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War, War, War
See other War, War, War Articles

Title: Fixated On Losing
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=263777112155033
Published: May 12, 2007
Author: INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Post Date: 2007-05-12 14:08:55 by BeAChooser
Keywords: None
Views: 118
Comments: 5

Fixated On Losing

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 11, 2007 4:20 PM PT

War On Terrorism: Thousands of active members of the military sign a letter urging Congress to support the mission in Iraq. But the media, focused on anything that'll make the war look bad, just yawn.

Let anyone who ever wore the uniform voice concern about the war, and the media are immediately interested. How many rent-a-generals, for instance, have we seen, heard from or read about in the last four years who've been critical of our involvement and/or performance in Iraq?

On the other hand, all we heard was crickets chirping as 2,700 soldiers — all on active duty — signed a petition titled "Appeal for Courage" and presented it last week to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and House Minority Leader John Boehner.

"As an American currently serving my nation in uniform," the appeal begins, "I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to fully support our mission in Iraq and halt any calls for retreat.

"I also respectfully urge my political leaders to actively oppose media efforts which embolden my enemy while demoralizing American support at home. The War in Iraq is a necessary and just effort to bring freedom to the Middle East and protect America from further attack."

Behind the effort are Navy Lt. Jason Nichols and Minnesota National Guard Staff Sgt. David Thul. These aren't new enlistees on latrine duty in the States. They're right in the middle of the action in Iraq — Nichols in Baghdad and Thul conducting convoy operations with the 34th Infantry Division.

Wednesday's presentation was held at the Veterans of Foreign Wars headquarters in Washington, D.C. The VFW happens to be the largest group of combat veterans in the country, and its headquarters is within a laptop's toss of hundreds, maybe thousands, of journalists.

Yet not one of them bothers to show up. They're obviously too busy doting on http://VoteVets.org, a group linked to http://MoveOn.org, the Bush-hating, anti-war organization that was founded by leftist George Soros, is adored by Democrats and will no doubt find favor with any military-related group or person in favor of surrender in Iraq.

The Army Times reports that roughly 60% of the 2,700 soldiers "are serving or have served in Iraq, with about two-thirds enlisted members and one-third officers." The signatures were gathered in the space of a month, less time than it took to get far fewer signatures on a petition asking Congress to promptly pull out of the Iraq War.

"Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price," says the Appeal for Redress. "It is time for U.S. troops to come home." Some 1,000 soldiers signed the Appeal for Redress before it was presented to Congress in January, and 900 more have affixed their signatures since.

Despite the difference in numbers, the Appeal for Redress has received the sort of favorable mainstream media coverage that has been denied to the Appeal for Courage.

None of this is surprising. The establishment media simply aren't as interested in stories that tell of support for the war or of positive developments from the front.

They have another election to win next year.

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  

#1. To: BeAChooser (#0)

I'm interested in a way to make the war self-supporting, as its proponents claimed it would be as they sold it.

The Chinese military raises its budget through entrepreneurial activity such as owning and operating factories. It can only raise so much, so it is constrained in its empire-building reach.

The U.S. military, OTOH, has its hand out asking for more welfare every few months - usually around $100 billion in "emergency" appropriations (over and above the half-trillion-dollar budget, which comprises at least 40 percent of all military spending on the planet) just to tide it over until the next time it begins running short of funds. This happens like clockwork about every six months.

It's not just the uniformed armed services who have their hands out, though. There has also grown up this industry of mercenary companies ("private contractors") who are also sucking at the federal tit.

The "War on Terror" is now like the "War on Drugs." It can NEVER be won (the industry living off it would go out of business if that were to happen and it won't), but it can never NOT be fought. In either case, victory is undefinable anyhow. But we do know "defeat" is when those living off the war have to find work in a peacetime economy. War may be hell, but peace is unthinkable.

Both will go on forever. The relatively small percentage of the population who draw their livelihoods from these wars will always strongly support them. The rest of us will get on with our lives, oblivious to the fearmongering from both sets of warmongers.

The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government. - Sam Houston

Sam Houston  posted on  2007-05-12   15:22:56 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Thousands of active members of the military sign a letter urging Congress to support the mission in Iraq. But the media, focused on anything that'll make the war look bad, just yawn.

1) .. the active members of the military who support the war, believe in a falsehood

2) .. the media is not focused on anything to make the war look bad.. quite to the contrary.. the media is controlled by those who are behind this war.. the administration made quite sure that would be the case.. if in fact, there is news that is making the war look bad then it must be 1,000 Xs worse that what we are being told in the media for the reason I stated.

