In Declaring Endless War: "No nation, could preserve its freedom.."

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0207-05.htm

Published on Tuesday, February 7, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Washington Digs In for a 'Long War' as Rumsfeld Issues Global Call to Arms
by Simon Tisdall

The Bush administration's re-characterisation of its "global war on terror" as the "long war" will be seen by critics as an admission that the US has started something it cannot finish. But from the Pentagon's perspective, the change reflects a significant upgrading of the "generational" threat posed by worldwide Islamist militancy which it believes to have been seriously underestimated.

The reassessment, contained in the Pentagon's quadrennial defence review presented to Congress yesterday, presages a new US drive to rally international allies for an ongoing conflict unlimited by time and space. That presents a problematic political, financial and military prospect for many European Nato members including Britain, as well as Middle Eastern governments.

According to the review, a "large-scale, potentially long duration, irregular warfare campaign including counter-insurgency and security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations" is necessary and unavoidable. Gone is the talk of swift victories that preceded the 2003 Iraq invasion. This will be a war of attrition, it says, fought on many fronts.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, suggested at the weekend that western democracies must acknowledge they are locked in a life or death struggle comparable to those against fascism and communism. "The enemy have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire."


,,more..
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(from, Alito - It's the Constitution That's At Stake, By Thom Hartmann
01/30/06)
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11718.htm

On April 20, 1795, James Madison, who had just helped shepherd through the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and would become President of the United States in the following decade, wrote:

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."

Reflecting on the ability of a president to use war as an excuse to become a virtual dictator, Madison continued his letter:

"In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both.

"No nation," our fourth President and the Father of the Constitution concluded, "could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

<snip>

[Rocknrule]

1. Like I said

Bush supporters must understand that if all it takes is a state of war for the president to achieve unlimited power, all the president has to do to become a virtual king is keep the nation in a perpetual state of war...hey, wait a minute...

[stevietheman]

2. And we "wonder": Who is most inflaming the Islamic peoples?

Apparently, all irony is lost on the Bush regime.

I myself have this feeling of wanting to stay out of this food fight between our criminal federal government under the Bush regime (largely supported by religious reichists) and the Islamists.

I honestly don't know which group is worse any more.

Both groups hate our freedoms... therefore, I sincerely hope they cancel each other out.

[leftchick]

3. Thank you G j

and "War is a Racket", right? :(

[G_j]

5. you bet it is!

(I got this link from you! :-) )

http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Smedley Darlington Butler
Major General - United States Marine Corps

Chapter One

WAR IS A RACKET

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

..more..

[donkeyotay]

4. The long war will be the death of us, and real patriots knew that

I hate that such small, ignorant and morally bereft minds are destroying our nation, this great experiment in human freedom. They don't even pretend to have read the constitution, let alone defend it. Gonzales, torture and spy legal mind promoted to the highest law office. Bush, ignorant frat boy promoted by crime syndicate to hold a gun to our heads while his posse loots the country. Rummy, the dumbest son of a bitch to ever run a mighty military power into the ground. A gang of crooks and thugs. War profiteers and just plain ignorant bastards. Anyway, my point, besides I wish we had politicians of Madison's caliber, is that before we go tripping off on this looooong war, we should be holding the military - both civil and uniformed, public and privatized - to account for the heckuva job they've done so far in this tragic farce, the War on Terror, Good Sense and Common Decency. Mission accomplished. When will they be held accountable for their failed policies? They had all the money and power they wanted and they failed miserably. Maybe they failed to first define the problem. This isn't a choice between "keeping us safe" and treating terra as a "law enforcement problem." This is a choice between using all your bullets shooting at shadows in the dark or choosing to fight a smart war and only use bullets when absolutely necessary. A smart long war or a dumb long war. One of these choices puts the welfare of the nation above the welfare of the privatized military.

[leftchick]

6. to make up for all of my useless photo posts

here is a big old kick!

:kick:

:)

[G_j]

7. really?

I don't think I have ever seen a 'useless' post from you leftchick.
I think those posts are quite important, and thank you for offering them.

:-)