Learning Not to be a Warmongering Nation

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." - Thomas Jefferson.

Scene from American takeover in the movie, "Red Dawn". For the people of Iraq, this has been reality for several years. Photo courtesy: conelrad.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - Some strange truths have emerged as part of our society, that many of us never saw coming, or even imagined. If you look at the United States and its current government as a role model of how nations should behave, then you are seeing a manifestation of the dead opposite of everything we are taught in school and in church as American citizens, about how people are supposed to treat one another.

Courtesy: Highlight Magazine

We are not supposed to be an aggressive nation, but in truth we are the purveyors of a Red Dawn for the people of Iraq and we have displaced the political and military balance with neighboring Iran. Any journalist who studies Middle East affairs could have predicted this and many did, but sound reasoning has no voice in this White House.

I think most of us agree that people who are picked on and abused, often seek out smaller and weaker people, or animals in some cases, to treat the same way.

It can be a child abused by a parent at home who lashes out at others as a school bully. It can be a matter between siblings and often is. The point is that when we are abused, it is easier sometimes for people to relieve their own stress by becoming abusers. It fulfills a need in damaged people and reminds them that they too can be the one in charge calling the shots.

I see a direct correlation between this pattern of abuse, and the way Americans have in many ways become in their position toward Iran. False media reports on FOX News and other mainstream media have mistranslated statements from the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and told Americans he said things he simply didn't say. The directly modified translations are used by American media outlets to color the water red. They are simply not true.

Tehran had the second biggest candlelight vigil in the world, to mourn the victims of 911 in September of 2001. We are hostile and skeptical of simple goodness from Iran because it doesn't fit the Bush team's goal of eventually seizing the country in order to take their oil, like in Iraq. He has the media convince Americans that the country is devious, when in fact he is the devious one who kills hundreds of thousands by proxy.

The truth is, Iran was screwed over in the biggest way in the early 1950's by the British company, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, because they were ripping Iran off and refusing to let them see the books. The Iranian government stayed cool and the people elected their first democratic president in history in the early 50's. He wanted to help his country and part of that in his estimation, was to nationalize their oil. Read that again; their oil, that the Brits couldn't pry their hands off of.

Rather than playing fair with Iran and paying the agreed "portion" of oil revenues, they waited until the United States elected Dwight Eisenhower as President, then the U.S. and Britain teamed up and launched a coup and overthrew the President of Iran. Then they took the "Shah" who is remembered fondly, and mistakenly, as a great 'friend' of the U.S. and returned him a few months later as the new leader of Iran, and a U.S. "puppet" government that was really friendly with oil proceeds. That is right up until the hostage crisis of 1979.

The point is that our fine colonializing western nations did a real number on Iran as out and out thieves and world government marauders, and who are we to have done that? When will we come clean about that? All for the sake of cheap oil, which isn't cheap anymore.

Then the CIA tried to do it again in 2002 in Venezuela, but the people rose up by the million and demanded the return of their President, Hugo Chavez. (see: Taking Government Control of Media by the Horns: Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.)

The media tries desperately to turn Americans against Venezuela, primarily over Chavez' defiance of George W. Bush whom he called "the devil" at an international conference. When Americans are outrageous and choose to call a spade a spade, they are called straightforward and honest. When a Venezuelan President does it, he is called a world threat.

Stop abusing the military

We have no business starting a war with Iran. Our military forces are stretched thin and no American should ask them to fight another war. Both active and guard and reserve forces are seeing their third and fourth combat tours and a human can only take so much.

They are already damaged in many ways and I stress again, that in my opinion no real patriot wishes for the abuse of their own nation's military. George W. Bush has abused the hell out of our military and he never had a right to do it at all, just like the long list of other things he had no right to do.

For all of you nationalists who still support this feeble, lame duck president, here is what Andrew Jackson had to say about people like him, "...there have always been those who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government. There is but one safe rule...confine (it) within the sphere of its appropriate duties...Every attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and firmly opposed." Guess what? We failed. The failure is not measurable in an overall aspect yet, because we will feel the repercussions of the last seven plus years for the rest of our lives, and I hope the same is not true for our children and grandchildren.

Homeland Security is a sad, big government joke. It reminds me of how unworthy this president is of ever being called "conservative". Bush is the least conservative president we have seen in decades, perhaps in all of our nation's history. He stripped away our liberties under the guise of "freedom" and made off with them like a thief in the night.

Another great American from the Revolutionary period, Patrick Henry, said everyone should be regarded with suspicion. "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." On this too we have failed. Wiretapping, checking people's body fluids before hiring them for a job, torturing people as part of a national policy, the list goes on and on.

