Wheeeeee! Tonight, we get to go back to the 1980’s! Won’t that be fun! Specifically, where we are headed is the first Reagan administration during the time his anti-Soviet rhetoric was on the rise -- the BG years, that is: Before Gorbachev and the happy-talk walk in the woods to the lake house in Geneva that led to the signing of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, and the beginning of the end of the cold war with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Thanks again. You're citing chapter, verse, footnotes, and appendices to illustrate what Walt Kelly had Pogo tell us, ever so gently, 73 years ago: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Not quite that long ago: I haven't turned 73 yet, but I remember that strip: It came out in conjunction with Earth Day 1970. The context was environmental pollution, though of course it could be applied to other things. Having seen the aftermath of not a few mass demonstrations, I say it was right on the money. The line, I just reminded myself, was a riff on Commodore Oliver Perry's report from the War of 1812: "We have met the enemy and they are ours."
"It seems like only yesterday" that Barry Goldwater, an eck-tchu-ell conservative, was saying "You can disagree without being disagreeable." Those are words that the Deranged Sexual Predator Defendant and his drooling acolytes look at, slack-jawed, then go back to plotting the concentration camps they will build in 2025, and how many of the rest of us they can imprison.
OK, but if you look a little closer, you'll notice that Goldwater really started the ball rolling on kneecapping the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Take a few of his quotes out of context and they actually sound good. Like this one: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” But his ideas of "liberty" and "justice" were mainly about white Republican men, not women, not people of color, not gay and lesbian people.
I cast my first presidential election vote in 1964, and the bumper sticker on my 1959 Peugeot 403 (stolid four-door sedan, as opposed to Peter Falk/Columbo's sporty-ish 1959 cabriolet) read: HELP GOLDWATER/STAMP OUT PEACE. So, yeah, Goldwater. He did, however, defend gays in the military. His longer quotes about the danger of the religious right have proven to be all-too-accurate. Someone, presumably an angry conservative, ripped my bumper sticker off my car in December, 1964, saving me the humiliation of having to scrape it off myself in July, 1965, when LBJ authorized the immediate deployment of 100,000 American military to Vietnam, with another 100,000 to follow in 1966.
That’s the thing, isn’t it, Lucian? The perception of ourselves as a nation is such that wherever we have troops stationed, they are always “the good guys” deployed overseas to “keep our country safe” from “the bad guys.” We go to ball games and stand facing the flag and remove hats or salute as someone sings “….bombs bursting in air…the rockets’ red glare….” and, presumably get all choked up with emotion just thinking of all those who wear our country’s uniform “guarding us….keeping us safe….our heroes.” (“Thank you for your service”) If we’re lucky we get to see a formation flight of military aircraft or have The US Army “Golden Knights” parachute down onto Centerfield….maybe one dude is even hitched to a giant American flag that rivals those flying over some of the Burger Kings I’ve seen around here. We’re not supposed to think about just why it is that so many of these countries we have our troops in seem remarkably unlikely to be any place you would care to go on vacation with your family.
Once we got past the mythology of our Founding Fathers that was pressed on us in Primary school and into the meat and potatoes of what really made this country different from a lot of others around the globe, we could see that our part in world affairs was a lot more nuanced than our forces always being the “Good Guys” vs. those others facing the pointy end of our weapons always being the “Bad Guys.” And….too often it was that “American interests” (i.e. business interests) was the real motivation for essentially acting against the wishes of the people in those countries we were there ostensibly to help. Case in point: Iran in 1953; Viet Nam after the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; Chile in 1973; Iraq…Afghanistan…and I don’t know how many countries in Africa. The List goes on. Does any of it lead to a true feeling of pride in how armed forces from our country “boldly go where no (rational) man has gone before!” I think not. Yet we persist in doing the same thing over and over again. Today’s actions in the Middle East are failing to make me feel either pride or hope for the future.
It's too bad he waited till he was on his way out to deliver it. Joe McCarthy was on a tear during most of the Eisenhower administration before he died, age 48, in 1957. His anti-communist (which included anti-liberal) and anti-gay crusades outlived him. The CIA was responsible for plenty of mayhem during the '50s, including the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran. Allen Dulles was head of the CIA while his brother, John Foster Dulles, was secretary of state. What could go wrong? And who could forget Ike's vice president, whose antics finally caught up with him in the Watergate scandal?
That's an interesting scenario for an alternate history! HUAC's boogeyman was Communism, and Russia isn't Communist anymore, so it's not too hard to see how HUAC might weasel out of investigating Putin's bestie.
Thee CIA theme ran right through to the Bush presidencies Gorgge the first was king spook extraordinaire,! He knew where all the bodies were buried,mighta planted a few himself?!
Reagan? Who knows he just sold us out period!George the II let Cheney another spooky character be the defacto President for gods sake ,haven’t seen a Republican in hi office that didn’t concern the hell out of me!BUT Trump is a whole different animal ,it's any ones guess what this lunatic is going to do!!
That’s if he god ,forbid is elected ,the maniac is doing harm to the country just by his candidacy,the rest of the free world is shitting their collective draws!
Trump may be "a whole different animal" but I can't help noticing that the GOP is lining up in lockstep behind him. He may be a whole different animal, but he's one they recognize -- and think they can use. Over the last few years the question has arisen: Who's using whom?? IMO the the GOP hasn't enough backbone or clout to make use of anybody.
