Reply #2: Yes, an army can bring quietude. But it cannot bring peace. It can dominate [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

with guns and bombs. It can kick in doors, and kill ten innocents for every "insurgent," it can incarcerate without charge, it can torture, it can march around with guns and tanks, it can terrorize, but it cannot create legitimacy, especially after egregiously DESTROYING THE PEACE, and breaking one international law after another, and slaughtering half of a million people, to force them to sign over their oil rights to U.S. corporations.

No legitimacy, there or here. Much trouble ahead. There and here.

This army does not have the consent of the American people, 56% of whom opposed this invasion, war and occupation from the beginning (Feb. '03), and a whopping 70% of whom oppose it now. The fascist party had to rig the voting system to shove this down our throats. And there is going to be hell to pay here--in loss of the rule of law, in crippled and brutalized soldiers, in a $10 trillion deficit (federal bankruptcy) and a thousand other impacts. What do you suppose Bush's "martial law" executive orders are FOR? What do you suppose Congress' endorsement of Bush/Cheney domestic spying, and all their other crimes, is FOR? The "pacification" of Baghdad is going to require the "pacification" of the United States. That is the kicker.

As for the Middle East, the U.S. is playing a losing game. There is simply no way that the U.S. can continue to prop up the sheiks of araby, and can continue to occupy the Middle East on their behalf (--with Israel as the excuse, to keep the Democrats on board; I'm convinced of this--Saudi Arabia and the UAE are calling the shots, not Israel; the Bushites will betray Israel in a cold minute, when it suits them; it's about the oil, not about Israel). To the millions and millions of Islamic peoples in the Middle East and Asia, Islamic fundamentalism IS freedom. It is freedom from the sheiks! And they simply will not put up with this new tyrannical, occupying power--the U.S. army--standing in the way of THEIR FREEDOM. It may not look like freedom to us, but it does to THEM--and, in the lo-o-ong view of history, they may be right. Islamic communalism is anti-king and anti-sheik, and it may well, one day, LEAD TO liberation of the common people, in the way that real Christianity--Jesus' communal idea--persisted through the Ages, beneath the surface, and eventually resulted in democracy--equal opportunity, dignity and rights of the common people, human rights, labor rights, civil rights, universal education, socialism, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for everybody, not just the nobility!

Against this tide of history--the REAL REASON for the success of Islamic fundamentalism (that it represents FREEDOM to the common people)--Bush, Cheney and their Democratic colluders have set the VIOLENCE of invasion and occupation. Guns, bombs, armored vehicles, high tech fighter jets, helicopters, tanks and transplanted, essentially conscripted "Roman legions"--which will NEVER be seen as "liberating," no matter how much they try to enforce that notion with the Big Boot. Using an army to steal resources is furthermore so corrupt and corrupting that it will cause--and is causing--an inner collapse, much like that of the Roman Empire. The "rule of law" is lost AT HOME. The filthy rich ruling class--the war profiteering class--get too fat, too lazy, too selfish and too callous, with the spoils of war, to give a goddamn about the basics of governing, OR about the people they use for slave labor and cannon fodder. The signs and portents are everywhere. This corrupt Empire--once the ikon of democracy--is failing, is falling. We are in so much debt that the mere flicker of a eyebrow in China can send us into a spiral of economic collapse.

Meanwhile, the Saudis command our army.