Making the World Safe from Sanity

It turned out so great last time . . . LET'S DO IT AGAIN!

The president got on TV tonight to tell us we're going to war again. But, as if this were just the peachiest news possible, we're not going to employ any American ground forces. What we will do is aid the "moderate forces" in Syria and those Arab states who choose to participate in the ground proceedings with our bombs and our gee-gaa technology. I've made a one of my periodic dips onto Facebook and I'm astounded--no, not really--with the vehemence and certitude of all the good ole American people rattling their swords. Can their memories really be that short? Can they not remember how just two weeks ago they were firmly against any kind of long-term commitment to the madness in the Middle East? I read that 71 percent of Americans are behind the president in his call for action against this latest enemy to civilization whom it's our responsibility to confront and defeat. I note that this time too, the Washington establishment is careful to qualify its call to war with the warning that this will not be a short job. No, we're signing on to possible years of conflict yet. Can anything be more insane? Forgive me if wonder just what in hell people learned from our last Middle Eastern excursion into war . . . you know, the one in Libya, which has fallen apart as a country; the one in Iraq which has spawned IS and thousands of deaths and fragmentation of the "democracy" we helped set up there; and of course, the one in Afghanistan that's not even over yet.

I'm not being crass or unfeeling or in the least bit disrespectful of the pain inflicted on the families and friends of the two Americans who were brutally beheaded by the IS fanatics. But it's interesting how the entire country can fly into bellicose outrage at the execution of two innocent Americans, but doesn't bat an eyelash at the literally thousands of innocent civilian deaths we have caused all over the Middle East with our drones, bombs, and artillery.  

It bears repeating, often and loudly: we are a doomed people. We don't have the sense God gave a grasshopper.