Prisoners of War
The centerpiece of the Bush legacy is a “war on terror” based on a vast disconnect between military expenditures and actual national security requirements that the presidential candidates all fully understand. The question is whether the voters and media will force them to face that contradiction or whether we’re in for more of the same — no matter how much the candidates go on about change.
—Robert Scheer, Truthdig.com
How perfect that John McCain has become the Republican candidate. Much as the party base might hate the man for some of his fiscal and social policies, he’s got the perfect résumé for taking over America’s War on Everything.
As a confessed war criminal — “I am a war criminal,” McCain said on “60 Minutes” in 1997. “I bombed innocent women and children.” — he’ll be able to step into Bush’s primary responsibilities from day one. High-altitude bombing of dark-skinned people? No learning curve for McCain!
As a former prisoner of war, he’s got the inside track on the whole torture debate. Though he has spoken sensibly against torture in the past, with the White House in his sights he’s changed his story and now appropriately rails against Islamo-fascism and the need to do whatever it takes — break out the waterboards, boys — to stop the evil terrorists.
Though he has complained much about Donald Rumsfeld’s prosecution of the Iraq War, the main thrust of his complaints is that we didn’t do enough. Not enough troops, not enough bombs. McCain LOVES the surge, and thinks we ought to stay in Iraq (and, presumably, anywhere else that America has significant economic interests) for the next hundred years.
Most importantly, as he admitted during a debate, the economy is not his strong suit. So, we could count on a McCain presidency to continue expanding military budgets — More troops! More bombs! — all the way to the monumental economic fubar that awaits our world.
Even if we overlook the many moral issues that inevitably arise for any nation-at-perpetual-war — the death of innocents, the lying leaders, the unconscionable tactics, the suspension of civil rights — even if we ignore all of that, the ever-inescapable problem of war is that it causes a suicidal diversion of national resources from essential social needs to the Military-Congressional-Industrial-Complex.
John McCain is just fine with all of that. There should be no limits on spending for the war machine. Indeed, it’s unpatriotic to even ask the question, “How will we afford it?” Bomb now, pay later.
Unfortunately, the supposedly anti-Iraq-war Democratic party — it’s why we elected all you guys and gals two years ago, if you’ll recall — is just as war-addicted. Since their historic return to power, they have given into EVERY pro-war action or initiative that Bush and his cohorts have wanted. “Shameful” doesn’t come close to describing it.
While we all want to think that either Clinton or Obama will end this madness, the record of the past two years is sobering. America has become one great prisoner of war, from sea to shining sea. Until a viable candidate can stand up and pledge to seriously reduce all military spending and to redirect the nation’s resource to its people, then there’s no escaping from this prison.
