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truedelphi

(32,324 posts)
Wed Aug 28, 2013, 01:44 AM Aug 2013

PLEASE Mr President, Give Us A War!

I remember sitting in a corporate lunch room,circa Summer 2001. And reading the newspapers over my daily sandwich.

Back then, I was pretty sure that the internal polling of the Bush Presidency was letting Mr Bush know that he wasn't being perceived that well on Main Street. Corporation after corporation was outsourcing jobs. Unemployment was high, and spending by consumers was down.

The one bright spot of the economy (if I remember correctly) was the housing market. Like other bubbles before it, this was a new factor inside a "new economy." Any banking or mortgage "professional" would tell you that housing prices were going on up through the roof and would only go higher. The advice I heard all around me was: Do whatever you can to get yourself a house - as pretty soon houses would not be affordable. (In California, they already were not affordable.)

But if you got yourself that house, not to worry. The prices could only go higher - they could never ever implode.

But on Main Street, consumer dissatisfaction was high. Those who were trying to trade up, housing wise, found it took all their discretionary spending to do that. Meanwhile there was still the cost of feeding the kids, putting away for the college fund, spending on insurance, etc. People seemed morose, except for the few I knew who were totally into the housing market - buying properties cheap and flipping them. And their frantic behavior reminded me all too much of the computer nerds I knew who had bought into the dot com bubble just some months earlier.

Thinking about the world each day at lunch, I mused that about the only way out of this awful American economic tragedy was some type of grand catastrophe. Only then could George Dubya retrieve his previous honeymoon high popularity numbers.

I had no idea what exactly the needed catastrophe would be, but of course, as so many have said, all that changed the morning of Sept Eleventh, 2001. That morning, the grand catastrophe took a lot of pressure off the President, at least in terms of polling numbers.

I mean, let's face it -- Outsourcing of jobs: who could think or worry about outsourcing of jobs when airplanes were careening through buildings, and landmarks were toppling and thousands of people were dying. Consumer shopping was down - well, yeah, but what did that matter when so much of the Pentagon itself had gone Kablouie!

Within a week of that cataclysm, the President had bright, new and shiny polling numbers, and many Americans were again in love with the fearless leader.

Now it is 2013. President Obama, our One Percent approved replacement for the George Dubya Presidency, has had his drop in polling numbers. In addition to the fact that most of us know the recession has not ended, and will not end, at least not for the "middle class" (and some eight to twelve millions of us know this from the security and comfort of the RV park where our new substitute for our foreclosed home is parked,) comes the added knowledge that we are now told that jobs will never come back. Over the last few months, unemployment numbers managed to drop due to the fact that many of the unemployed are no longer even looking for work. And for other Americans, student loans and attending college on a student loan happens to be the new "job."

It was safe to say some three weeks back that the honeymoon glow of Obama's first term is clearly over.

His one shining star - the ACA - has been re-worded so that certain key provisions were put on hold. That way his buddies in industry won't cause even more of a PR headache for the "reform" measure. Among these key provisions are the penalty provision of the ACA, giving employers more time—until 2015—to comply. Supposedly this additional year offers employers more time to understand the requirements of the act. The Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury also stated, "We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively. We recognize that the vast majority of businesses that will need to do this reporting already provide health insurance to their workers, and we want to make sure it is easy for others to do so."

But above and beyond the stumbles of the ACA on its way to implementation are the revelations of one Ed Snowden. His leaks of NSA intricacies related to the spying by the NSA on all Americans was the Strike Three! for this Presidency. (Economy being the first one; the ACA delays being the second.)

Yes, while Americans were tolerant of Strike One and Two, the notion that a person's emails were being collected, that our conversations were stored so that at any point in the future, they could be reconstituted - all that was a matter the American public found appalling.

It occurred to various segments of society that this was a flagrant and dangerous precedent, especially given that Spring 2013 had shown the IRS willing to target various political groups not in sync with the Obama Presidency. Various liberal protest groups could foresee very harsh future, when some Big Corporation needed to pin down exactly who it is that is against GM foods, or fracking, could simply call on the NSA to have such information revealed to them. All that made headline news for most of June and July 2013. And the uproar had not really died down at all in August.

