Chapter 11
IS OBAMA ANY SMARTER THAN BUSH?
According to George W. Bush, we are fighting in Iraq to “secure the peace” and, to “secure freedom and democracy”. Is there any rational reason to believe this? If war can secure peace then why, after 10,000 years of war, isn't there peace on earth by now? ¹
War didn't begin or end with the American Revolution; soldiers who fought against the British soon rose up in “Shay's Rebellion” against wealthy colonists who were taking their land and throwing them into debtors prison. Soon after, another war against England erupted.
Then came the Mexican-American War, Civil War, Spanish-American War and War in the Philippines. And then, the so-called “war to end all wars”, WWI, soon followed by WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf Wars I&II and Afghanistan.
Spaced among this long bloody trail, were slave uprisings, a long drawn-out war against Native populations and many smaller wars. There have also been many “uprisings” within the U.S., including mob murder of African-Americans, Irish, Jews, Mormons, Chinese, Latinos and even striking child workers. ²
Yet today, after all this bloodshed, we find ourselves still at war In spite of overwhelming historical evidence, a morally bankrupt America remains quick on the trigger and very slow to understand, that war will never “secure the peace”. Is President Obama acting any wiser than Bush by increasing troop levels in Afghanistan?
Some people claim Gandhi was wrong because he ended up a martyr. Yet, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and many others claim he inspired them. Did Gandhi lose in the great historical battle for human rights, the only war that really matters? ³
According to Jesus, the solution to war is to put down our swords. 4 A small child can easily grasp this crystal-clear logic of Jesus, yet we find people today pretending to follow him, who still promote war. Jesus inspired millions of people to promote peace and goodwill. Thus, he won a far, far, far greater victory than all the military generals in history combined.
It is entirely logical, that if I promote peace and goodwill, I will help humanity and leave a positive legacy for others to emulate. It is likewise, entirely logical if I promote war as a solution, I will hurt humanity and extend the trail of tears for others to make even longer. 5
We as individuals have little choice what our leaders or other people do. However, we each have a personal choice to make, to either stand up for peace and goodwill or, to bow to peer pressure and promote war and other violence. 6
It takes courage to stand up against one's own society, which is why Isaiah and Jesus continue to be revered by millions. It takes only a victim of societal pressure to promote violence. It is mature to promote peace and goodwill; it is childish, historically and patently absurd to promote anything else.
Is Obama any smarter than Bush? 7 Whose mission do you think we are we really accomplishing? You decide.
NOTES:
1. War is undoubtedly by far, the most irrational of all human endeavors. One cannot logically expect peace to result from violence, any more than one can rationally expect to squeeze a glass of fresh drinking water out of a petrified pebble.
2. According to an Annenberg Media documentary on 19th Century America, there were over 35 major riots in American urban centers between 1830 and 1860, as the American industrial revolution was coming into its own. Working people today who support neo-conservative economic policies and believe that unions are unnecessary relics of the past, have been blindsided into voting against the interests of their own selves and offspring by modern-day "supply-side" economic liars and corporate lackey right-wing radio media hacks. Since the implementation of "trickle-down" theory under Ronald Reagan, ongoing business de-regulation has succeeded in producing by 2007, the widest gap between the rich and the poor in American history. And, our nation and the entire world is now continuing to pay a significant price for the unbridled greed released by extremely unwise de-regulation policies under Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. While union power has been steadily curtailed, profits for corporations and salaries of top executives have steadily risen and many former worker benefits have been cut back or eliminated entirely. Gross corporate malfeasance and mass corruption has flourished in insurance, banking, health, communications, transportation and other industries. Wages for middle and working-class Americans have mostly stagnated and in many cases, have gone down significantly when adjusted for inflation, during this same 20+ year period. And yet, our blind leaders of the blind continue to bail out the wealthy few, who caused our nation's middle and working classes and poor to now be teetering in national mass, on the corporate malfeasant precipice of bankruptcy.
In order to enjoy the same approximate lifestyle today compared to that of a typical blue-collar family with one working parent in the 1960's, both parents often find it necessary to work two or more, full-time jobs. Thus, conclusively proving that supply-side economic theory is one of the greatest lies in the history of human civilization. Instead of excess profits of oil companies translating into lower prices at the pump, the cost of energy and other basic necessities continues to spiral out of control. Instead of excess business profits trickling down into the pockets of average Americans, they have been "supply-sided" more and more into ever larger and more expensive homes, yachts, jewelry and art collections for the mega-rich, while the lifestyles of most working-class and middle class Americans continue to move ever closer to the 14-18 hour day, healthcare-less and other benefit-less, grossly unsafe working condition economic slave reality of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
3. See Notes on the Great War for more information.
4. Matthew 26:52; repeated in Revelation 13:10 and is agrees with several other teachings of Jesus, in spite of how badly conservative Christians lie to the contrary (obviously, they think they are smarter than Jesus).
5. According to an August 29th article published on CNN.com, over 2,000 Iraqis in Northern Iraq have contracted cholera as a result of poor drinking water due to the illegal Bush war. According to UNICEF, "forty-seven cases have been confirmed as epidemic cholera, but the number is expected to grow." There have been reports of widespread disease in Baghdad and elsewhere, which has long been a "hidden" major cost of war. Historians estimate that human disease, often greatly aggravated by war, including significant transmission of diseases from "protected" populations of soldiers to a population that has no built up immunities, has contributed to more casualties than all of the actual battlefield deaths in all of the wars of history combined. Disease was a major contributing factor to uncounted deaths for generations in our own revolutionary war, our civil war and in every major conflict the United States has been involved. The long and ongoing extending historical human trail of tears as a result of war, numbers in the many billions, including not only battlefield and later actual casualties, but also inducing major negative psychological, social, economic and other devastating repercussions on families and friends of victims for generations to come. There is no excuse for anyone who has ever picked up a Bible or a history book, to ever pick up a gun as a means for settling a dispute of any kind between nations, or any perceived "side" within a nation.
6. Those who blame belief in God, which is not synonymous with "religion", for human violence and other oppression, are only kidding themselves. War is very clearly greed-based at the root, involving either the protection or theft of wealth and almost always, war is about both. Human beings are individually and collectively responsible for our own bad choices and resultant massive global suffering.
In the historical past, religion seemingly played a more dominant role in war-related violence because societies in general, were structured differently in theory. The invention of printing and cheap mass dissemination of knowledge has gradually changed the excuses for war. From the so-called "age of enlightenment" forward, by no means all, but societies in general on a global scale, have gradually been shifting away from theocracy and more towards nationalism and intellectual idealism; democracy, communism, socialism and similar. War and rumor of war (rumor of war causes great fear, social unrest and economic instability), murder, theft, rape and other violence and, the resulting human oppression and human rights suppression, mass displacement, homelessness, hunger, disease, psychological trauma, emotional sorrow, suffering and pain remains. Only the names of naive, shallow and self-justifying human theories leading to a variety of new excuses for war have changed.
7. According to Bill Moyers, President Johnson early on was advised that it would take at least one million soldiers to "win" the war in Vietnam. The United States ended up sending 2.5 million soldiers and in doing so, we not only destroyed the lives of countless American families as a result, we also destroyed the lives of countless millions of Vietnamese and Cambodian citizens. Also, it is probably fair to say that the cost for the Vietnam War was the main reason for the severe economic downturn under President Carter. Unlike Johnson, President Obama has the benefit of Vietnam historical hindsight and thus, all people of conscience should be as hard if not harder, on any troop increase decisions made by Obama, than we were on troop increase decisions made by Bush, Nixon and Johnson.
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