Iraq, Iran and the Moral Rot Infecting the Soul of America

[unhappycamper]

Iraq, Iran and the Moral Rot Infecting the Soul of America
by Walter C. Uhler | Aug 27 2007 - 8:44am


The more I read history, the more I'm convinced that the United States, far from being God's appointed beacon for all mankind, was always a big talking, poor performing country in which the massive and willful stupidity of the majority engendered a moral rot incapable of withstanding manipulation and seduction by self-serving business/political interests. Thus, columnist Richard Cohen was merely acknowledging the latest example of such rot among the majority, when he asserted the Iraq War "was no mere failure of intelligence. This was a failure of character."

~snip~

Such moral rot explains why, when presidential candidate George W. Bush smugly asserted, "I may not know where Kosovo is, but I know what I believe," he was not judged to be a dimwit, but a man of character. Such moral rot also explains the ease with which an evil president and vice president -- with the cynical aid of America's neocons -- could manipulate the ignorant fears and blind rage of Americans into support for an illegal, immoral unprovoked war against Iraq.

Moreover, such moral rot explains why, even in the disastrous wake of the evil invasion he inspired, Darth Cheney could send out Christmas cards containing Benjamin Franklin's words: "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?" And, alas, such moral rot explains why President Bush - who, until two months before ordering his evil invasion of Iraq didn't even know that the country was populated by Sunnis and Shiites - could feel sufficiently confident about the collective stupidity of Americans to erroneously compare Iraq to Vietnam (a war that the moral coward supported, but worked so mightily to dodge).

Moral rot also explains American's current inability to see through Bush's "surge" propaganda. Simply consider two incontestable truths: (1) "As of late-August, no progress had been made in achieving the key objective of the "surge" - to provide safe space for political progress at the national level." and (2) such political progress, in the form of national reconciliation, cannot occur because the Shiites now in power consider their permanent political ascendancy to be predicated upon their ability to outlast the American occupation.

As the New York Times correctly noted: Mr. Maliki's government "is the logical product of the system the United States created, one that deliberately empowered the long-persecuted Shiite majority and deliberately marginalized the long-dominant Sunni Arab minority. It was all but sure to produce someone very like Mr. Maliki, a sectarian Shiite far more interested in settling scores than in reconciling all Iraqis to share power in a unified and peaceful democracy." <"The Problem Isn't Mr. Maliki," New York Times, August 24, 2007> Of course, it's difficult to foresee such problems, if you're a president who did not even know that the country he was preparing to invade contained such Shiites and Sunnis. Moral rot!

Finally, moral rot now explains what appears to be the inevitable march to war against Iran, or at least the bombing of its nuclear energy facilities. Having supported an illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq, which has inflicted untold suffering upon its people, most Americans - including Americans currently sitting in congress and running for president - find themselves incapable of thinking through just how to deal peacefully with Iran, the sole regional power to emerge preeminent from the debacle we initiated.


more

[liberalmuse]

1. It's kind of hard to dispute Mr. Uhler, here.

And that is damn sad. :(

[Middle finga]

2. We have a sad situation here. It cracks me up sometime

when people are quick to say USA is the greatest nation on earth, especially when they never even visited another country.

[madhoosier]

3. "Baby, You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet."

"Baby, You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet."

The goal of the neocons in the Middle East is to steal the oil
controlled by the Shia in Iraq and Iran, the oil that will be
required to fuel the non-negotiable lifestyle of America’s
elite over the next two decades.

Iran is a client state of Russia and China with both countries
having major investments in Iran. One of the so called nuclear
facilities the AIPACers want to nuke is a Russian nuclear
power facility and an attack on it would no doubt kill
hundreds of Russian workers. China has contracted with Iran to
develop a lot of Iranian infrastructure in return for Iran
supplying China with lots of energy.

1. I have little doubt that the lesson the PNACers have
learned in Iraq is that to successfully steal the resources of
a foreign country you need to neutralize the natives,
something few occupying nations succeed in accomplishing short
of genocide. ( A lesson most Americans should know from their
own history.)

2. No nation in the Middle East will allow the United States
to use their airbases for an attack on Iran. Tehran is over
1,000 miles from where an aircraft carrier would be able to
launch an attack. (From the north Arabian Sea assuming that
nobody in the Navy is stupid enough to start a war with Iran
with America’s fleet bottled up in the Persian Gulf.). That
means a round trip of over 2,000 miles over enemy territory.
Iran has state of the art Russian made air defenses that would
pose a real threat to conventional American air power.

3. Iran has an arsenal of anti-ship missiles that can blockade
the Straits of Hormuz, through which 25% of the world’s crude
oil flows. The only military tactic to neutralize this threat
that I’m aware of would be to carpet nuke an area along Iran’s
rugged gulf shoreline the size of the state of Iowa.

4. Finally the Bush clan has too many ties with the Saudi
Royal family to allow Iran to become the dominate power in the
Islamic world, something that the destruction of Iraqi society
virtually guarantees. An attack on Iran would make the
returning of the Sunni minority in Iraq to power and aligning
them with Saudi Arabia possible Iraq’s when Iraq’s Shia turn
on their American allies.

5. The End Timers pray to Christ for Armageddon.

For all of these reasons I believe that an American attack on
Iran would be with nuclear tipped ballistic missiles and would
be designed for nuclear genocide. “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses” the PNAC bible, not only called for a new Pearl
Harbor it also called for a new generation of nuclear weapons,
chemical weapons and biologically racially specific weapons.
The document also stated that no power would be allowed to
challenge American hegemony, Russia’s vast energy resources
and China’s rapid economic growth both present significant
future challenges to American hegemony. For these reasons
premeditated genocide in the Middle East and a first strike on
Russia and China can not be ruled out as an option that Bush
would consider.

“Nuclear Primacy” is an article from the neocon Council on
Foreign Relations that will scare you senseless. The thesis of
Nuclear Primacy is that an American first strike nuclear
attack against Russia and China is “winnable” and that the era
of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is over. Click here to
read; http://tinyurl.com/rq3sc

With the outbreak of nuclear war Bush will declare a state of
emergency and implement full scaled Fascism in the United
States…and probably only a few American cities will be taken
out by Russian missiles.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

4. Even without a conviction, impeaching the bastards says we repudiate your actions

Otherwise, the spinless democrats are allowing the crimes to continue without even trying to stop them.

[Demeter]

5. Bush Combined Corporate Moral Rot With Fundie Intellectual Rot

and created a super compost for bad ideas, bad policy, and bad people. Weed Fertilizer

[Hydra]

6. The moral rot is the real problem

The fact that we don't really care that people are being tortured, even our own army and civilians, tells me that we are as far from civilization as we can get.

Sickening. I never guessed my neighbors were such freaks.

[GeorgeGist]

7. Perverts ...

are never at fault because they live in Widestance Reality.