But now all that uproar can be lessened. All it takes is one more foray into the exciting world of international war on yet another third world nation. A bombardier jacket is no doubt being tailored for this President, as the "Mission Syria Accomplished" banner is being inked. It will be a short and painless war, like all the other wars we enter. (From my vantage point of history, all wars are short and painless, at least during the week and /or month before we enter them.)

What is not to like about this war? It will be brutally short and it is justifiable.

It will be a short war, and that phrase reminds me of the way the populace of the East Coast viewed the Civil War in the early weeks after the attack on Fort Sumpter. It will certainly not end up with 600,000 dead, as that war did - we have drones to do our dirty work now.

And Vietnam was another "walk in the park" type of war, despite the fact we should have examined the lesson plan the French had previewed for us before our entrance into that war "theater."

And even if it should prove to be long and painful, well, at least we have the satisfaction of knowing we were taking the moral .high ground. How dare any political leader use Sarin gas on his own people! And of course, as a nation that has never done anything like this, except for when we exposed the entire length and width and breadth of the states of Nevada and Utah to the pestilence of falling radioactivity from our above-ground nuke tests, well our nation certainly should be the judge and executioner against the Syrian leader and the people of Syria, for that use of Sarin Gas. I mean, one example only - just that of nuke contamination across Nevada and Utah - resulting in entire towns of people, moms and dads, and old men and aunts and uncles - yes, entire towns of people dying of cancers, what of it?

Should that disqualify us from sending in the death machinery of an American war to topple the regime in Syria? Okay in all honesty, well maybe one other example: of course, the Agent Orange that our own service people breathed in while accomplishing the splendid freedom-creating actions that were our mission in Vietnam, and of course, the depleted uranium that cost the lives of so many of our troops during the decade following our involvement in Iraq War I.

But we as a nation are very very good at taking the moral high ground. Surely the above examples should not stop us - because think of how handsome our young men look in their parade dress uniforms before they go overseas. And think also of how the young women look so poised and confident in their dress uniforms as they too embark on this short and moral war.

Thinking of how great our young service people look as they embark on a foreign war, I almost get weepy with pride. Let's not harangue the President - let's encourage him! This nation doesn't make steel, or manufacture cars, or produce the tools my husband used to bandy our ten year old car back together today. All that production is happening in Korea, and in Mexico, and in China. (And it is possible the military uniforms are produced in Bangladesh, or Ecuador, but no longer in New England or the Southern states.)

We Americans are good at this war business. Give us a war, PLEASE Mr President, and we who brought the world the horrors of Abu Gharib, despite the Geneva Convention, and despite the lesson of the Nuremberg trials, we need to have a moral high ground, if only to make up for that Abu Gharib, and also because many of us lost the ground our homes stood on. Let us fight once again for The Red The White The Blue.

And I bet you your damn polling numbers will go up as well.























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PLEASE Mr President, Give Us A War! (Original Post) truedelphi Aug 2013 OP
k&r for exposure. Well said. n/t Laelth Aug 2013 #1
Secretary of State John Kerry Announces Chemical Weapons Unacceptable..... JohnyCanuck Aug 2013 #2

JohnyCanuck

(9,922 posts)
2. Secretary of State John Kerry Announces Chemical Weapons Unacceptable.....
Wed Aug 28, 2013, 09:24 AM
Aug 2013

on SAME DAY that It’s Revealed America Helped Saddam Use Chemical Weapons.

From the Do-What-We-Say-Not-What-We-Do Department

On the same day that Secretary of State John Kerry announces that we have to bomb Syria because the use of chemical weapons violate international rules, it was revealed that CIA files prove that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iran.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/08/secstate-john-kerry-announces-chemical-weapons-unacceptable-on-same-day-that-its-revealed-america-helped-saddam-use-chemical-weapons.html

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