Plenty of spooks running around back then for sure, McCarthy was born too early,he’d fit right in with Fatboys crew of freaks ,him and Rudy could drain a distillery together!
And from what I see in our current era is that too many Americans today are completely unaware of President Eisenhower’s comments in his Farewell Address to the nation in January, 1961. His shining example of service to the country and honor both in Uniform and as President are both testimony to his being the last great Republican to hold that office.
Another quote from Eisenhower that describes the warped priorities of our current system:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Saying “Thank you for your service." feels so rote, trite and meaningless that I can't bring myself to utter it. I'd rather apologize to the vets I know and meet, but that too easily can be misconstrued. Any vet who survived being put in harm's way for too often the wrong reason or no reason at all and who is now and forever in the highest suicide risk population among us doesn't need that added baggage.
Female vets are 2.5 time more likely to commit suicide than non-vets. Vet suicide rates range between one every 1 to 1.5 hours of every single damn day. And that's just the suicides. The repercussions of the death through mayhem lottery we have place our young folks in now reverberate and nearly control our culture and society.
9/11 caused us to put the lives of our young generations on a roulette wheel as we used them to lash out in an ignorant childlike rage, playing directly into Bin Laden's hands. We weren't the good guys. We were the pissed off schoolyard bully screaming for revenge with leadership that just fanned those flames.
What would Lincoln have done after 9/11? My hope and trust is that he might have built hospitals and schools in those countries of question while enabling economic opportunity so the voices of violence within those countries would fall on deaf ears.
Instead we sent our youth on a mission of destruction and revenge while dooming them to a deep and abiding core of fear and despair about the future that is driving this country right off a cliff. It's galling that we not only created the likes of a Bin Laden with our arrogance, but that he got us so right.
After ‘911’ I got a very sick feeling. It wasn’t just the horror of the attacks itself. It was the dawning of the realization that suddenly an ordinary man with nothing on his Curriculum Vitae to suggest he would be either competent or capable in his role as President* had squandered a Golden Opportunity to show the world how ‘America’ truly deserved to be called ‘the Last Best Hope’ for Peace and Democracy in the World.
Who can forget the outpouring of compassion, grace, and heartfelt support for the country which had meant so much to so many, particularly during the dark days of the Second World War. I believe the first Prime Minister to come to the US to personally extend his country’s condolences was from France. Pretty soon we were to hear idiotic utterances from the mouth of our “leader”* such as that the attack was because those behind it “hated our Freedom” and that we could show them….”by going shopping.”
Soon there was much worse to come: The so-called ‘Patriot Act’…..a war “against Terror,” as if that moniker made any sense at all; an otherwise honorable man who had been a highly regarded US Army General (Colin Powell) being used to serve up a laughably unconvincing case at the UN for doing something clearly illegal by all conventions and agreements represented in that great body of world nations; to the arrogant statement that “You are either with America, or you’re with the Terrorists.” In short, within just a few months George “W” Bush had taken the world’s Good Will and Compassion and pissed it all away. It’s been a rapid slide downhill ever since.
* “W” actually was ‘elected’ into office, not by the People, but by a corrupt Supreme Court who didn’t take note that his brother, FL Governor Jeb Bush, basically assured that Florida was in ‘W’s pocket before the election even took place. Recounts of that painfully close vote count were halted and the “Win” handed to Bush on a silver platter.
My guess/hope is that instead of sending our youth to physical and mental destruction in battlefields of our own making, Lincoln might have paid for everyone to build a front porch so they'd get to know their neighbors. We have been a country of strangers hidden behind garage door openers for far too long.
Instead we gorge on the mayhem of pointless wars and Fox's viciously destructive hate porn while electing our most flaccid, vapid, mean spirited narcissist to lead us in 2016 and have yet to learn any lesson at all from any of this. If I thought there was a god, I'd be asking it WTF hoser!?!
What are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, next stop is Tehran. Put down your books, pick up your gun, gonna have a whole lot of fun.
Adding to the tragedy, even without an American presence, many of these local groups would be fighting each other -and in fact, are fighting each other, such as with Hamas vs. Hezbollah vs. other Iran-backed groups vs. Palestinian Authority. American presence doesn't even unify them to cooperatively fight against us or Israel. Each group wants their slice of a limited pie and doesn't seem to understand they could make a bigger pie, enough for all their people to prosper. But, of course, killing and destroying is easier than creating and building.
"[The Shi'a nor the Sunni dogmatic ideology that claims direct inspiration from Allah, supreme over all other false gods worshipped by unbelievers] do not seem to understand they could make a bigger pie, enough for all their people to prosper. But, of course, killing and destroying is easier than creating and building."
That's my provisional edit - perhaps it's unfair to the comprehension of either sect, though, which fervently believes after hundreds of years of this, in fact over one thousand years of it! - that they ARE on the correct, predestined and theologically correct path to have "all of THEIR PEOPLE" prosper, for which killing and destroying unbelievers and their toxic heathen creeds is a prerequisite! *****
"Sword and Scimitar: “A Compelling Reminder of the Terrifying Dynamic which Continues to Drive the Islamic World”
10/02/2019 by Raymond Ibrahim 4 Comments
Note: The following book review of my Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West was written by Terry Scambray and first appeared in the Sept. 2019 issue of the New Oxford Review:
We judge individuals by what they say and what they do. We judge cults, religions and ideologies the same way; that is, by their doctrines and history.
