Withinsight

Remember the government propaganda about Vietnam (40 years ago already, wow!!!)? That war was lost by 1968 really...but "give us one more chance to win it please" they said (for years and years) or..."the region will explode if we don't win this war (so let's bomb Laos and Cambodia cause they are supporting our enemy)".

Or..we gotta take the fight to the commies there or we will have to fight them on our own soil soon. We got to Vietnamize this war...strengthen the South Vietnam army so they can stand up and we can stand down. We can't just cut and run, it will ruin our imagine in the world and embolden our enemies, make them think we are weak. (Perhaps we are weak when we cannot admit our mistakes and have to resort to violence to make our point all the time, rather then negotiate with our declared enemies like other countries have to; heaven forbid an level playing field).

1975 came and millions more dead and wounded (if you count the yellow fellas who normally don't count.... 650,000 brown in today's case)- we 'lost the war' cause the south army was not able to stand up, the people living there never wanted us there really in the first place, etc etc.

Any of this sound familiar? It was then and is now an excuse for an imperialist notion of global dominance to protect the American way of life...which is, it seems, to shop and drive gas guzzling SUVs ... while poorer kids join up (cause its work and pays and seems like an adventure at first) and die and who notices much because its mainly people dying in some other country who don't count much anyway?

So, let's make the military bigger because we are spread too thin with bases in only 735 places around the world, in 93 countries... so we can do more of these Iraq adventures...or better yet...attack Iran or have Israel do it and make the war even bigger to hide the mistakes in Iraq; ...surely that will make us safer (like bombing Laos and Cambodia did?).

I am still an anti-war person at heart and still an anti-imperial policy person who still does not think America has some divine destiny to rule the world as we please for the sake of the rich getting richer and poor poorer (as this trend continues unabated, even now worse in America and round the world).

My hope for the season is peace on earth - fewer guns each and every year in America, where they are manufactured and we might have some fewer American and Canadian young people in foreign lands 'protecting' us from the enemy in some notion of a perpetual war on terror. The notion of this continuing is terrorizing me as much as lessons not learned and history repeating itself.

Amen (added by Gary).