- "An empire is an immense egotism," said Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
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- For the past 45 years, the United States, with 570,000
military personnel on 700 bases in 120 countries maintained (s) an empire
around the world. America created the Korean, Vietnam, Desert Storm and
Iraq Wars. Deaths mounted into the millions. Human suffering registered
off the Richter scale of misery.
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- All of their deaths and our deaths amounted to nothing
with a meaning of nothing. All could have been avoided with more intelligent
minds at work for peaceful co-existence on this planet.
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- Fifteen years ago, Osama bin Laden demanded that America
retreat from Muslim lands. We ignored him. The Muslim world did not want
us in their lands. Bin Laden didn't want Western culture "polluting"
Islamic law and culture. Muslims view America as the "Great Satan"
of the Western world. Our women wear what they please. We celebrate in
Las Vegas. We encourage women to vote, to speak, seek divorce, to teach,
to be independent and run for political office. We accept all races, creeds
and colors. We accept homosexuals. We do not allow honor killings, female
genital mutilation, promote suicide bombings or arranged marriages.
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- We failed to leave. Osama bin Laden exacted his revenge.
We may have killed him, but we are slowly and effectively killing our civilization.
All empires decline from over-extension. Examples: Great Britain, Rome,
France, Athens, Germany, Spain and others.
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- Empires, as Thucydides understood, are diseases. Thucydides
said, "The tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others, it
finally imposed on itself. The disease of empire, according to Thucydides,
"Would finally kill Athenian democracy. And the disease of empire,
the disease of nationalism these of course are mirrored in the anarchic
violence of these groups, but one that locks us in a kind of frightening
death spiral."
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- As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges said,
"I despair that we as a country, as Nietzsche understood, have become
a monster that we are attempting to fight."
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- Nonetheless, the military industrial complex in America
wins out in every battle against those who promote peace. Lyndon Baines
Johnson, Richard Nixon, George Bush I and George Bush II started wars that
did nothing but bring massive deaths and casualties to other human beings
and Americans. They accomplished nothing whatsoever for freedom or human
life.
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- Goering at the Nuremberg Trials said, "Naturally
the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor
for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE
LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist
dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED,
and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country
to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."
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- Is any American looking at what our own government does
to us every decade? What exactly are we fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Answer: money, power and greed! None of those wars has anything to do
with freedom or terror or rational thinking.
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- "Nothing is actually resolved, nothing concluded,
and nothing to be celebrated in taking away life," said journalist
David Swanson in "War is a Crime." "If we want something
to celebrate here, we should celebrate the end of one of the pieces of
war propaganda that has driven the past decade of brutality and death.
But I'm not going to celebrate that until appropriate actions follow. Nothing
makes for peace like ceasing to wage war. Now would be an ideal time to
give that a try. Our senseless wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and
Libya must be ended. Keeping bin Laden alive and threatening, assisted
in keeping the war machine churning its bloody way through cities and flesh
for years. No wonder President Bush was not interested in tracking bin
Laden down."
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- At what point will Americans sicken of their perpetrating
war on other countries, on millions of other people and the contamination
of our world with bombs, poisons, anger and revenge? How can we call it
good when we killed over 100,000 and up to 200,000 Iraqis? How about the
2.0 million we killed in Vietnam in 10 years. How about the 100,000 or
so in Korea? What exactly was the point, purpose and reason?
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- How can the American people be so easily duped, led over
a cliff and jingoistically convinced that they are the chosen ones to go
about killing so many other people in self-righteous egoism?
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- When the American military industrial complex cooks up
the next war, and Obama or name-your-president decides to blow up another
civilization, what will you say and what will you do? If the past is any
indication of the present, you will probably remain a sheep like the rest
of America. You will send young men to die in war for nothing.
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