Which is common sense, of course.
Apparently though, common sense is abandoned when it comes to ideologies like Marxism which has largely escaped such scrutiny by our schools and popular culture; and now the same cover up is happening with Islam.
But Raymond Ibrahim, fluent in Arabic, is an equal opportunity Middle East scholar committed to truth rather than conforming to dangerous fads.
Ibrahim gained attention with his revealing translations in his 2007 book, The Al Qaeda Reader, which showed the difference between what Osama bin Laden said in Arabic to Muslims and what he said for receptive, if not gullible, Western audiences.
Ibrahim’s second book, Crucified Again, showed the murder and destruction that Christians are enduring at the hands of Muslims throughout the world.
In Sword and Scimitar, Ibrahim begins by explaining Mohammed’s doctrine of jihad or “holy war”: “Whereas the rewards of the pre-Islamic tribal raid were limited to temporal spoils and came with the risk of death, the deified raid (jihad) offered rewards in the here and the hereafter – meaning it was essentially risk free – and thus led to a newborn fanaticism and determination.” In other words, robbery, murder and enslavement were sacralized and then transformed into a prodigious engine of Islamic conquest.
Conquest being the major feature of Islam’s 1,400 year history, Sword and Scimitar takes the reader on a tour – “a tour of force” – as represented by eight significant battles and an array of lesser clashes.
Skillfully relying on first person descriptions, Ibrahim’s narration of these battles is gripping and suspenseful while also evoking the pain and terror of warfare. Especially after the current revival of jihad, his recounting of these barbaric episodes and their consequences is not comforting.
The battles are taken chronologically beginning in 636 with the lesser known Battle of Yarmuk, a place now in Syria. This battle displayed the fierce power of jihad by imbedding in the Western mind a fear of Islam for the ensuing 1,000 years. *****
I started this book around the same time I incorrectly believed I would finally be able to finish reading Lucian's first novel and get to the sequel, well, I am back after the apartment renovation in here, with a good Roku TV 40 inch monitor for the Ibrahim book, and excellent reader glasses pending even better vision correction via cataract surgery for Dress Gray and Full Dress Gray, yes!
Maybe I have this wrong, but it seems like Richard attacking the Muslim religion(s) implies that the Christian religion followed by the US is so much better since it does not want to destroy others. Chuckle, chuckle. Hence our soldiers by occupying bases in other people's nations are really doing good and are just misunderstood. We have more bases in our American empire than any other country on this planet. Hence we are seen as evil by most of the people in those countries. Having read long ago Sword and Scimitar, it definitely makes Muslims the "bad guys." A non-religious person looking at Christians and their history can easily offer proof that Christians are the "bad guys." And the US as a representative of Christianity, certainly appears evil with its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the not long ago past in Central and South America, the Philippines, Hawaii to name just a few. Or the genocide of the native tribes in North America. Yes, as a history teacher, I realize the underlying power was not religion but capitalism and the power of various companies wanting the benefits from dominating production in oil, sugar, fruit, the grabbing of land, etc.. However, to the common person watching America, US greed and dominance became the same as Christianity, to the people experiencing the ugliness. We are not loved by the Afghans or Iraqis rest assured.
So, Richard, how do you account for the Ottoman Empire? Or Umayyad Spain? Or, on the flip side, the Crusades, or the Reconquista, which culminated in the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492? Could it possibly be that the Muslim world has good reason to be suspicious of the Christian world? For extra credit, check out what went down during and after the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire finally broke up.
American foreign policy hasn’t changed at all since 9/11. We should have normalized relations with Iran years ago. Iran has a huge educated middle class with Western views that would love more freedom. That would also have kept the Saudis from screwing us with high oil prices. We should have told Israel
No more billions every year without an independent Palestine. Russia had its chance to mainstream its economy with the West but Putin burned that to the ground. We need to keep China close economically or they will
Invade Taiwan. I don’t understand why we keep doing the same things over and over.
Because we're arrogant and stupid and obsessed with our "exceptionalism". Because the country is run, still, by swaggering male fools who think they're John Wayne. Because nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
I’m afraid I agree. Maybe poorly regulated democracies expand over time like an enlarged heart and become flabby and inefficient. I despair at the stupidity of so many things this country has done. We have (or perhaps we are) a massive hammer and every problem looks like a nail.
This is what happens when a country has an uneducated and ignorant population that believes the myths it's been sold. Americans are willfully blind and prefer to remain so. It's so much easier to wallow in stupidity and hate than it is to actually think. We are in grave danger, just as Germany was before Hitler came to power.
Agree wholeheartedly. We’re indolent and spoiled, and as it happens geographically protected between two oceans and friendly neighbors… particularly Canada. I am sick to death of the chest thumping and jingoism. What the fuck is “exceptional” about this country?
Yes, I think that once we could have repaired relations with Iran -- which was an ally when we were propping up the Shah -- and then cut out the utterly corrupt Saudi princes who have been playing us like a fiddle for decades and have stirred up more trouble in the Near East and elsewhere with their Wahhabism than Iran could. Iran is also blessed with a mucy more strategic position vis-a-vis those dastardly Russians, if this were a factor. Our DC leadership is extremely shortsighted as well as blindly vindictive (they've NEVER gotten over the 1979-80 "hostage crisis"). And for the last 20 years or so, we've pretty well demonstrated to the Iranian leadership that we negotiate in bad faith, flip-flopping with every administration, arbitrarily backing out of deals, or never following through with pledges and promises, so they don't trust us any more.
