on the ground. FIVE separate war fronts. FIVE different countries! Iraq and Afghanistan, plus Syria, Iran, and I think he also included Yemen in that. But according to Mother Jones, it's far more than that, even!
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/john-mccain-world-attack-map-syria
And as for people like mccain - who actually ARE war veterans, I don't care! I'd say the same thing. You want that damn fucking war so bad - THEN GET YER ASS IN THERE AND GO HAVE YOURSELF SOME!!!!!! Knock yerself out! SHOW us how macho you are! Time to get some skin in the game! Same thing for YOU, TOO, Traitor-tom cotton. You DID serve. Okay, then I suppose you wouldn't mind leading our forces back there - YOUR boots back on the ground. Dayum - if I were able to, that's the kind of legislation I would either sponsor or introduce. And then do as much talk-show talking as I could. The Mandatory Skin-in-the-Game Act. If you're out there pushing for war in the public square, especially on the people's dime, marco rubio, then YOU FIRST. YOU suit up and lead the way, jeb bush. I don't care HOW far you tried to walk it back. Your FIRST INSTINCT, the FIRST thing off the tip of your tongue was YES you would have gone into Iraq. Knowing whatever you did or didn't, at whenever a time or era. That was your instant response, what was first on your mind, and first in your head and first from your lips. Besides, you've appointed and are keeping paul wolfowitz as one of your inner-circle advisors on foreign policy, plus your ding-dong dry-drunk miscreant worst-president-ever no-good idiot brother. So it's pretty doggone clear what you can be expected to do. And NONE of it's good, either.
And THEN (and ONLY THEN) come back and tell me all about it. And how damn glorious it was. And how macho you are NOW. Probably as much so as all those Iraqi troops whose modus operandi seems to be to turn tail and run when the heat turns up. Saddam Hussein's much-vaunted, feared, and PR-massaged Revolutionary Guard did the same thing when they realized all was lost in Kuwait. They grabbed what they could steal, turned tail, and ran - eventually leaving a broad trail of stolen loot and even weapons behind, on the ground as they fled back to Iraq through the desert. I remember seeing full-color full-page photos of it in the news magazines back during Operation Desert Storm - the one led by "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf. I was still working full-time in news myself back then. Everything we'd been told about the fearsome Revolutionary Guard failed to materialize. They ran.
So perhaps it's time we ask ourselves, DO WE REALLY want to keep having these wars? THESE wars. In other places, where we're not under physical assault here on the terrestrial U.S.? Are we REALLY okay with having to prop up how many countries or areas of the world that can't seem to hold together on their own? Should we start considering letting nature take its course? Some of these parts of the world have been in turmoil for thousands of years! The problems there just might possibly NOT be fixable. Should we start leaning toward even considering that reality? What's the point - if the home team isn't motivated or interested? Maybe a country like Iraq, which was artificially crafted by others, isn't meant to be set up, the way it is at present. It's a mess at present. May be a lost cause. Why should we continue to throw away years, trillions of dollars, and most especially our precious children and other loved ones on a lost cause? We can't remake them into anything. THEY have to remake THEMSELVES!!! Perhaps it's time to recognize this? To speak of it openly? To introduce it in the public square? To broach the subject?
I'm even wondering if ALL warfare is eventually going to morph into some sort of cyber war. Hell, we've already seen hackings galore of BIG entities, from Sony to the U.S. government. Warfare of the bloodless kind. I'd rather it be that humankind finally matured a little and realized we have a lot more in common than we have differences and we really ought to work together - ALL of us planet-wide.
However, human nature being what it is, I doubt it. I imagine that's a little too much to expect of us humanoids, at least for the time being. It's expecting too many of us to evolve a little more. And some of us out there don't want to.
= new reply since forum marked as read
