Reply #5: Let's look beyond that [View All]

[Jack Rabbit]

Rumsfeld knows better than most people what's happening. He actually understands it. That doesn't mean he isn't twisted.

He realizes that the reservists in Iraq are like the draftees in Vietnam. Many of them would be okay being yanked out of their comfortable, civilian lives and whisked off to fight a foreign war if it were clearly necessary. We wouldn't be seeing this dissension if Saddam, in addition to being the brutal tyrant that he was, was also a gneuine threat and Iraq were a cesspool of biochemical weapons like Rumsfeld and Powell told us; it would probably help further if instead of tearing down Iraqi society in order for it to be rebuilt by American contractors, we were facilitating the rebuilding of Iraqi society with Iraqi resources for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

There is no war on terror. This is a colonial war. Americans are not fundamentally colonialists. American political traditions are democratic and libertarian. Colonialism requires the brutal oppression of the natives least they rise up and liberate themselves.

Rumsfled and other members of the junta know that they have lied to drum up support for this war. Americans would not have supported this war if they knew the truth. Thus, he sees those American traditions as a problem. The American people, once properly informed, will not allow him and the multinational corporations who sponsor the junta to loot Iraq. The Iraqi people will take up arms and the American people will resent Americans being killed trying to prevent them from taking control of their own country. That Iraqis should control Iraq is something Americans see as the natural order of things. That many Americans whom the junta has put in harm's way see the big picture are people who desire to return home to their families and jobs sooner rather than later further aggrevates the dissension.

Therefore, Rumsfeld wants a professional army that can be rebuilt into an army for colonial occupation. Americans must not know the truth. Draftees in Vietnam and reservists in Iraq come home to join the peace movement. Professional soldiers simply do as their told in one war and then go on to fight the next.