"Be the first one on your block to have your kid come home in a box." Somebody should be singing Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag to the right-wing hawks and to Biden. Damn, this shit never stops. About to re-read The Best and the Brightest as a reminder and an object lesson.
Don’t I know! 1 A every bday leading up to and including my 18th ,just missed the draft in 73’ war was finally coming to an end! Lot’s didn’t many didn’t come home,a few of them my friends.
Lost an old friend who never recovered from the physical, emotional, and psychic damage the war did to him. Heart attack at 44. I think of him every day.
I'm so sorry about your buddy. I miss my friend, but he was lost for a few years before his death. Nam did so much harm to so many people. The people of Vietnam and our generation were damaged in some profound ways and I don't think any of us have ever really recovered.
War makes too much money for rich old billionaires for it to ever stop, at least not as long as they can send young men and women out to get mutilated and killed.
Many millions here in the USA think "we" are an evil empire stuffed to the gills with cannibal capitalists who have wrecked our healthcare system, sold our farmland / livestock production to the chinese, etc etc ad nauseum. No need to go beyond our borders for Evil Empire thoughts.
The invasion of Iraq was a disaster. There were a few voices in those days pointing out that removing Saddam would strengthen Iran. Which supposedly was not something we wanted to do. But perhaps the most simple revelation about Shrub's ignorance was expressed when he asked what was the difference between Sunnis and Shia. Oh, yeah, we're really prepared for the invasion.
Trump put American troops into Saudi Arabia to protect Saudi from Iran.
Saudi now has a peace deal with Iran arranged through China. Hardly ever mentioned.
Yet America is now almost at war with Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia and Netanyahu. And America still has troops in Saudi.
America is Isreal’s and Saudi’s proxy.
Venezuelan boycott enriched Saudi and Russia two anti democratic nations.
Saudi money has killed Americans in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and America. The bases in Syria and Iraq are to control Saudi financed ISIS.
In Vietnam everyone understood that Russia was supplying the weapons that killed Americans. Why don’t Americans understand it was gulf Arab money which killed Americans in Afghanistan?
No one in America will admit that the racially driven destruction of the Obama agreement with Iran was a major disaster that is continued by Biden’s accepting trumps insanity.
There is a desire for war with Iran by many Americans.
The people of Iran have suffered the most by Trump and America’s lies.
It isn’t that nothing was learned the facts say it is even stupider now.
Wikipedia informs me that "the U.S. has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2023, with half of these operations occurring since 1950" but I've been unable to discover the percentage that followed prolonged CIA presence and activity beforehand.
Maybe start with the traditional psychological profile Langley looks for in new recruits for in all 4Directorates. While they do vary in different degrees they don't vary in kind. Those don't apply to contractors, though.
Hint: while the function is all about the shades of grey (hence findings are presented in percentages and with degrees of confidence ) in the world, they seek people who want the world to be black and white or better yet red, white, and blue. aka my country, right or wrong. While they bow their heads to the stars on the wall, what is missing is stars for all the people they burned.
Even at Langley there are positive changes being enacted much like in the US Mil. Most, if not all ,go unnoticed or don't appear to be as impactive as they really are. Nothing introduces positive change more than diversity in any field or profession.
That’s because you can just assume that the CIA has been involved in every single war since its inception. Hard to trust them because of their covert operations.
Thanks so much for your Red Dawn essay. As always it is damn hard to see ourselves in "the other." Regretably, it is also difficult for us Americans to realize we are no longer the scrapppy little republic clinging to the east coat of America and in an existential struggle with the British Empire celebrated in our Star Spangled Banner. Today, we are The Empire, the armed to the teeth globe girdling corporate empire shouldering the burden of maintaning global order and security by, for example, enabliing shipping to reach the Suez Canal safely, guaranteeing the independence of Taiwan, and the survival of Ukraine, etc. Hegemony is a curse for democracy (see Thucydides) and too often deadly for young people with limitted oportunities (see the current armed services recruitment shortfalls) currently deployed on every continent and in nearly every country in the world. And now there is the black hole of Israel vs Palestine that gathers mass daily fed by an alliance of opposing extremists joined in what amounts to a murder suicide pact.
We have learned nothing since Vietnam, and we are apparently going to continue to learn nothing. Our arrogance is only exceeded by our ignorance.
Exactly what I was thinking. Yesterday's "haji" is the day before yesterday's "gook."
Damn, right on the money.
Thanks again. You're citing chapter, verse, footnotes, and appendices to illustrate what Walt Kelly had Pogo tell us, ever so gently, 73 years ago: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Ain’t it the truth
Not quite that long ago: I haven't turned 73 yet, but I remember that strip: It came out in conjunction with Earth Day 1970. The context was environmental pollution, though of course it could be applied to other things. Having seen the aftermath of not a few mass demonstrations, I say it was right on the money. The line, I just reminded myself, was a riff on Commodore Oliver Perry's report from the War of 1812: "We have met the enemy and they are ours."
