Foto by tgw, "Penn Terminal Building," New York City, 2003------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: The Daily Growler has warned you that the rightwing (Whites) are determined to take this country back from our first Black president in the name of White supremacy and the Christian (or Mormon) God--a NeoCon move, folks--the backward state of Wisconsin (cheese heads for real) have just sent shivers through the spine of the Democrats by backing the whacky nutjob Scott Walker by a 54 to 45% margin in the stupid recall vote--thus so much for public worker unions and so much for any kind of progressive movement in that backward state. Let 'em eat cheese. President Obama avoided going to Wisconsin and sent Slick Willie out there instead. The Slick One's still considered a lying bastard in Wisconsin due to his dilly-dallying in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky--and, yes, the Slick One is a lying bastard alright, one Obama should throw to the dogs and reverse himself on all his power moves by his being in bed with and getting joyfully fucked by all the corporate criminals who are his heroes. He'd better watch his back and start bringing about some YES WE CAN change or else the White Power Elite will finally take total rule of this country. But, of course, when you've got those corporate-fascist hands squeezing your balls and up your ass it's hard to do anything but be scared and continue to try compromising with these rightwing assholes. Progressives have to stop preaching to the choir and get off their asses in masses and bring about true change in this already fascist nation.
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Exceptionalism
This past Memorial Day--it was once called Decoration Day--I watched President Obama and his sidekick Joe Biden traipsing about the globe praising our "brave" fighting men and women. In their manufactured speeches of high praise, these two basic liars promoted our soldiers as heroes, as men and women who are protecting our nation while also bringing freedom and democracy to the nations in which they are killing millions of people as they march across the Georgias of the world. In my cynical mind, I'm hollering, "But wait a minute, Fearless Leader and his Sancho Panza sidekick, where have these poor workingclass soldiers brought democracy and freedom? In Afghanistan? In Iraq? In Pakistan? In Yemen? In Bahrain? In Libya? In Somalia? In the Sudan? Where?"
The rightwing Yahoos (all Whites) and the Barack Obama Democrats speak loudly and single-mindedly of America's exceptionalism (ironically a term first proclaimed in 1929 by Uncle Joe Stalin in criticizing the American Communist Party for declaring that Marxist revolutionary tactics wouldn't work in this country), of our being the STRONGEST and greatest REPUBLIC in the world with a right to neglect world laws and do as we please wherever we please. Newtie Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House said American exceptionalism was a gift to us from the Christian God, Jehovah, or whatever the hell name he's going by these days. The NeoCons through the ignorant voice of G.W. Bush gave American exceptionalism as an excuse for our invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan--preemptive striking is what they really called it. All Obama and his loyal Brutuses are doing is continuing this NeoCon definition of the word. In Strasbourg when asked about it, Obama, in his backpeddling way, said, yes he believed in America's exceptionalism while at the same time he also believed in Britain's exceptionalism...er ah, also Greece's exceptionalism.
This idea that America is the strongest and most powerful nation on earth and we invade and occupy your country in order to bring you freedom and democracy started after World War II; actually it started during World War II. In order to prove this idea, especially after we developed the atomic bomb and demonstrated it by blowing away 300,000 Japanese civilians (men, women, and children), we needed a New Devil after Hitler. And that New Devil became the Soviet Union even though they had been our ally in World War II and in fact had probably more to do with our winning that war (in our minds) than we give them credit. Without the Soviets holding off the Nazi forces in the Western Soviet Union, it's doubtful whether the US alone could have won that war. The Soviets were the first into Germany from the east while the US and British forces advanced on it from the west.
As a matter of fact, most of any country's exceptionalism is a myth. That our men and women in the armed forces are exceptional is also a myth. What wars have we won since WWII? G.W.H. "Pappy" Bush claimed, during his exceptional reign as a budget devastating and deceiving president, that his Gulf War against Saddam Hussein was our only won war since WWII, a war, by the way, in which We the Exceptional People of the USA used a Muslim nation, Saudi-Arabia, as our base of operations against another Muslim nation, Iraq, an incident that really fired up a Saudi bad boy named Osama bin Laudin and started him, while working for our CIA in Afghanistan, slinging exceptional vile statements against our exceptional self-righteousness, that which he claimed was exceptionally symbolized by the architecturally tacky World Trade Center.
Since WWII, we haven't really won any of the wars we started (all started based on lies). The Korean War is still going on. Our exceptional feat in that war was dividing a nation in half. In Vietnam...well, hey, though we riddled that country with exceptionally ruthless bombing, our exceptional troops had to high-tale it out of there during the Tet Offensive; as a result, We the People of the USA didn't get to divide that nation in half and it survives whole today no thanks to us.
Was Pappy's Gulf War a victory? I don't know if you'd call it a victory; otherwise, why did his worthless son, Georgie Porgie, have to invade and occupy Iraq a few years later?
I view our US troops as exceptionally dumb. And I say that in sympathetic tones. I was a soldier once. I had no choice. I was conscripted. And believe me, nobody I knew was really exceptionally eager to become soldiers and go off thousands of miles to countries we knew nothing about and take them our form of democracy (there is evidence that we invaded Indo-China because Michael Rockefeller, a geologist, told his old worthless daddy, Nelson, there was abundant oil under the Indo-China shelf). When I was a soldier, I couldn't imagine going to Vietnam and having to kill or be killed--and I wasn't a coward; I could take care of myself in exceptionally dangerous situations, though after being a child during World War II and living in a West Texas city that lost so many of its young men in our South Pacific theater of action, especially on the Bataan Death March and seeing members of my own family losing their minds due to their being in combat during that war, no sir, I wanted no part of war. [Note: during the Korean War, We the People of the US were horrified by Chinese torture practices we called Psychological Warfare--check out a movie called "The Manchurian Candidate" for Hollywood's version of that horrible torture! We are such hypocrites.]
