Pax on both houses: Golda Meir: "We Will Only Have Peace With The Arabs When They Love Their Children.."

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Golda Meir: "We Will Only Have Peace With The Arabs When They Love Their Children.."

Dear Fred,

I am baffled by Elaine's "Thought For The Day": "We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us." Golda Meir

It is often difficult to determine whether the chicken or egg came first.

But when it comes to The Crusades, it's pretty clear.

Christians went out of their way to "reclaim The Holy Land," and did so through centuries of gratuitous, unprovoked violence - at one time enlisting a crusade waged by child warriors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade

Although Christendom's failure in the Crusades was as egregious as "Christian" America's failure to "save" Iraq (in a war that Bush originally characterized as "a crusade"), the neo-cons are already pumping the next round of belligerence - while other neocons are pulling for Uncle Sam to ally with the mullahs of Iran.

Go figure...

Here's what I figure:

"War Is A Racket," By Self-Professed "Gangster For Capitalism," Maj. Gen Smedley Butler

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/war-is-racket-by-self-professed.html

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Alan: If George Bush and Dick Cheney had not waged their Whimsy War on Iraq, thus undermining a stable country that was a staunch ally of Ronald Reagan -- a country with no WMD and no involvement in 9/11 -- the current ISIS crisis would not exist.

ISIS' seizure of Mosul and Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's hometown) would have been inconceivable --- like The Tea Party winning the Oval Office, both houses of Congress and packing the Supreme Court with nine judges all named Antonin Scalia.

The prospect of a 9/11-type terror strike launched on the United States from Iraq or Syrian soil would have been unthinkable except in the delusional minds of paranoid xenophobes whose constituency (spearheaded by Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton) was solely responsible for kicking every hornet's nest in the Islamic world, then wondering why blowback was biting them in the ass.

If tables were turned, Americans would have already launched terror attacks across the Middle East. For that matter, the entire Iraq War -- from inception onward -- has been an unrelenting exercise in state-sponsored terrorism perpetrated by Uncle Sam.

During the run-up to The Iraq War, everyone with an internet connection and a folded cortex was aware that the invasion was monstrously stupid -- and grotesquely unjust. (Pope Benedict XVI declared the war unjust. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/pope-benedict-xvi-questions-if-modern.html)

Remember "Shock and Awe?" Remember "The Power of Pride?"

Who's shocked now?

And what about the pride - which, predictably, came before the fall - and wasted all those lives?

The dead, the maimed.

The Americans, the Iraqis?

Since the Vietnam War, two lessons scream at us.

"You don't get involved in somebody else's Civil War."

"And you don't start them."

When we forget either lesson, American soldiers come home in caskets having accomplished nothing.

We owe our troops trustworthy guidance, not swashbuckle, bluster and simian chest-thumping.

Fear-driven Christians, cheerleading the Apocaplypse, are the most reprehensible actors in this whole sordid scenario.

They are America's Taliban. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-newsroom-tea-party-is-americas.html

"Pope Benedict Questions Whether War Will Ever Again Be Just"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/benedict-xvi-from-now-on-there-are-no.html

Alan: Three star Air Force general friend, AWC, age 95, recently confided: "It seems we haven't fought a "good war" since World War II."

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"Terrorism And The Other Religions"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/terrorism-and-other-religions-juan-cole.html

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An armed man waves his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the US consulate compound in Benghazi late on Sept. 11, 2012. The alleged ringleader in the attack has been captured by involving Special Operations forces. (AFP/Getty Images)

Alan: Whichever "pistol" this young buck is shooting, it's all about: "Bang!" There is no better categorization of the hormonally-driven, cultural illiterates who fight wars than "young, dumb fucks." I know. I was a young, dumb fuck. (And smarter than most...)