(January 2, 2015 at 1:25 am)Chuck Wrote:(January 1, 2015 at 10:01 pm)tjakey Wrote: America loves war. We are pretty much constantly at war. War spending makes up a large part of our budget. No one is talking about actually cutting military spending to something in the same time zone as rational, no Democrats and certainly no Republicans. Military spending is America's job program, and we all know it. In addition, Republicans are the American Christian Party, particularly their T-party branch, and American Christians love war. Indeed, they can hardly wait for god to come along and kill off a billion or so in a nice big battle that will do away with all of us un-believers in the great and powerful Jesus.
There is no chance that an anti-war candidate will ever make it onto a national ballot with a real chance of winning. Americans would not stand for it. So, pretty much every and any POTUS will be a war criminal before his (or her) first year is the history books. Waging war is what we elect them to do. There may never be peace on earth, but there will certainly never be peace on earth as long as America rules.
It's a regrettable fact that no model total war has ever occurred on American soil to teach muricans what it is like to really be on the receiving end of the eagerly disavowed but lustily felt desire to revel in the ability to deal out impersonal killing and destruction.
America never had to survive a modern total war. We folded after the single attack of 9/11, abandoning any pretence of being a just or democratic society. Military / Corporate interests overwhelmed the government and we have been "at war" ever since; with military and secuity special interests absorbing the majority of the budget. The NSA expanded its powers to spy on every American at any time for any reason, and the courts were either powerless or uninterested in opposing them.
So, I guess it is wrong to think of Bush, Obama, or anyone else as a war criminal. War is not a criminal act in the US...it is our only reason for being.
We live in a "post-fallen" America, the failure of American democracy being a thing at least 10 years behind us. We now have a throughly militarized police regularly putting down street protests. Civil liberties have been rolled back for many citizens, and more are in the works. Propaganda rules as both "news" and "entertainment". All of us are continuously threatened by the police on one hand and our fellow, armed, citizens on the other. The flaws in the Constitution have been expertly exploited by those in power, and "democracy" and "liberty" are now words without meaning - but most Americans haven't a clue.
We live with the Chinese curse, "May you live to see interesting times."