Here's a horror list of the monetary costs and the horrible losses in human life our exceptional forces have suffered in WAR since the beginning of the Korean War--like I said, a war that ain't over yet. Check this list out:
| 1950-1953 | Korean War | 54246 | 103284 | $50 bil |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1954 | Matsu and Quemoy | 3 | 0 | -- |
| 1957-1975 | Vietnam War | 58219 (4) | 153356 | $111 bil |
| 1958-1984 | Lebanon | 268 | 169 | -- |
| 1962 | Cuba | 9 | 0 | -- |
| 1964 | Panama Canal Riots | 4 | 85 | -- |
| 1965-1966 | Dominican Republic | 59 | 174 | -- |
| 1966-1969 | South Korea | 89 | 131 | -- |
| 1967 | Israel Attack/USS Liberty | 34 | 171 | -- |
| 1968 | Tet (Vietnam) | 7040 | 0 | -- |
| 1980 | Iran Operation Desert One | 8 | 0 | -- |
| 1980-1991 | Terrorism | 28 | 0 | -- |
| 1983 | Grenada | 19 | 100 | $76 mil |
| 1983 23 Oct | Beirut Lebanon | 241 | -- | -- |
| 1983-1991 | El Salvador | 20 | 0 | -- |
| 1984-1989 | Honduras | 1 | 28 | -- |
| 1986 | Libya | 2 | 0 | -- |
| 1987 (3) | Persian Gulf | 148 | 467 | -- |
| 1989-1990 | Panama | 40 | 240 | $163 mil |
| 1990-1991 | Persian Gulf, Op Desert Shield/Storm | 363 | 357 | $61 bil |
| 1991-1992 | Somalia, Op Restore Hope | 8 | -- | $.52 bil |
| 1993, Feb 26 | Terrorism, World Trade Center | 6 | 1000+ | - |
| 1995 | Terrorism Oklahoma City | 168 | 400+ | -- |
| 1995, Nov 13 | Terrorism Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | 7 | 42 | -- |
| 1995-2000 | Terrorism | 77 | -- | -- |
| 1996, Jun 25 | Terroism Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia | 19 | 500 | -- |
| 2000 | Yemen, USS Cole | 17 | 651 | -- |
| 2001, Sept 11 | Flight 93 | 44 | -- | -- |
| 2001, Sept 11 | World Trade Center | 2,974 Total 19 Hijackers 2,603 New York City 125 Pentagon 24 Missing All civilians except 55 military 1,366 at or above floors attacked 600 killed instantly 200 jumped to deaths 341 firefighters 2 paramedics 23 police officers 37 Port Authority | -- | -- |
| 2001 | Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan | 89 | 33 (U.S.) (Friendly Fire) | -- |
| 2002 | Operation Enduring Freedom, Filipines | 12 | -- | -- |
| 2002 | Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan Theater | 30 | 28 | -- |
| 2003 2004 | Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan Theater | 34 | -- | -- |
| Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan Theater | Total to date | 1,474 | -- | -- |
| 2003-2008 | Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq 4,452 | COMBAT/ATTACKS United States 4397 Australia 2 Britain (UK) 179 Bulgaria 13 Denmark 7 El Salvador 5 Estonia 2 Georgia 3 Hungary 1 Italy 33 Latvia 3 Netherlands 3 Poland 21 Romania 3 Slovakia 4 Spain 12 Thailand 2 Ukraine 18 POW 7 Other Iraq War Casualty Resources: Military 19,217 American Est: Civilians and Military British Est: Civilians and Military 21,700 to 55,000 INJURIES US: 8,004 hostile US: --- non-hostile | US: 11,413 [f1] | -- |
Figure up those totals. And we haven't WON any of the above WARS. An exceptional waste of human life--and in terms of our exceptional troops, VERY YOUNG HUMAN LIVES!
NOTE: In the last war we won, World War II, it is estimated that as a result of that war, over 60 million human beings lost their lives! 60 million!!! 60 million!!!
Our military, according to the now totally aborted Constitution are supposed to protect our borders from invasion--a job they failed to do when 22 drunk-the-night-before Saudis wielding boxcutters as weapons successfully invaded and blew down the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, in which an estimated 3,000, not all of them Americans, were killed.
Our troops are scattered around the world on over 150 bases; President Obama is now not bringing our troops home where they belong, but extending their presence now along the Pacific Rim and for the first time on a base in Australia. For what is he doing this? Surely he and his G.W. Bush military advisors aren't seriously considering a war with China. Though remember, these fools truly believe we are exceptional and under the watchful eye of the Christian God who's out for vengeance against the Muslim God who is the same God. How utterly insane are We the People of the USA? We are the dumbest and most sheep-like people (read A Nation of Sheep) in the world; and yet we foolishly think we are the superiors--at least that's what White people in the US think.
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
Goya The Colossis
1 comment:
Bob Welch died. I really liked his music.
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