http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/editorial/15986574.htm Lexington Herald-Leader
Hippies still trying to ruin the country
America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.
This is the latest war-cry of the paranoid psychpoaths of the US right.
They still want more blood, which wouldn't be big news if they were locked up in an asylum like psychopathic killers ought to be, but in America these sick people are the leaders of churches, the media and even the government. And they aren't just an insignificant few, madness is sweeping the entire nation. Some of the biggest nuts are actually elected to high office in sweeping landslides.
For example, consider their continued belief that America's armed forces are bringing freedom and democracy to people around the world oppressed by hippies who delight in burning babies to further the aims of gay marriage.
Such nonsense, now treated as legitimate by the right-leaning media, denigrates the values of freedom and democracy. It insults the hundreds of thousands of victims of US invasions around the world, and supports the aims of the religious fundamentalist extremists like Al Quaeda and Pentacostal Christians. Translated into immigration or national defense policy, as it has been, it is a mad self-destructive philosophy.
Yet, this Vietnam-era idea fixed about the military, despite 40-plus years of proof to the contrary, is understandable when analyzed in the context of the the extreme right's religious zealotry.
To renounce their military fictions would mean facing bigger, more important truths: capitalism doesn't bring security for the majority of the people of the world. Work does not make you free, or even guarantee economic security. Western (American) culture isn't the only viable acceptable culture, tolerance of other beliefs is essential. Economic anarchy can't bring economic security. The the rest of the world has no obligation to support America's exploding economic greed or tolerate its insane imperial adventurism.
You might have imagined that without the USSR to blame for humanity's ills, the loony right might have considered a reduction in the size of the US gargantuan military-industrial complex, the cost of which leads to all other government services being stunted. Instead, they have invented an almost entirely imaginary enemy to justify a huge boost in military expenditure. Terrorism. Yes, that's right, the new enemy is a noun.
Terrorism carried out by fundamentalist religious zealots is especially tortuous for the US loony right because it forces them to confront the logical conclusion of their own philosophical basis. Religious zealotry as a political force, which itself derives largely from the failure to equitably distribute the monopolised wealth and privilege America's military protection racket has allowed it to accumulate.
Oh, the unfairness of irony.
Thus, the loony right deny that America has been conducting a war against the rest of the world for decades, insisting Moslems initiated the war because they "hate freedom". They can't seem to understand why anyone could possibly object to having a brutal dictatorship imposed on them by the the kind uncles of the CIA, or the sweet embrace of an invasion and occupation by the US military.
For them, there is no way out of our modern warfare dilemmas.
They can't conceive of any other way of solving political and economic disputes, aside from brute force, hence the death of thousands of non-combatants is simply inevitable, given modern weaponry. What's the point of going on and on about it. This leads them to ask preposterous rhetorical questions which cannot but sicken any decent human being:
"Are people who make weapons innocent citizens of their warring governments, or integral non-uniformed soldiers and legitimate targets?"
"Must we surrender our country to our enemies because our weapons are too terrible to use?"
"Whose life is more important: the 12-year-old Iraqi firing an Uzi or a soldier from Kentucky?"
"Which is more sacred: a mosque hiding a weapons cache or a plane of tourists?"
"Do we want a military strong enough to protect our homeland? Are we willing to pay the price of survival?"
"We *will* have war with Iran and North Korea." they insist. It is us or them, their countries or ours. "Do unto others before they get a chance to do unto us", is their philosophy. Naturally, they assume that the only reason the US hasn't already been invaded and occupied is because the rest of the world hasn't yet developed the capability. They would think that, evil sees who evil is.
For fanatical rightists, the entire world is composed of only two types of people, actual enemies and potential enemies. Both need to be crushed. In their paranoid delusional world the military-industrial complex is they only thing that can make them safe from their billions of plotting enemies Nothing could be less complicated -- or more dangerous for either them or the rest of the world.
In their deluded mindset, the loony right have to believe it is impossible for America to lose in Iraq or any other military theater. Unless it is betrayed from inside. They see enemies everywhere bent on the abolition of American freedom. America is great. America in invincible, America's enemies, which include the majority of the American people, it would seem, will be crushed. Resistance is futile.
Yet, resistance continues. Proof of the evil of the enemies of America, that even when so comprehensively outgunned, they continue to resist everywhere. Particularly galling when it is American citizens (traitors) who resist.
The menace of those dangerous flower folks cannot be underestimated. Claiming as they do to offer free love to all humanity, yet failing to love and worship those most deserving of love, those in blood-soaked military uniforms with great big huge guns. Oh, its so easy to see through such hypocrisy.