One Hundred Routes to War One Hundred Ways to Hell

[seemslikeadream]

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/11/one-hundred-routes-to-war-one-hundred.html


One Hundred Routes to War, One Hundred Ways to Hell


Almost two years ago, in writing about the effects of any foreign intervention that is not a demonstrably necessary act of self-defense, I identified what I considered to be the most important principle regarding interventions of this kind. Events of the last few years have proved once again that I can confidently rest upon this formulation:

Intervention always leads to more intervention: the first intervention leads to unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences, which are then used as the justification for still further intervention. That intervention in turn leads to still more unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences, which are then used as yet another justification for still further intervention. The process can go on indefinitely, and the ultimate consequences are always disastrous in the extreme.
The earlier essay traced in broad outline the more notable examples of this principle beginning with the entrance of the United States into World War I, extending throughout the entire remainder of the twentieth century, and now reaching into the twenty-first century. I then noted:

These are only some of the very bitter fruits of foreign intervention: uncontrollable consequences are always set loose and, all too often, those consequences are directly opposed to what the original stated purpose had been. And yet, like the insane man, we repeat this behavior over and over again, insisting that this time the result will be different, and it will finally work -- and we'll get exactly the result we want, and no others at all.

Given the complexity of factors involved in interventions of this kind -- the complicated issues of history, culture, politics, and society and the endless variations involving how these factors interact within one country and among different countries -- the desired outcome simply cannot be dictated in this manner, no matter how great the military forces at one's disposal. You would think the current experience in Iraq would prove that, once and for all.

But of course, the criminal catastrophe in Iraq -- including the unleashing of a monstrous genocide -- has proven nothing of the kind to the ruling class, including the foreign policy establishment

[seemslikeadream]

1. Kill the Messenger, On With the War: A Noxious Discharge From Armed Liberal

http://www.chris-floyd.com/


Now, I don't know who Armed Liberal is. I'd never heard of him until someone sent me the link to his, well, "insanely belligerent" attack on Silber. Being a very dutiful journalist, I then spent about 14 seconds trying to find out more about him. I learned that besides being involved with the founding of Pajamas Media, he had an epiphany in a restaurant in 2002 when he suddenly realized that ordinary working people -- like house builders, aerospace workers, sewer workers, etc. -- were actually his equal as human beings. Well, that's something, I guess. Having come from a line of carpenters, sharecroppers, merchants and clerks myself, I'm glad that to know that if Armed Liberal saw me and my folk at "some really bad Italian restaurant," he'd embrace our heartland earthiness with his elitist empathy.

But wherever he and his groupthink groupies are coming from, their assertion that people like Silber, or Vidal (or even me, if I can temporarily place myself in such rarefied company) "hate America" is nothing but blithering pig-ignorance. There's no other way to describe such stupidity. Anyone who truly "hated America" would never say a single word against the Bush Administration or the decades-long bipartisan policies of empire that Chalmers Johnson, among others, has detailed so well. On the contrary: a true America-hater would be cheering on the Bush faction at every step as it drags the nation deeper into ruin and disgrace.

But the feeble-minded, mean-spirited farrago dumped on Silber's head by this crew is all too typical of the self-noodling complacency and complicity that has, yes, empowered the bloodcaked despoilers of the Republic.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Good article. Too true. Thanks for posting. K&R

[flashl]

3. At this time ...

one of the points in all of this, the recoil to "the poll" that professes to accurately convey Americans belief that “Iran should be nuke”.

Given all of the “other” polls showing Americans total distain of this administration, Congress, and politics, why are we hang ringing over a poll that is antithetical to said Americans distain and disbelief in the utility of government?

Chris, a military person, quotes Butler, an American hero, that I believe we should read every day.