In 2006 Gen. William Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency, was one of the few and first to break ranks and declare that Iraq was, “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” Very few of his colleagues have done the same.
So…all the genius’ out there, Republican and Democrat, are once again getting an enormously expensive lesson in Realpolitik. Let’s hit a few of their names; Kristol, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Bremer, Bolton, McCain, Clinton, Feinstein, Pelosi, Panetta……and let’s not forget Bush and Obama. Then there’s a whole Yacht full of Generals and Admirals who simply follow along in order to protect their pensions and rank rather than do the honorable thing and resign.
The real problem is that the lessons involved have been and will continue to be paid by the front-line rank-and-file military members, the American taxpayer and our grandchildren, not the fools who get us into these Wars of Opportunity. Those Wars which all can see come at the expense of American security and our strategic defense posture in the world.
After attacking Iraq with “shock and awe,” expending hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi lives, hundreds of thousands of other casualties, trillions of dollars, hollowing out the American military and moving toward plunging an entire region into endless war we come to the inevitable result. The Neocon-chickenhawks and Progressive-liberal warmongers each move through the media punditsphere shoring up their position with endless excuses, new and old justifications. So when will they pay the price? Or do they always get off scot-free?
The Bozos that have been running this bus off a cliff for more than a decade deserve nothing less than public trial, impeachment, imprisonment and perhaps even an oldtimey public floggin’ or two. My son keeps telling me, “we need a return to using the stocks.” I think he might be right. Instead, we do nothing to the perpetrators of all the follow-on death and destruction.
Every excuse that can be imagined will once more be trotted out to basically say, “It’s not our fault. No one could have known it would all fall apart!” That line of total bullshit is going to be run out in front of the public again and again in the coming months. They saw none of this coming. Not the dissolution of Iraq as a state, or Syria, Egypt or any of the others. All of our experts who demand we do as they tell us and then fail at every turn to see the outcome in foreign policy, in economic bubbles and monetary crisis, cultural and moral destruction of our entire country.
It’s almost as if they had no understanding whatsoever that virtually every country in the Middle East has completely artificial and arbitrary national boundaries drawn by the victors of WW1 and WW2 and various colonial empires (which in several cases are the same players). It is the same story in virtually every sphere of public policy that is being destroyed by the comic road show that is the Right/Left political and “expert” class. The track record of our “leaders” is abysmal and yet the American public continues to follow like hungry puppies after the bitch.
In March, 2003 I wrote the initial essay that became the Foreword (click on “look inside” the cover on the Amazon page) for the intricately researched “Petrodollar Warfare” by William Clark. That Foreword detailed, almost as a blow-by-blow script with near precision, the events that have occurred since then. It didn’t take a genius to be able to predict the flow of events that have transpired in that region or in our economy and policy structure since.
I’m just wondering if Americans are really starting to understand that the Left-Right ideological paradigm and its “expert” outliers are the real enemy here. An enemy that soon must be expunged from the American political structure and replaced with principled and disciplined individuals of apparently uncommon common sense. Or will they instead continue to play dumb and take their cues from the corrupt opportunists and politicians who infest the body politic like a viral infection?
We can have hope for only 2016 I fear as there doesn’t appear to be enough movement yet in 2014. The American public is still largely in a collective coma from the look of it.