This is my reasoning for why none of these conflicts work. I am sure people will be able to "shoot" holes in my argument, but that matters not.
The "bad guys" for want of a better term, do not fight a traditional war. This fact was painfully obvious in Vietnam.
You can not kill a thought, idea or belief system with weapons of war..you can only kill people. The whole idea of exporting our brand of democracy with bombs, bullets and thousands of soldiers is a ridiculous assumption being made by men who have never been to war. Not one of the asshats currently attempting this bullshit has ever fought in a war.
Eisenhower was a soldier first and a President second. I think that was perhaps a good thing. He saw first hand what war can and can not accomplish, and that was fighting a traditional war where the enemy wears a uniform and carries a gun. Eisenhower's parents were both pacifists but did not object to him entering West Point. He went on to become a military leader and the president that ended the Korean conflict by advocating negtiotiations between the warring factions. Eisenhower had grand plans to end the cold war with Russia via talking but when the Russians shot down a spyplane, they said fuck it, and Nikita Khrushchev never did have Eisenhower visit Russia to continue the talks and the rest, as they say, is history.
This final tidbit of info on our only Republican president to advocate negotiations over armed conflict, its from Wiki: "On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower gave his final televised speech from the Oval Office. In his farewell speech to the nation, Eisenhower raised the issue of the Cold War and role of the U.S. armed forces. He described the Cold War saying: "We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method..." and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals and continued with a warning that "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Our liberty is another man's hell on earth. Our liberty should not be shoved down the throats of people that do not wish to see it bloom and prosper. We can not make the world over in our image, and who are we to demand that our life is the best of all worlds and everyone who believes different should be wiped off the face of the earth? In order to bring our brand of democracy to the people of the Middle East we will need to use genocide..are all you folks that buy into the GWOT prepared to use that tactic? Are you prepared to kill an entire country of people because they will not bow down to our brand of freedom? Because if you are..
I want no part of it.
I have been reading alot about Dwight Eisenhower recently, trying to find out how a life-long military man could be so good at trying to bring peace through talk and negotiations. I wanted to know why he warned us about the monster known as the "Military Industrial Complex".
I think its very simple..he went to war, he lead the charge and he knew, in the end, that war only kills people..it doesn't kill an idea, thought or a belief.
Are we trying to kill people or a ideal in the Middle East? Bombs and bullets will not work on the latter. A republican president figured that out..after he went to war time and time again as a soldier and a General.
Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rove and now Olmert have never served in a war. These men never learned the lessons Eisenhower did. That is why they will fail in their attempt to wipe out the "bad guys" in the Middle East.
But I am no one..just a woman that reads quite a bit of history and a woman that respects the right of indigneous people to live their life as they see fit, regardless of someones belief system or their politics.
Quotes from Eisenhower:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address January 17, 1961
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter to his brother Edgar, November 8, 1954
I voiced to him (Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson) my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1945
Peace and Justice are two sides of the same coin.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