Afghan woman and child, one in five kids here won't live the age of five. Photo by Tim King Salem-News.com

But there is no greater failure of this administration than the decision to attack Iraq. Afghanistan was in great need of intervention and we were probably wise to help. Anyone who watches Charlie Wilson's War or otherwise knows the history, realizes that we as a nation were not going to do anything to step on the toes of the Soviets. It all had to be done quietly and nobody wanted their nation's flag attached to it. They also revealed our country's reluctance to help build schools after the Soviets left, or help the children. On this too, we failed. Our reluctance to ever recognize this causes us, even forces us to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

On that note, if there is one thing about Bush that really insanely raises my blood pressure, it is his pathetic early termination of the Afghan Children's Fund.

The amount of help it brought is indescribable, because Americans funded it, American people, and he went and canceled it shortly before I was in Afghanistan in late 2006. I learned that the lack of funding affected the restoration of a local hospital where children were treated. Only individual American efforts were helping these children who so desperately needed to be treated. (see: Independence Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan Opens with Many Needs)

Because Bush in his utter lack of wisdom canceled the fund, he ended the solitary way that people could inject money into the programs that benefit children in Afghanistan which has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Americans would drop to their knees and cry if they saw how bad children over there have it. How they don't have shoes in the winter, or food or wood for heat.

I can not help the kids there with all the hours of video I recorded of them suffering, literally, because there is not a solid way other than working directly through military commanders to get the money in. Each year those commands change, it is more than challenging, because Bush ended the only way to help kids in a country we bombed and bombed and bombed.

Our troops are honorable and deserve a rest. Standing up to warmongers is not anti-American but it is healthy. Courtesy: beyondsatire.us

In general, it stupefies me that people would ever consider themselves "pro-war". I know war can sometimes be necessary, but our attitude is far beyond that anymore. I know that if we have a war, those who fight it should be honored for taking on the hardest role in all of life, but they should not be sent into an unnecessary conflict.

If military fighters fight a good fight and accomplish something with their spilled blood, then it may have been a worthy investment of their time, as long as victims were freed and the world as a result of it, became a better place.

Then we need to take care of them when they come home. It isn't the war protesters who dishonor them, at least they are rooting to bring the forces home where they won't be shot at. Instead it is the cheerleaders who chant in total ignorance that cause the fighting to go on, bringing questionable results. To boot, the VA is a pathetic shell of an organization, vastly underfunded and packed with senseless policies and red tape.

We as a nation have dropped the ball, and we don't demand enough accountability, and we listen to liars like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly who never served in the military. We follow others like Cheney, and Rumsfeld and Rove, who also never wore a uniform, yet root for war and anything that divides and alienates people. It is not weak to love your neighbor more than these characters encourage you to.

"Unless the mass [of people] retains sufficient control over those intrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression." Thomas Jefferson and our other forefathers knew that we needed to be mindful and watchful of our government, but those media pundits have convinced their listeners otherwise.

They liked this administration because it supported them. The last one gave them fodder and wouldn't have questioned their right to be critical. The next one is a total threat and they know it. Now the plump drug addict Limbaugh is encouraging his listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton. There is not time to describe the insults he has lobbed at her over the years, they both are nauseating for the peculiar and just plain wrong alliance.

The Founding Fathers knew it was vital for we, the American people, to be responsible citizens and are entitled to information about what our government is doing. After all, they intentionally set it up that way. They knew so long ago, that the government has the power of coercion over our lives.

As we struggle in Iraq, a place we never should have gone, and contemplate military action against Iran, which also has done nothing to us in recent years, we are still in Afghanistan, a country that unlike the others, needed our military's intervention.

A good example of a war that should be fought and needs to be fought but isn't, is in Burma. The country that today is called Myanmar is a bloody evil dictatorship under their military junta's rule, and if any self respecting nation thinks war is a sometimes worthy cause, they have missed out so far on a big opportunity to prove it.

We have lost our way as a nation, but we can find our way back if a number of things go the right way. The warring mentality is wrong and war should be reserved as a last resort, only employed under dire circumstances, not because a blue blooded spoon in the mouth heir wants to be called "a war president." We are fortunate to have a military force far superior to any other in the world, with more honor and integrity than ever could be measured. It should be saved and reserved and never abused.

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Today, in addition to his role as a war correspondent in Afghanistan where he spent the winter of 2006/07, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated only with Google News. Tim's coverage from Iraq that was set to begin in April has been delayed and may not take place until August, 2008. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com