Oops. 53 years ago. so much for my skills as a mathematician and a typist. Yes, Perry.
Well, these days "it seems like only yesterday" covers at least five decades, so I get it. ;-)
"It seems like only yesterday" that Barry Goldwater, an eck-tchu-ell conservative, was saying "You can disagree without being disagreeable." Those are words that the Deranged Sexual Predator Defendant and his drooling acolytes look at, slack-jawed, then go back to plotting the concentration camps they will build in 2025, and how many of the rest of us they can imprison.
OK, but if you look a little closer, you'll notice that Goldwater really started the ball rolling on kneecapping the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Take a few of his quotes out of context and they actually sound good. Like this one: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” But his ideas of "liberty" and "justice" were mainly about white Republican men, not women, not people of color, not gay and lesbian people.
I cast my first presidential election vote in 1964, and the bumper sticker on my 1959 Peugeot 403 (stolid four-door sedan, as opposed to Peter Falk/Columbo's sporty-ish 1959 cabriolet) read: HELP GOLDWATER/STAMP OUT PEACE. So, yeah, Goldwater. He did, however, defend gays in the military. His longer quotes about the danger of the religious right have proven to be all-too-accurate. Someone, presumably an angry conservative, ripped my bumper sticker off my car in December, 1964, saving me the humiliation of having to scrape it off myself in July, 1965, when LBJ authorized the immediate deployment of 100,000 American military to Vietnam, with another 100,000 to follow in 1966.
That’s the thing, isn’t it, Lucian? The perception of ourselves as a nation is such that wherever we have troops stationed, they are always “the good guys” deployed overseas to “keep our country safe” from “the bad guys.” We go to ball games and stand facing the flag and remove hats or salute as someone sings “….bombs bursting in air…the rockets’ red glare….” and, presumably get all choked up with emotion just thinking of all those who wear our country’s uniform “guarding us….keeping us safe….our heroes.” (“Thank you for your service”) If we’re lucky we get to see a formation flight of military aircraft or have The US Army “Golden Knights” parachute down onto Centerfield….maybe one dude is even hitched to a giant American flag that rivals those flying over some of the Burger Kings I’ve seen around here. We’re not supposed to think about just why it is that so many of these countries we have our troops in seem remarkably unlikely to be any place you would care to go on vacation with your family.
Once we got past the mythology of our Founding Fathers that was pressed on us in Primary school and into the meat and potatoes of what really made this country different from a lot of others around the globe, we could see that our part in world affairs was a lot more nuanced than our forces always being the “Good Guys” vs. those others facing the pointy end of our weapons always being the “Bad Guys.” And….too often it was that “American interests” (i.e. business interests) was the real motivation for essentially acting against the wishes of the people in those countries we were there ostensibly to help. Case in point: Iran in 1953; Viet Nam after the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; Chile in 1973; Iraq…Afghanistan…and I don’t know how many countries in Africa. The List goes on. Does any of it lead to a true feeling of pride in how armed forces from our country “boldly go where no (rational) man has gone before!” I think not. Yet we persist in doing the same thing over and over again. Today’s actions in the Middle East are failing to make me feel either pride or hope for the future.
Unfortunately Eisenhower’s warning fell upon deaf ears !
It's too bad he waited till he was on his way out to deliver it. Joe McCarthy was on a tear during most of the Eisenhower administration before he died, age 48, in 1957. His anti-communist (which included anti-liberal) and anti-gay crusades outlived him. The CIA was responsible for plenty of mayhem during the '50s, including the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran. Allen Dulles was head of the CIA while his brother, John Foster Dulles, was secretary of state. What could go wrong? And who could forget Ike's vice president, whose antics finally caught up with him in the Watergate scandal?
Speaking of the 1950’s, if HUAC was still in existence, they would have to investigate the Mango Mamzer for his ties to Russia and Putin.
That's an interesting scenario for an alternate history! HUAC's boogeyman was Communism, and Russia isn't Communist anymore, so it's not too hard to see how HUAC might weasel out of investigating Putin's bestie.
Thee CIA theme ran right through to the Bush presidencies Gorgge the first was king spook extraordinaire,! He knew where all the bodies were buried,mighta planted a few himself?!
Reagan? Who knows he just sold us out period!George the II let Cheney another spooky character be the defacto President for gods sake ,haven’t seen a Republican in hi office that didn’t concern the hell out of me!BUT Trump is a whole different animal ,it's any ones guess what this lunatic is going to do!!
That’s if he god ,forbid is elected ,the maniac is doing harm to the country just by his candidacy,the rest of the free world is shitting their collective draws!
Trump may be "a whole different animal" but I can't help noticing that the GOP is lining up in lockstep behind him. He may be a whole different animal, but he's one they recognize -- and think they can use. Over the last few years the question has arisen: Who's using whom?? IMO the the GOP hasn't enough backbone or clout to make use of anybody.
Plenty of spooks running around back then for sure, McCarthy was born too early,he’d fit right in with Fatboys crew of freaks ,him and Rudy could drain a distillery together!
And from what I see in our current era is that too many Americans today are completely unaware of President Eisenhower’s comments in his Farewell Address to the nation in January, 1961. His shining example of service to the country and honor both in Uniform and as President are both testimony to his being the last great Republican to hold that office.
