Monday, October 13, 2014

Endless War, Human Nature, and the U.S.


Endless War, Human Nature, and the U.S.
P. Schultz
October 13, 2014

Another email exchange with a friend: First is a link I sent out to some people. Then there is a response from a friend, Skip, and then we both responded after that. Enjoy.



Skip’s response to my link:

Pete; Periodic war is inevitable, no? You know far better than I of the
endless score of wars in recorded history, SOME of them even before the
advent of Lockheed, Raytheon, General Dynamics etc.  The desire for power,
fame , and wealth is a kin to that hereditary form of Diarrhea.....its' in
our genes.....Skip

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My response to Skip:

Well, yes, Skip what you say is quite true. But does that excuse wars based on lies and deceit, unnecessary except in terms of helping to fund Lockheed, Raythreon, and General Dynamics, ala' Vietnam, Iraq, and now Syria? For some one who claims to be "conservative," you are certainly able to excuse the government's behavior with the argument: "Well, shucks, Pete, war is inevitable so even when that secret Muslim, Obama, does it, we should not complain. Shucks, Pete, dismembering other human beings is in our genes! So let the beheadings and bombings go on." 

It is so interesting to me how those who claim to be "conservatives" find that the government cannot provide health care in a reasonable fashion but it can torture, kill, and annihilate with precision. I believe, though, as you say, it is little more than the lust for blood, the desire to kill, whether the killings are needed or not. 

But, don't forget or complain about the consequences. As Willie likes to sing: "It ain't really hard to understand. If you're gonna dance, you gotta pay the band." Or as Malcolm X said after J F Kennedy was assassinated: "The chickens have come home to roost." Indeed they have and boy did they ever come home on 9/11! 

Skip’s response to my response:

Pete; Aren't the lies and deceit necessary to cloak the desire for power, fame & fortune? As a general rule, I see liberals as idealists and conservatives as realists. Liberals cling to the hope (fantasy?) of world peace. Wouldn't it be great.......but we both know it ain't gonna happen. Conservatives usually abide by Reagan's premise of peace through strength. If we relinquish our role as the most powerful country on earth(I think bho would like this!), who will succeed us? Communist China or Communist Russia? A human rights catastrophe in the making. Don't you think we need to continue our role as the most powerful country on earth? Sorry but I have to study my livelihood for a while! Luego Pedro.


And my response to Skip:

I believe that you are correct, Skip, but what apparently you don't see is how right you are when you say that humans always engage in lies and deceit, as well maiming and killing, "to cloak [and advance] their desire for power, fame, and fortune." For some reason, you don't include the United States in the human race in this regard. So, yes, I agree with you about human nature; but I don't exclude or excuse the US when we demonstrate the same characteristics. Otherwise, I believe one is engaging in a fantasy just like the one you attribute to our "liberals."  To explain: 

After declaring that (a) human beings naturally desire for power, fame, and fortune, and (b) need lies and deceit to cloak these desires, you go on to defend "our role as the most powerful country on earth" without so much as blinking or recognizing that perhaps this "role" is merely just another disguise for the humans who hold power in this country to kill, maim, and annihilate for the sake of national power, fame, and fortune. This is, to say the least, confusing and, I submit, confused. The only way this makes sense is if you think that we Americans or some of us are, unlike all other human beings, immune somehow from what you, in my mind rightly label, "that hereditary form of Diarrhea." Did we Americans get an inoculation from this dis-ease? I think not. To your way of thinking, we must have. Talk about a "hope (fantasy)" of the kind you attribute to liberals. I believe you are enmeshed as deeply in such "hope (fantasy)" as any liberal. 

Now, some facts: 
(1) Your oh so "idealistic" because world peace loving liberals aren't: They built the Pentagon against the wishes of many conservatives of the day; they created the CIA, again against the concerns of many then conservatives; they gave us Vietnam and the covert war in Laos and Cambodia [as well as endorsing covert war around the globe]; they have helped build our current armada, thereby greasing the palms of those corporations you name; they did not coin the phrase "the military-industrial complex;" the liberal Obama has merely continued and even expanded, while legitimating, the policies of George, aka "Shrub," Bush; engaging in torture, death and destruction in the deceitfully named, "War on Terror." This is just to point out several facts that have me to conclude that your characterization of liberals is based on a fantasy, and more broadly, the fantasy that our two parties or our liberals and conservatives have deep seated differences. They don't and both of them show symptoms, to say the least, of your "hereditary form of Diarrhea." I am surprised that as a doctor you don't recognize these symptoms. ;-) 

(2) Get ready, my friend, to relinquish "our role as the most powerful country on earth" as it will or has already happened. We couldn't win in Nam, we couldn't win in Iraq, we couldn't preserve the Shah in Iran, we couldn't overthrow Castro in Cuba, we couldn't assassinate Castro while there is considerable evidence that Castro had JFK assassinated, we couldn't defeat the communists in China, we couldn't win in Afghanistan or Pakistan, . to say nothing of our inability to impose a peace on the Middle East. and China is displacing us as the most powerful nation economically [don't we owe them a ton of money? I think we do and we are, and have been for some time, a debtor nation.] You may fantasize as you wish but it is, I think, little more than fantasy to think we control the world. If 9/11 should have taught us anything, it should be that.  

(3) And do you think that our role as the most powerful nation on earth has led to a flourishing of human rights? Not so much. To wit: Guantanamo, the Phoenix program in Vietnam, My Lai, millions or the equivalent of the population of our New England states killed in Nam while we were there, over a 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, support for dictators around the world, ala' Saddam [when Reagan was president], the tyranny in Chile, in Guatamala, in Cuba [before Castro took over], in South Korea and South Vietnam, support for jihadists in Afghanistan [how did that work out?], as well as in Egypt, in Lybia, in Syria, in Pakistan, and more dictators in China, in Iran with the Shah and his secret police, the Savak. That is, wherever it was deemed necessary or even convenient, the U..S. has supported dictators, over and over and over. What a boom for human rights!!












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