Reply #41: "Unfortunately, only with tens of thousands of dead americans [View All]

[Sather Gate]

will the truth dawn on these jingoistic folks. Ain't it the truth. I too saw this phenomenon in the VietNam era. The psychology of these well-meaning lemmings hasn't changed since that time. It's built into human nature - the herd instinct. Mavericks don't survive. There are several pertinent differences in the present war. First, there is no draft. They were drafting men into the combat Marines in VietNam. Second, the media is not covering this war the way VietNam was covered. The elites and the military-industrial complex learned their lesson from VietNam, and they will never again allow free-roaming reporters to cover the blood and gore, the atrocities, and the daily lies, and let it get into Joe Sixpack's lving room on the teevee every night. They even created a special propaganda corps to "cover" this war - Faux News - this time. This war, no reporter can cover unless he's "embedded" - "in bed with" the military. In the chaos that has been created, "reporters" do not venture outside their fortified hotels, or, if they have their druthers, the Green Zone fortress. Third, the present group of warmongers are decidedly more messianical than Johnson and Nixon were, and so are their diehard followers. Think "jacobin" and "trotskyite" for the neocons, and think "wacko" for the Christian Right fundies, many of whom thought that this war was going to precipitate the confrontation with the AntiChrist, the Rapture, and the Second Coming of Christ - I kid you not. If it doesn't, they'll just contort Scripture some more to rationalize, and they will never, never stop believing that Dubya is a godly man and God's gift to the world.
So....let the casualties roll up. Let this country spend itself into oblivion. What happened to Rome, will happen to us - at an accelerated pace. The average lifespan of nations is 200 years - I think Max Weber said that.