Another quote from Eisenhower that describes the warped priorities of our current system:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Thanks for reminding us of this quote. Absolutely true. Eisenhower had a moral compass.
Ike would NEVER be the party’s candidate in today’s Republican party.
Saying “Thank you for your service." feels so rote, trite and meaningless that I can't bring myself to utter it. I'd rather apologize to the vets I know and meet, but that too easily can be misconstrued. Any vet who survived being put in harm's way for too often the wrong reason or no reason at all and who is now and forever in the highest suicide risk population among us doesn't need that added baggage.
Female vets are 2.5 time more likely to commit suicide than non-vets. Vet suicide rates range between one every 1 to 1.5 hours of every single damn day. And that's just the suicides. The repercussions of the death through mayhem lottery we have place our young folks in now reverberate and nearly control our culture and society.
9/11 caused us to put the lives of our young generations on a roulette wheel as we used them to lash out in an ignorant childlike rage, playing directly into Bin Laden's hands. We weren't the good guys. We were the pissed off schoolyard bully screaming for revenge with leadership that just fanned those flames.
What would Lincoln have done after 9/11? My hope and trust is that he might have built hospitals and schools in those countries of question while enabling economic opportunity so the voices of violence within those countries would fall on deaf ears.
Instead we sent our youth on a mission of destruction and revenge while dooming them to a deep and abiding core of fear and despair about the future that is driving this country right off a cliff. It's galling that we not only created the likes of a Bin Laden with our arrogance, but that he got us so right.
After ‘911’ I got a very sick feeling. It wasn’t just the horror of the attacks itself. It was the dawning of the realization that suddenly an ordinary man with nothing on his Curriculum Vitae to suggest he would be either competent or capable in his role as President* had squandered a Golden Opportunity to show the world how ‘America’ truly deserved to be called ‘the Last Best Hope’ for Peace and Democracy in the World.
Who can forget the outpouring of compassion, grace, and heartfelt support for the country which had meant so much to so many, particularly during the dark days of the Second World War. I believe the first Prime Minister to come to the US to personally extend his country’s condolences was from France. Pretty soon we were to hear idiotic utterances from the mouth of our “leader”* such as that the attack was because those behind it “hated our Freedom” and that we could show them….”by going shopping.”
Soon there was much worse to come: The so-called ‘Patriot Act’…..a war “against Terror,” as if that moniker made any sense at all; an otherwise honorable man who had been a highly regarded US Army General (Colin Powell) being used to serve up a laughably unconvincing case at the UN for doing something clearly illegal by all conventions and agreements represented in that great body of world nations; to the arrogant statement that “You are either with America, or you’re with the Terrorists.” In short, within just a few months George “W” Bush had taken the world’s Good Will and Compassion and pissed it all away. It’s been a rapid slide downhill ever since.
* “W” actually was ‘elected’ into office, not by the People, but by a corrupt Supreme Court who didn’t take note that his brother, FL Governor Jeb Bush, basically assured that Florida was in ‘W’s pocket before the election even took place. Recounts of that painfully close vote count were halted and the “Win” handed to Bush on a silver platter.
My guess/hope is that instead of sending our youth to physical and mental destruction in battlefields of our own making, Lincoln might have paid for everyone to build a front porch so they'd get to know their neighbors. We have been a country of strangers hidden behind garage door openers for far too long.
Instead we gorge on the mayhem of pointless wars and Fox's viciously destructive hate porn while electing our most flaccid, vapid, mean spirited narcissist to lead us in 2016 and have yet to learn any lesson at all from any of this. If I thought there was a god, I'd be asking it WTF hoser!?!
All true. Bush II was and is a frat boy dunce. I cringed whenever he spoke in public (then turned off tv).
Excellent post Paul.
Your second to last sentence is the definition of insanity, thanks for reminding us.
With that in mind, "We're number one!!!" - and very much so.
excelent
"And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for..."
YUP! Next stop, SOS, DD.
What are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, next stop is Tehran. Put down your books, pick up your gun, gonna have a whole lot of fun.
And it's 1, 2, 3....😩
Adding to the tragedy, even without an American presence, many of these local groups would be fighting each other -and in fact, are fighting each other, such as with Hamas vs. Hezbollah vs. other Iran-backed groups vs. Palestinian Authority. American presence doesn't even unify them to cooperatively fight against us or Israel. Each group wants their slice of a limited pie and doesn't seem to understand they could make a bigger pie, enough for all their people to prosper. But, of course, killing and destroying is easier than creating and building.
"[The Shi'a nor the Sunni dogmatic ideology that claims direct inspiration from Allah, supreme over all other false gods worshipped by unbelievers] do not seem to understand they could make a bigger pie, enough for all their people to prosper. But, of course, killing and destroying is easier than creating and building."
That's my provisional edit - perhaps it's unfair to the comprehension of either sect, though, which fervently believes after hundreds of years of this, in fact over one thousand years of it! - that they ARE on the correct, predestined and theologically correct path to have "all of THEIR PEOPLE" prosper, for which killing and destroying unbelievers and their toxic heathen creeds is a prerequisite! *****
"Sword and Scimitar: “A Compelling Reminder of the Terrifying Dynamic which Continues to Drive the Islamic World”
10/02/2019 by Raymond Ibrahim 4 Comments
Note: The following book review of my Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West was written by Terry Scambray and first appeared in the Sept. 2019 issue of the New Oxford Review:
We judge individuals by what they say and what they do. We judge cults, religions and ideologies the same way; that is, by their doctrines and history.
