Once more we are slow walking towards war

[MadHound]

It is a tactic that the US has perfected over the span of the last one hundred years, slow walking towards a war. Knowing that public opinion isn't behind going to war, our leaders have taken years, over a decade in the case of Vietnam, to gradually ratchet up the rhetoric and actions in order to get us into war. Wilson started this with WWI, shipping war material to England while cranking up the propaganda at home. Roosevelt not only continued this tactic in the prelude to WWII, but also took actions, deliberate or not, that wound up provoking Japan into attacking us, finally thrusting us into war. Truman, and those who followed, did the extremely slow walk, almost a crawl to war, by sending the first advisers and material to Vietnam in 1950.

Now we are once again seeing the slow walk being deployed in order to bootstrap us into Iraq, for the third time. We have the convenient boogey man, ISIS, that can me dehumanized and used as a great proganda tool("fucking monsters", much like the "hellspawn baby killing Huns" of a century ago). We are actually moving at a relatively brisk pace compared to some previous slow walks, what with material already being shipped, and US airstrikes already taking place, not to mention the constant drip, drip, drip of "advisers" being dropped into the country. We are being bombarded with nonstop propaganda of journalists being beheaded, and locals being killed in horrific ways. All the while, Obama is busy "forming strategy", remaining relatively quiet on the issue while his supporters, like Hagel, and detractors, McCain, not to mention the entirety of the Fox/dittohead stupidverse, are almost literally foaming at the mouth in their eagerness to get some serious boots on the ground and once more get their wargasm on. Frankly, it looks more and more like Obama isn't formulating a strategy, but simply playing for time, letting the rantings of the warhawks, and the corporate media propaganda to whip a war weary public back into that fine, frothy frenzy he needs in order to,reluctantly I'm sure:eyes:, get Iraq War III on.

That's the beauty of the slow walk, it works much like boiling a frog, the average US citizen doesn't realize that they are being played like a violin until after the shooting starts, the money is getting sucked down, and the body bags are rolling home. Of course by then it is too late, we have to " see it through", and "can't leave the job unfinished", whatever that means. The slow walk sucks up all the air in the room, leaving precious little for calmer, saner voices of reason to be heard, voices that wonder what the long term ramifications will be.

And that's the real kicker here, the 800 pound gorilla in the room, unseen and ignored. ISIS is an child of Iraq I and especially II, our own Frankenstein creation. If we hadn't followed yellow cake, WMD and babies dead in incubators into starting Iraq II, ISIS would not exist. So that should logically make a reasonable person wonder just exactly will Iraq III lead us to? Sadly, it is looking more and more like war forever and ever, amen. Al-Qaeda begets the even worse ISIS, what will ISIS beget ten years down the road? Something even worse, with two heads, horns and a forked tail that our children or grandchildren will have to fight, that is after we're slow walked into Iraq IV, and V, and . . .

Is nobody in our leadership even thinking long term, that we are just perpetuating never ending war? Sadly, I think that they are, and worse yet, that is exactly what they want, war forever and ever, amen. It makes the big bucks for their corporate masters in the MIC, keeps the focus abroad, so people don't concentrate our our crumbling society at home. It is the last great gasp of any empire, perpetual war abroad, while society is hollowed out from within. And it all starts with that first step of the slow walk. Let us hope that this time the American people aren't as gullible this time around.