"Losing wars is always bad. One of the major reasons for America’s current global predominance economically and politically is that America doesn’t lose wars very often,...Unless the advocates of defeat can show, as they have not yet done, that the consequences of losing are very likely to be small not simply the day after the last American leaves Iraq, but over the next five, ten, and 50 years, then what they are really selling is short-term relief in exchange for long-term pain. As drug addicts can attest, this kind of instant-gratification temptation is very seductive — it’s what keeps drug dealers in business despite the terrible damage their products do to their customers. 'Just end the pain now and deal with the future when it gets here' is as bad a strategy for a great nation as it is for a teenager."-- Frederick W. Kagan, writing in the National Review Online
Stop or I'll hit you? oooo, scary. Beat me, I love it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I lost my score card.
The analogy works better the other way
ReplyDeleteWars are easy to start and certainly feel great at first (as Toby Keith said, "Iraq + Roll!") but the negative consequences of the intervention habit only become apparent over time, and by then, you're in too deep to quit easily
Yea, we paid a hell of a price for Germany, Japan, Italy, Bosnia, and all the other countries we've saved. Please. When I hear people like you, who claim to care so much for other people - but aren't willing to do anything, but whine and moan, while others die for a better world - it makes me wonder how you can look yourself in the mirror each morning, being so demoralized.
ReplyDeleteNothing has turned out as the anti-war crowd has said: we didn't take the oil, we aren't losing the war, there's been no civil war, the surge worked, and Al Qaeda is begging the Iraqis to quit joining up with us. You got nothin'. I'd think, at some point, you'd start to reconsider the premise for your argument but, I know, that's too much to ask from anyone so trapped in the mindset of always losing - in war, in politics, and in life.
Wake up, friend:
The 60's are over.
I wish to call attention to a form of addiction, which has not been previously identified. It is more like gambling than drinking, since the people afflicted are ravenous for situations that will cause their bodies to release exciting chemicals into their bloodstreams. I am persuaded that there are among us people who are tragically hooked on preparations for war.
ReplyDeleteTell people with that disease that war is coming and we have to get ready for it, and for a few minutes there, they will be as happy as a drunk with his martini breakfast or a compulsive gambler with his paycheck bet on the Super Bowl.
Let us recognize how sick such people are. From now on, when a national leader, or even just a neighbor, starts talking about some new weapons system which is going to cost us a mere $29 billion, we should speak up. We should say something on the order of, "Honest to God, I couldn't be sorrier for you if I'd seen you wash down a fistful of black, beauties with a pint of Southern Comfort."
I mean it. I am not joking. Compulsive preparers for World War III, in this country or any other, are as tragically and, yes, as repulsively addicted as any stockbroker passed out with his head In a toilet in the Port Authority bus terminal.
For an alcoholic to experience a little joy, he needs maybe three ounces of grain alcohol. Alcoholics, when they are close to hitting bottom, customarily can't hold much alcohol.
If we know a compulsive gambler who is dead broke, we can probably make him happy with a dollar to bet on who can spit farther than someone else. For us to give a compulsive war-preparer a fleeting moment of happiness, we may have to buy him three Trident submarines and a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles mounted on choo-choo trains.
If Western Civilization were a person--
If Western Civilization, which blankets the world now, as far as I can tell, were a person--
If Western Civilizations, which surely now includes the Soviet Union and China and India and Pakistan and on and on, were a person--
If Western Civilization were a person, we would be directing it to the nearest meeting of War-Preparers Anonymous. We would be telling it to stand up before the meeting and say, "My name is Western Civilization. I am a compulsive war- preparer. I have lost everything I ever cared about. I should have come here long ago. I first hit bottom in World War I." Western Civilization cannot be represented by a single person, of course, but a single explanation for the catastrophic course it has followed during this bloody century is possible. We the people, because of our ignorance of the disease, have again and again entrusted power to people we did not know were sickies.
And let us not mock them now, any more than we would mock someone with syphilis or smallpox or leprosy or yaws or typhoid fever or any of the other diseases to which the flesh is heir. All we have to do is separate them from the levers of power, I think.
And then what? Western Civilization's long, hard trip back to sobriety might begin.
A word about appeasement, something World War II, supposedly, taught us not to practice: I say to you that the world has been ruined by appeasement. Appeasement of whom? Of the Communists? Of the neo-Nazis? No! Appeasement of the compulsive war-preparers. I can scarcely name a nation that has not lost most of its freedom and wealth in attempts to appease its own addicts to preparations for war.
And there is no appeasing an addict for very long.
"I swear, man, just lay enough bread on me for twenty multiple re-entry vehicles and a fleet of B-1 bombers, and I'11 never bother you again."
Most addictions start innocently enough in childhood, under agreeable, reputable auspices-a sip of champagne at a wedding, a game af poker for matchsticks on a rainy afternoon. Compulsive war-preparers may have been encouraged as infants to clap their hands with glee at a campfire or a Fourth of July parade.
Not every child gets hooked. Not every child so tempted grows up to be a drunk or a gambler or a babbler about knocking down the incoming missiles of the Evil Empire with laser beams. When I identify the war-preparers as addicts, I am not calling for the exclusion of children from all martial celebrations. I doubt that more than one child In a hundred, having seen fireworks, for example, will become an adult who wants us to stop squandering our substance on education and health and social justice and the arts and food and shelter and clothing for the needy, and so on--who wants us to blow it all on ammunition instead.
And please understand that the addiction I have identified is to preparations for war. I repeat: to preparations for war, addiction to the thrills of de-mothballing battleships and inventing weapons systems against which there cannot possibly be a defense, supposedly, and urging the citizenry to hate this part of humanity or that one, and knocking over little governments that might aid and abet an enemy someday, and so on. I am not talking about an addiction to war itself, which is a very different matter. A compulsive preparer for war wants to go to big-time war no more than an alcoholic stockbroker wants to pass out with his head in a toilet In the Port Authority bus terminal.
Should addicts of any sort hold high office In this or any other country? Absolutely not, for their first priority will always be to satisfy their addiction, no matter how terrible the consequences may be--even to themselves.
Suppose we had an alcoholic President who still had not hit bottom and whose chief companions were drunks like himself. And suppose it were a fact, made absolutely clear to him, that if he took just one more drink, the whole planet would blow up.
So he has all the liquor thrown out of the White House, including his Aqua-Velva shaving lotion. So late at night he is terribly restless, crazy for a drink but proud of not drinking. So he opens the White House refrigerator, looking for a Tab or a Diet Pepsi, he tells himself. And there, half-hidden by a family-size jar of French's mustard, is an unopened can of Coors beer.
What do you think he'll do?
You really should get an account so I can put a name to you:
ReplyDeleteOne time, walking home from school, I ran into some guys who demanded my shoes. There were like 5 of 'em, but I put up a fight, and made it home - with my shoes still on my feet. The lesson, for you, is the guy who fights didn't always start it.
Which leads me to wonder why, since we all witnessed 9/11, you anti-war types don't do any complaining to the guys who start the shit we always have to finish. No marches against Osama, not a word about Saddam, just Bush, Bush, Bush, like he knocked down the WTC. It seems pretty chickenshit.
But, unfortunately, not very surprising.