Permanent War Out in the Open

I can’t believe what I just heard Senator Lindsay Graham say on the “Morning Report” on MSNBC this morning. Referring to the “War on Terrorism,” Sen. Graham said, “This war will never end.”

That is most disturbing to me. I’ve long been under the impression that the Washington power base, the multi-national defense contractors and the like in our country want a permanent war. It keeps the military/industrial complex fat with profits at the expense of our domestic woes.

I’ve always believed that this is the underlying objective of those in power, though I did think that it was a “covert operation” the Powers That Be in order to keep it from the general population.

But to have a Senator blatantly admitting on a national broadcast that we are in a permanent war just shows how comfortable those in power are with their agenda. That we, the people, will not object to forever being in a state of war, having our military personnel continually killed for the rest of our country’s existence, continual massive profiteering, never ending war strategy sessions on our cable news networks, etc.

The nebulous phrase “War on Terrorism” is absolutely ideal for a permanent state of war. It is a given that there will always be some person or persons hating the United States and constantly figuring out ways to hurt us. Just as I am sure there are persons who hate Great Britain, France or any other country who are trying to figure out ways to hurt them. Are those other countries in a permanent state of “war on terrorism”?

So now those in power have no problem with saying it out in the open, on national interviews, that we are now a country locked in warfare and will always be a country locked in warfare. By these permanent warfare advocates’ insistence on having war commissions, tribunals and such to deal with supposed “enemy combatants” (as opposed to treating them as the criminals they are) further implants the idea to the citizenry that this egregious mind set will never go away.

Thus, for the rest our lives and our descendants’ lives we’ll be forever ramping up the defense expenditures, cutting the domestic funds (“We don’t have the money because we have a forever war to fight and the military/industrial complex desperately needs their profits to fight the terrifying war on terrorism”). At least, until the people finally get what has tragically befallen on them.

Bad Posture

Glenn Greenwald had an article last Monday (Feb. 22) about the falsehoods of American war criminals.

It is a very well-written piece, but I want to particularly focus on what he says at the end of the post. Mr. Greenwald wrote what he perceives is "the current posture of the U.S. to the world..."

Yes, we implemented a worldwide torture regime that we justified with lawyers' memoranda that were false, wrong, shoddy, lawless, sloppy and extremist, but because those lawyers were such warped radicals, they probably believed what they were saying at the time, so we're going to declare that we had the right to do what we did and are shielded from all consequences, even though we've signed treaties agreeing to prosecute anyone who authorizes torture and constantly demand that other nations prosecute their own torturers. Besides, we have important things to do and so we want to Look Forward, not Backward.

This is a great statement and it couldn't be more right on! I hope this is quoted all over the Internet. I hope that it becomes a mantra that all of us can throw into the faces of those who perpetuate this warped viewpoint.

We need accountability for all those who brought this country to the nadir of its existence. I do not want our country to be thought of by civilized countries as some rogue nation torturing human beings and allowing those who authorized the torture to not be held accountable. I hope that within my lifetime, I can see those in the Bush Administration who initiated these horrible crimes be brought to justice somewhere.

Any presidential administration (current or future) who allows this behavior to get a free pass should be scrutinized as well.

These are sick, twisted people who caused over 100 fellow human beings to be killed by torture and destroyed who knows how many lives. They are murderers (or accessories to murder at least) in my book and should be held accountable for their actions.