Which is common sense, of course.
Apparently though, common sense is abandoned when it comes to ideologies like Marxism which has largely escaped such scrutiny by our schools and popular culture; and now the same cover up is happening with Islam.
But Raymond Ibrahim, fluent in Arabic, is an equal opportunity Middle East scholar committed to truth rather than conforming to dangerous fads.
Ibrahim gained attention with his revealing translations in his 2007 book, The Al Qaeda Reader, which showed the difference between what Osama bin Laden said in Arabic to Muslims and what he said for receptive, if not gullible, Western audiences.
Ibrahim’s second book, Crucified Again, showed the murder and destruction that Christians are enduring at the hands of Muslims throughout the world.
In Sword and Scimitar, Ibrahim begins by explaining Mohammed’s doctrine of jihad or “holy war”: “Whereas the rewards of the pre-Islamic tribal raid were limited to temporal spoils and came with the risk of death, the deified raid (jihad) offered rewards in the here and the hereafter – meaning it was essentially risk free – and thus led to a newborn fanaticism and determination.” In other words, robbery, murder and enslavement were sacralized and then transformed into a prodigious engine of Islamic conquest.
Conquest being the major feature of Islam’s 1,400 year history, Sword and Scimitar takes the reader on a tour – “a tour of force” – as represented by eight significant battles and an array of lesser clashes.
Skillfully relying on first person descriptions, Ibrahim’s narration of these battles is gripping and suspenseful while also evoking the pain and terror of warfare. Especially after the current revival of jihad, his recounting of these barbaric episodes and their consequences is not comforting.
The battles are taken chronologically beginning in 636 with the lesser known Battle of Yarmuk, a place now in Syria. This battle displayed the fierce power of jihad by imbedding in the Western mind a fear of Islam for the ensuing 1,000 years. *****
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2019/10/02/sword-scimitar-a-compelling-reminder-of-the-terrifying-dynamic-which-continues-to-drive-the-islamic-world/
I started this book around the same time I incorrectly believed I would finally be able to finish reading Lucian's first novel and get to the sequel, well, I am back after the apartment renovation in here, with a good Roku TV 40 inch monitor for the Ibrahim book, and excellent reader glasses pending even better vision correction via cataract surgery for Dress Gray and Full Dress Gray, yes!
Maybe I have this wrong, but it seems like Richard attacking the Muslim religion(s) implies that the Christian religion followed by the US is so much better since it does not want to destroy others. Chuckle, chuckle. Hence our soldiers by occupying bases in other people's nations are really doing good and are just misunderstood. We have more bases in our American empire than any other country on this planet. Hence we are seen as evil by most of the people in those countries. Having read long ago Sword and Scimitar, it definitely makes Muslims the "bad guys." A non-religious person looking at Christians and their history can easily offer proof that Christians are the "bad guys." And the US as a representative of Christianity, certainly appears evil with its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the not long ago past in Central and South America, the Philippines, Hawaii to name just a few. Or the genocide of the native tribes in North America. Yes, as a history teacher, I realize the underlying power was not religion but capitalism and the power of various companies wanting the benefits from dominating production in oil, sugar, fruit, the grabbing of land, etc.. However, to the common person watching America, US greed and dominance became the same as Christianity, to the people experiencing the ugliness. We are not loved by the Afghans or Iraqis rest assured.
Thank you for the reality check!
So, Richard, how do you account for the Ottoman Empire? Or Umayyad Spain? Or, on the flip side, the Crusades, or the Reconquista, which culminated in the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492? Could it possibly be that the Muslim world has good reason to be suspicious of the Christian world? For extra credit, check out what went down during and after the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire finally broke up.
There’s good money to be made by killing people and blowing stuff up.
‘Not so much immediate return on reforestation.
“Pave Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot.”
Thank you for a sane, thoughtful analysis.
American foreign policy hasn’t changed at all since 9/11. We should have normalized relations with Iran years ago. Iran has a huge educated middle class with Western views that would love more freedom. That would also have kept the Saudis from screwing us with high oil prices. We should have told Israel
No more billions every year without an independent Palestine. Russia had its chance to mainstream its economy with the West but Putin burned that to the ground. We need to keep China close economically or they will
Invade Taiwan. I don’t understand why we keep doing the same things over and over.
Because we're arrogant and stupid and obsessed with our "exceptionalism". Because the country is run, still, by swaggering male fools who think they're John Wayne. Because nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Brilliantly stated, and totally true.
Thank you. The fruit of many years of studying history and observing the American public. I am often in despair as a result.
I’m afraid I agree. Maybe poorly regulated democracies expand over time like an enlarged heart and become flabby and inefficient. I despair at the stupidity of so many things this country has done. We have (or perhaps we are) a massive hammer and every problem looks like a nail.
This is what happens when a country has an uneducated and ignorant population that believes the myths it's been sold. Americans are willfully blind and prefer to remain so. It's so much easier to wallow in stupidity and hate than it is to actually think. We are in grave danger, just as Germany was before Hitler came to power.
Agree wholeheartedly. We’re indolent and spoiled, and as it happens geographically protected between two oceans and friendly neighbors… particularly Canada. I am sick to death of the chest thumping and jingoism. What the fuck is “exceptional” about this country?