Zipporah  posted on  2007-05-12   16:12:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

the media is not focused on anything to make the war look bad.. quite to the contrary.. the media is controlled by those who are behind this war.. the administration made quite sure that would be the case.. if in fact, there is news that is making the war look bad then it must be 1,000 Xs worse that what we are being told in the media for the reason I stated.

well said bump

Dr.Ron Paul for President

Lod  posted on  2007-05-12   16:18:49 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

War is the Health of the State--Randolph Bourne

To most Americans of the classes which consider themselves significant the war [World War I] brought a sense of the sanctity of the State which, if they had had time to think about it, would have seemed a sudden and surprising alteration in their habits of thought. In times of peace, we usually ignore the State in favor of partisan political controversies, or personal struggles for office, or the pursuit of party policies. It is the Government rather than the State with which the politically minded are concerned. The State is reduced to a shadowy emblem which comes to consciousness only on occasions of patriotic holiday.

Government is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is thus a legitimate object of criticism and even contempt. If your own party is in power, things may be assumed to be moving safely enough; but if the opposition is in, then clearly all safety and honor have fled the State. Yet you do not put it to yourself in quite that way. What you think is only that there are rascals to be turned out of a very practical machinery of offices and functions which you take for granted. When we say that Americans are lawless, we usually mean that they are less conscious than other peoples of the august majesty of the institution of the State as it stands behind the objective government of men and laws which we see. In a republic the men who hold office are indistinguishable from the mass. Very few of them possess the slightest personal dignity with which they could endow their political role; even if they ever thought of such a thing. And they have no class distinction to give them glamour. In a republic the Government is obeyed grumblingly, because it has no bedazzlements or sanctities to gild it. If you are a good old-fashioned democrat, you rejoice at this fact, you glory in the plainness of a system where every citizen has become a king. If you are more sophisticated you bemoan the passing of dignity and honor from affairs of State. But in practice, the democrat does not in the least treat his elected citizen with the respect due to a king, nor does the sophisticated citizen pay tribute to the dignity even when he finds it. The republican State has almost no trappings to appeal to the common man’s emotions. What it has are of military origin, and in an unmilitary era such as we have passed through since the Civil War, even military trappings have been scarcely seen. In such an era the sense of the State almost fades out of the consciousness of men.

With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world. The result is that, even in those countries where the business of declaring war is theoretically in the hands of representatives of the people, no legislature has ever been known to decline the request of an Executive, which has conducted all foreign affairs in utter privacy and irresponsibility, that it order the nation into battle. Good democrats are wont to feel the crucial difference between a State in which the popular Parliament or Congress declares war, and the State in which an absolute monarch or ruling class declares war. But, put to the stern pragmatic test, the difference is not striking. In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves.

The moment war is declared, however, the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government’s disapprobation. The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men. Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the relations which the individual bears and should bear toward the society of which he is a part.

The patriot loses all sense of the distinction between State, nation, and government. In our quieter moments, the Nation or Country forms the basic idea of society. We think vaguely of a loose population spreading over a certain geographical portion of the earth’s surface, speaking a common language, and living in a homogeneous civilization. Our idea of Country concerns itself with the non-political aspects of a people, its ways of living, its personal traits, its literature and art, its characteristic attitudes toward life. We are Americans because we live in a certain bounded territory, because our ancestors have carried on a great enterprise of pioneering and colonization, because we live in certain kinds of communities which have a certain look and express their aspirations in certain ways. We can see that our civilization is different from contiguous civilizations like the Indian and Mexican. The institutions of our country form a certain network which affects us vitally and intrigues our thoughts in a way that these other civilizations do not. We are a part of Country, for better or for worse. We have arrived in it through the operation of physiological laws, and not in any way through our own choice. By the time we have reached what are called years of discretion, its influences have molded our habits, our values, our ways of thinking, so that however aware we may become, we never really lose the stamp of our civilization, or could be mistaken for the child of any other country. Our feeling for our fellow countrymen is one of similarity or of mere acquaintance. We may be intensely proud of and congenial to our particular network of civilization, or we may detest most of its qualities and rage at its defects. This does not alter the fact that we are inextricably bound up in it. The Country, as an inescapable group into which we are born, and which makes us its particular kind of a citizen of the world, seems to be a fundamental fact of our consciousness, an irreducible minimum of social feeling.

---snip---

christine  posted on  2007-05-12   16:31:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

The establishment media simply aren't as interested in stories that tell of support for the war or of positive developments from the front.

like the brain-washing mechanism FOX News??

Diana  posted on  2007-05-12   16:35:06 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

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