James Moore: Men without Honor

[unhappycamper]

Men without Honor

As the trumpets were blaring and the guns were sounding, I watched Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush on television and wondered anew, "What kind of men are these?" Surely, they must be among the first Americans to be almost devoid of conscience.
Rumsfeld, his chest protruding beneath the waving American colors, appeared as oblivious as he has always been of his own failings. This was a moment of pride for both the president and the former defense secretary; the deceptive Mr. Bush was preening and parading with the incompetent Mr. Rumsfeld.

Did either of them entertain a solitary thought of the lost boys and girls of America whose devotion and service was wasted on lies and political utility? Did they ponder for a moment the billions of dollars they have expended to destroy another country when it could have been used to provide health care to the American poor or fight AIDS or cancer? President Bush said a few days later that "he sleeps a lot better than you might suppose." That he can sleep at all must be a kind of phenomenon prompted by a total absence of cognitive thought.

Can he not hear the ghosts of those who have fallen needlessly or the sounds of democracy's scholars and historians crying over the body of our Constitution? I suppose he sees only glory, hears the martial beat of the drums, and feels the thunder and power of the gun ships and the rockets that he has never had to fear. I wonder how Bush and Rumsfeld look into the mirror in the morning and so I am astonished that they can walk before our men and women in uniform and claim an honor they have not earned.

~snip~

Rumsfeld got it all wrong and still thinks that's all right. He went to war with the army he had and then did not take responsibility for the horror they got. He was a partner in corporate America's giant profits off of the war and it did not bother him as small towns had to take up donations to buy bulletproof vests for their children at war. Rumsfeld sent in his army "light and fast" against an enemy even novices knew was going to be slow and asymmetrical. American troops were scavenging in junk yards for scrap metal to armor-up their Humvees while Rumsfeld assured the president freedom was on the march. Instead, it was stumbling into a hopeless abyss.

We now need peacemakers; not more warriors. Yet John McCain comes to us and says the answer is more soldiers, which only means more death. General William Westmoreland consistently was able to convince Lyndon Johnson more troops were the answer to an asymmetrical enemy in Vietnam. But they never were. They were only more kids that did not need to die. Iraq is Vietnam without the trees.


entire article

[demnan]

1. Iraq is Vietnam without the trees

and we all here knew it before it started.

[MaineYooper]

2. I think it's not absence of cognitive thought---

but rather absence of even a glimmer of empathy or decency that lets * sleep.