I was working from home in a beautiful resort community in North Western NJ. I had contacts every day in NE Bergen county, where a couple million people each day commute into Manhattan, so literally everyone you met knew someone who was killed.
One of the most startling things I recall was sitting around at lunch with a dozen blue collar guys, and listening to them all agree the US needed to nuke someone. I was shocked. The thing affected me as deeply as any of these guys but I could not believe they wanted blood so badly they were willing to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Yet that was the unanimous position (all but me.)
When people recall those days they often resort to revisionist history. So just to be sure all those too young to know better have heard it at least once, let me recount some simple facts.
Bush explained over more than an hour, the 21 reasons he had to go to war with both Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike all the "military actions" the US has seen where POTUS initiates a war without calling it a war, Congress voted unanimously with one abstention. No one voted against either of those wars, and they were authentic wars, voted on by Congress.
Two weeks into the military campaign in Iraq, the US and its large group of allies had flown thousands of sorties--something that had never happened in human history--and completely destroyed Iraq's ability to resist. On the deck of one of the mighty Nimitz aircraft carriers, Bush did a photo op with a banner stating "Mission Accomplished!" Despite everyone knew this meant the air war, not the ground war, the press started asking if that meant the war was over. From that moment, the US press was entirely antagonistic toward all US military force. This was a shameful and disgusting manipulation.
What concerns me the most today, is we can see this hateful and bitter manipulation for political purposes at work all around us all the time. For some unknown reason, powerful political forces seek to undo every good the US has ever accomplished through military means--all except in Libya, which to this date still no one knows why we were there at all. The good wars are bad and the bad wars are good---that's what American media says to its people every day since Vietnam.
Why the whining? I'm deeply troubled by the recent events in Afghanistan. I was unlucky enough to watch a couple hours video on youtube of Lara Logan explaining to whomever will listen, that the Afghan military is still fighting for freedom. The stories that they quit are apparently all lies. Since she was there for years and can recount thousands of intricate details off the top of her head, I'm inclined to believe her. Yet what seems is, the same people who dared argue on the deck of a Nimitz class carrier that the war in Iraq should be over just two weeks after it started, are today lying to We The People and pretending we didn't abandon our brothers in arms, when they know damn well that we did. We not only abandoned them, we armed their enemies and made sure no nation will trust the word of the US for the next few decades.
So where is the outrage about killing thousands of innocent civilians as we watch the Taliban drag friends from their homes and behead them in the streets? Where is the outrage?
