Contrast the way the Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan treated "righteous" drone strikes or bombing/strafing runs that killed innocent civilians with how the same commanders treated soldiers, sailors and Marines who killed or injured civilians or even terrorists and you start to wonder at the amazing disconnect with reality suffered by officers wearing stars. They find it perfectly appropriate to torment and court-martial men for alleged misbehavior that might have led to a terrorist getting a fat lip but turn a blind eye to "righteous" killings via air strikes.
It was said that war makes monsters of us all. I heard that quote some years ago on a radio show and it was attributed to one of our bomber crew that flew missions with the 8th Air Force in World War II and dropped thousands of tons of bombs in a "righteous" sort of way on anything that moved in Germany and most of the things that didn't. Nobody on our side was ever charged with killing innocent civilians and if you look at the policy in place at the time, while the 8th Air Force conducted day-light precision bombing and paid dearly for it, the RAF and the Pacific Air Force set out to destroy entire cities and again, nobody was prosecuted because the winners don't have to sit through that kind of peak under the curtain. Only the losers get that treatment. Mind you, the 8th Air Force didn't bomb in daylight out of any concern about civilian casualties, the generals just thought they stood a much better chance of hitting the actual targets of the raids if they could see them.
I have the sense that civilization is coming to an end but not as projected by Fukuyama and not as Huntington proposed in his "Clash of Civilizations." The barbarians without and beyond The Pale are not the ones undermining civilization now, it is our own institutions that have repurposed and dedicated themselves to destroying Western civilization to the point that there can be no clash because Western civilization won't be around to show up for the clash. American civilization used to be bred in the bones of its citizens and I think Norman Rockwell reflected what it was like to be a white American as we entered the Cold War. Almost all of that sense of purpose and history is gone now. Only old people have any idea about civics, history, economics, thrift, industry, decency.
What 9/11 brought about, temporarily, was a return to a unity of purpose. All of that was frittered away and no place reflected that more than NYC as the moguls and politicians waged all out war over the replacement for the World Trade Center. It played out in the public eye and I think everyone was revolted by it. The government actions since then have repelled almost all the people who once believed in government as a positive force. Only fools believe that anymore. Government exists to exert awful pressure on citizens in order to turn them into subjects and criminals. It lets the connected insider elite such as Jamie Gorelick or Hillary Clinton get away with murder and it hastily proclaims that all those who have dirt on people like that commmitted suicide when they're found dead, even the ones in federal custody. And we the people, have let them get away with that.
I see Justice Breyer has resisted strong urgings from democrats that he retire right away and give Biden and his idiot Senate a chance to name a thoroughly corrupt creature of the elite such as our current Attorney General to his place on the Supreme Court. Breyer has so far declined and is not persuaded by the fact that Ginsburg also resisted the clarion howls that she resign on Obama's watch and spitefully died on when Trump was President leaving him to fill that seat on the Court. The democrats figure Breyer won't last as long as Biden and fear that the Republican Senate that comes to office next year will reject Merrick or any other communists from taking a seat on the Court. Breyer is a dead man walking. I expect him to turn up dead any day now from some nagging little cough that turned into Ebola or something worse. At any rate, I'm pretty sure they'll off him with Covid. I wonder how many strange men in coveralls have been seen in the Supreme Court building in the vicinity of the air conditioning system with odd little brief cases stuffed full of live covid virus. If the democrats accidently wipe out the entire Supreme Court it won't be any skin off their noses. They can appoint 9 new tame communists and move on with their plans to further wreck the country without any judicial restraint at all. Not that the Courts have really been known for judicial restraint since Roe v Wade.
It doesn't pay to see things like this when the whole Western world seems hellbent on recreating a fascist dictatorship of massive proportions again. Just looking at Australia turned into an entire nation of sheep over a virus that has a 99% survival rate is amazing. I'm appalled.
2 comments:
No argument with anything you said. I do think, though, that Norman Rockwell's illustrations represented all Americans.
Clinton and Obama made sure that being a warrior would stop you in your tracks, at O-6.
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