Mission Creep

Deja vu all over again, Groundhog Day, mobius strip, you know, the endless ways to repeat catastrophe continues ever onward as long as you don't do the fighting.

Quite frankly, this has been one of the more depressing weeks we have seen in a very long time. The country seems to be sliding down some very familiar tracks into a military engagement in the Middle East -- an engagement that, at the moment, seems to be cloudy in its objectives, vague in its outlines, and obscure on the simple fact of what we are supposedly fighting for, and who we will be fighting with. Can we fight the Islamic State generally without help from (gasp!) Iran? Can we fight the Islamic State in Syria without a de facto alliance with Hafez al-Assad, who was Hitler only a year or so ago? And the most recent polling seems to indicate that all the institutions that are supposed to act as a brake on war powers within a self-governing republic are working in reverse again. The Congress is going to debate how much leeway it should give the president to make war, not whether he should be allowed to do it at all. The elite media, having scared Americans to death by giving the barbarians and their slaughter porn the international platform the barbarians so desired, is jumping on board with both feet. (To cite only one example, Chris Matthews is suiting up again.) The country has been prepared to give its children up again. At the very least, public opinion on what we should do is a muddle, which means that any plan that looks "bold" likely will carry the country with it, unintended consequences be damned.With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. - George Orwell

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

Endgame: It's amazing that the resident chicken hawks - Cheney, Kristol, Wofolwitz, Pearle, Nuland, Kagan et al - who have NEVER been right about anything regarding foreign policy, i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran, Russia, Ukkraine,, Chin etc., etc., are even listened to as they too push for war but, as former senator Mark Prior said, "You don't need to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate"." 

Into the valley of death rode the six hundred. - Tennyson