Steve Hayes: "It matters less what the American people think than it does what the enemy think in terms of winning the war"
September 05, 2010 10:07 am ET
From the September 5 edition of Fox News Sunday:
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Tossing out the word terrorists does not clarify this issue.
Understanding your enemy is good. I don't see anything that show the rightwing is making any effort to do this. It seems they use it almost exclusively to make people fearful.
My self I'm tending to believe that their enemy can easily be anyone who does not comfortably accept and enthusiasticly work for the world view that they see.
Cowards, each and every one.
"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
- William Tecumseh Sherman
Except that the enemy knows that in a democracy what the people think does matter a lot as to whether to continue the hostilities or not and at what level.
Continued borrowing from China to fund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq while not strengthening the economy is a recipe for disaster. Republicans should be among the first people in this country to reject this practice because it is not fiscally responsible, but they don't. We don't have to wait for the republicans to regain power to see the results of this flawed policy because we're living it today. A republican majority in both house of Congress will definitely weaken our economy as they borrow to fund these tax cuts, refuse to create jobs, refuse to extend unemployment benefits, borrow to continue operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and borrow to make their wet dream of invading Iran come true. Once the economy is in dire straits, the republicans will do exactly what they're doing now. They'll refuse to accept any responsibility for their mistakes, lose power, go on another slash and burn campaign against those who can govern, and repeat the whole process.
I have watched republicans' behavior and policymaking since Nixon was in office, and the patterns of behavior I described above are the primary rules in the republican playbook. When Americans will realize that their policies do not work and adamantly refuse to vote for them, forcing the party to face reality and change is anybody's guess. I only know that at this time in our history, we don't need to be exposed to a revival of policymaking that has already been proven to be devastating to our economy, our troops and citizens, and our standing in the world.
Although simplification is in order when confronting an ideologue, war is a seperate issue. Though you are right in the sense that we didn't "win" the war because so many soldiers died and we never left those countries, that was never the objective in the first place. The truth is we won those wars. I know I know, but bear with me.
The point of all those wars a.k.a "interventions" was never to institute democracy, or take out any type of horrible leader. It was to overthrow a more than likely state run economy. It didn't matter how many soldiers we lost during those wars (many of which were started by Dems.) In nearly all those wars, we obliterated their infrastructure and forced them into a capital road. But of course, we say they're our "trading partners" now.
Let me wrap up by saying this, the ideologues you mentioned above know all of what I just said. And if you think confronting them on national TV and trying to get them to admit that will work, then I say you have more hope than I do. This playbook isn't a matter of being ineffective, it's a matter of being disastrous at the expense of the taxpayer, for the benefit of the corporations. And as far as borrowing goes, I doubt any country that we've borrowed from would attack us knowing that they're owed so much.
China already has, if you consider cyberwarfare to be warfare. The Chinese military is well ahead of ours (as far as we know) in cyberwarfare doctrine and practice. They have, according to Richard Clarke in Your Government Failed You, successfully hacked into the Pentagon's non-classified network, and seem to be capable of bringing our economy, electric grid, and transportation facilities to a standstill.
"They would never attack us because..." is always a dangerous position to take, because it rests on the assumption that other countries and cultures see their interests, and threats to those interests, the way we think they do, or should. Assumptions like that fill graveyards.
Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass
Besides, Humpty Dumpty's misplaced faith in the King's Men's abilty to put him back together, perhaps this is an apt metaphor for Iraq and "winning". Seems as if at anytime we could have declared victory and left.
During the times when I COULD still listen to him, he virtually never told the truth. I've never seen him write anything that was honest either. He's dishonest to the core.