Yes, I think that once we could have repaired relations with Iran -- which was an ally when we were propping up the Shah -- and then cut out the utterly corrupt Saudi princes who have been playing us like a fiddle for decades and have stirred up more trouble in the Near East and elsewhere with their Wahhabism than Iran could. Iran is also blessed with a mucy more strategic position vis-a-vis those dastardly Russians, if this were a factor. Our DC leadership is extremely shortsighted as well as blindly vindictive (they've NEVER gotten over the 1979-80 "hostage crisis"). And for the last 20 years or so, we've pretty well demonstrated to the Iranian leadership that we negotiate in bad faith, flip-flopping with every administration, arbitrarily backing out of deals, or never following through with pledges and promises, so they don't trust us any more.
Insanity!
"Be the first one on your block to have your kid come home in a box." Somebody should be singing Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag to the right-wing hawks and to Biden. Damn, this shit never stops. About to re-read The Best and the Brightest as a reminder and an object lesson.
Country Joe and the fish ,better times ,as bad as They were!
Amen. I protested the war then and I fear I'm going to have to do the same now, but I'm old and weary and sick of this shit.
Back then kids got drafted.
Don’t I know! 1 A every bday leading up to and including my 18th ,just missed the draft in 73’ war was finally coming to an end! Lot’s didn’t many didn’t come home,a few of them my friends.
Lost an old friend who never recovered from the physical, emotional, and psychic damage the war did to him. Heart attack at 44. I think of him every day.
Seems like everyone has a friend in similar straits,my buddy is still walking the streets in a perpetual daze 50 years later!So very sad.
I'm so sorry about your buddy. I miss my friend, but he was lost for a few years before his death. Nam did so much harm to so many people. The people of Vietnam and our generation were damaged in some profound ways and I don't think any of us have ever really recovered.
It is impossible not to think “I’ve read this book before.”
War makes too much money for rich old billionaires for it to ever stop, at least not as long as they can send young men and women out to get mutilated and killed.
Many millions here in the USA think "we" are an evil empire stuffed to the gills with cannibal capitalists who have wrecked our healthcare system, sold our farmland / livestock production to the chinese, etc etc ad nauseum. No need to go beyond our borders for Evil Empire thoughts.
The invasion of Iraq was a disaster. There were a few voices in those days pointing out that removing Saddam would strengthen Iran. Which supposedly was not something we wanted to do. But perhaps the most simple revelation about Shrub's ignorance was expressed when he asked what was the difference between Sunnis and Shia. Oh, yeah, we're really prepared for the invasion.
Trump put American troops into Saudi Arabia to protect Saudi from Iran.
Saudi now has a peace deal with Iran arranged through China. Hardly ever mentioned.
Yet America is now almost at war with Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia and Netanyahu. And America still has troops in Saudi.
America is Isreal’s and Saudi’s proxy.
Venezuelan boycott enriched Saudi and Russia two anti democratic nations.
Saudi money has killed Americans in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and America. The bases in Syria and Iraq are to control Saudi financed ISIS.
In Vietnam everyone understood that Russia was supplying the weapons that killed Americans. Why don’t Americans understand it was gulf Arab money which killed Americans in Afghanistan?
No one in America will admit that the racially driven destruction of the Obama agreement with Iran was a major disaster that is continued by Biden’s accepting trumps insanity.
There is a desire for war with Iran by many Americans.
The people of Iran have suffered the most by Trump and America’s lies.
It isn’t that nothing was learned the facts say it is even stupider now.
Wikipedia informs me that "the U.S. has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2023, with half of these operations occurring since 1950" but I've been unable to discover the percentage that followed prolonged CIA presence and activity beforehand.
Maybe start with the traditional psychological profile Langley looks for in new recruits for in all 4Directorates. While they do vary in different degrees they don't vary in kind. Those don't apply to contractors, though.
Hint: while the function is all about the shades of grey (hence findings are presented in percentages and with degrees of confidence ) in the world, they seek people who want the world to be black and white or better yet red, white, and blue. aka my country, right or wrong. While they bow their heads to the stars on the wall, what is missing is stars for all the people they burned.
Even at Langley there are positive changes being enacted much like in the US Mil. Most, if not all ,go unnoticed or don't appear to be as impactive as they really are. Nothing introduces positive change more than diversity in any field or profession.
That’s because you can just assume that the CIA has been involved in every single war since its inception. Hard to trust them because of their covert operations.
Thanks so much for your Red Dawn essay. As always it is damn hard to see ourselves in "the other." Regretably, it is also difficult for us Americans to realize we are no longer the scrapppy little republic clinging to the east coat of America and in an existential struggle with the British Empire celebrated in our Star Spangled Banner. Today, we are The Empire, the armed to the teeth globe girdling corporate empire shouldering the burden of maintaning global order and security by, for example, enabliing shipping to reach the Suez Canal safely, guaranteeing the independence of Taiwan, and the survival of Ukraine, etc. Hegemony is a curse for democracy (see Thucydides) and too often deadly for young people with limitted oportunities (see the current armed services recruitment shortfalls) currently deployed on every continent and in nearly every country in the world. And now there is the black hole of Israel vs Palestine that gathers mass daily fed by an alliance of opposing extremists joined in what amounts to a murder suicide pact.