IS IT WARTIME YET?

IS IT WAR TIME YET?

By Peter Fredson

February 10, 2006

Please, someone enlighten me. For the past 5 years I have been informed by Bush or some cabinet member that this is War time, that we are IN a War, we are AT War, we have a Wartime President, and we are preparing War against Iran and Syria, etc. Bush talks constantly of a War against terrorists.

I’d like to know with what country are we at War? Are we at War with specific countries, with a single person in a country, or with multiple persons in many countries?

I know there was a World War I, and a World War II. I have copies of their Declarations of War. War was declared, proclamations announced, armies were raised, several million people were destroyed, not to mention entire cities.

If we are now at War, is it World War III, Bush’s War I, an extension of the Gulf War, War against Afghanistan, War Against Iraq, Generalized War against anyone Bush declares is not with him? I’d like to know the name of the specific War we are in. Is it really a War we are now In?

George Bush said we were at War after 9/ll, against terrorists and terror and any country that harbored terrorists. People involved in the 9/11 disaster were mainly Saudis, so why are we not at War with the Saudis? But Bush is friendly with the Saudis, and will remain so as long as a gallon of petroleum is left in that country.

If we are at war with specific terrorists and everyone that participated in flying planes against the Twin Towers is now dead, then whom are we at War With? For a while after 9/11 Bush of “getting those terrorists’ as though the people who commandeered the planes were still alive.

Is anyone who has a grudge against the U.S. and the Bush administration, and would like to change the Bush regime, a terrorist?

Does that leave out anyone in Muslim countries, or in former Soviet countries, or even in Europe? I believe that many thousands of people, all around the world, fervently hate Bush and his neocon fascist theocrats and would happily see them vanish from the daily scene.

I know there were actual terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, sponsored by people like Osama bin Laden, arising out of unannounced Wars with the Soviet Union and continuing throughout the Gulf War. The history of terrorism goes back a long way in time, often coexistent with the history of the corporate military establishment and warmongering.

The Taliban regime of Afghanistan supported the training camps and refused to eject the people being trained. Were we at war with just the Taliban, just with people in the training camps, or with all the other people in Afghanistan? Are we justified in killing anyone in Afghanistan if they are not “with us?”

But then the picture gets confused. Did we actually declare “War” against Afghanistan? Did this qualify as the beginning of WWIII? I know that troops invaded Afghanistan, destroyed the main training camps, dispersed the trainees and occupied the country. We changed the regime, installed our own puppet ruler and then settled down to daily killing random Afghanis and friends seeking vengeance against American brutality and destruction.

I know we are still there. In fact, the other day I heard that Britain was sending another 3,000 troops, with other contingents to arrive in Afghanistan because evidently terror is on the rise there. Must we exterminate all the inhabitants of Afghanistan to stop their hate?

Was the War over when we invaded and occupied Afghanistan? Did simple Police Action then begin? If a single terrorist remains in a country, does that justify our occupying that country, killing its inhabitants, substituting our own puppets, and calling it “democracy?”

Osama bin Laden escaped from being surrounded and went to some other country as our favorite terrorist. Did each country bin Laden escaped to then qualify for a different War? Bush said he would fight terror wherever it raised its ugly head and that if they weren’t with us, then they were against us?

Is “they” a country, a group of people, or anyone Bush considers to be a terrorist? Is “Stateless Terrorism” an entity? Is a vague ideology like the neocon strategy for world domination a terrorist entity?

If terrorists are spread world wide, does that mean we are then at War with the world? Are we now in WW IV, world-wide, with the right to invade any country or send missiles and planes into it to seek terrorists and in the process kill any civilians that happen to have been living there?

Did the Downing Street Memo that had Bush and his neocons talking about invading Iraq and other countries, long before 9/11, purposely create terror? Was the War against terror actually a very good pretext to occupy Iraq for its petroleum, to put military bases there and a large embassy from which diplomats could fan out to threaten and dominate the entire Middle East?

Did not the Bush family and their cronies, with their sales of weapons and aggressive trading in oil, enrage people who were victims of weapons and cultural arrogance? What part did Christian fundamentalism, with its contempt for Islam, play in cultural jingoism and Islamic resentment?

For instance, Iraq had never threatened the U.S. and in the past 4 years we found they had no WMD’s, no Yellow Cake, no aluminum tubes for nuclear devices, no long-range missiles, no fleet of pilotless planes, no nuclear bombs, thus no mushroom clouds.

Yet all the War dances of the entire Bush cabinet alleging enormous imminent fright over Saddam Hussein’s EVIL intentions, and all their twisting of intelligence to suit their New World Order plans, created a War out of imagination, lust for power, and hunger for oil.

Does 9/11 justify EVERYTHING for neocon expansionism? Is this a War or simple looting and domination of entire countries?

When and HOW did that get to be a WAR? And after we murdered about 40,000 Iraqis “accidentally” as “collateral damage” in the process of capturing Saddam, jailed him, and occupied the entire country, installed our own puppet regime under our own ruler, was the War then over?

When Bush swaggered onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, under a huge sign announcing MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, was the War then not over?

When Bush later announced that he had brought peace, liberty, democracy, sovereignty and a constitution back to Iraq was the War then not over?

Does Bush have to wait until every single person in Iraq that wants to kill him is dead, will the War then be over? Does he want to wait and lure terrorists from all over the world into Iraq, like flies on fly-paper, and kill them all there rather than have them come over here?

Does staying a failed course make any sense? Does repetition of grave mistakes not need correcting? Isn’t there any sane person in the Bush administration or Senate?

Bush sent several shiny missiles from pilotless planes screaming into a small village in Pakistan, killing innocent peasants whose families that lived in that land for ages, without consulting its sovereign government, so was he not then at War with Pakistan?

Can Bush send deadly missiles into any country in the world he pleases, solely because he holds the keys to the atomic arsenal of the U.S.? Again, is there not a sane person in the Senate to curb the reckless and murderous acts of their arrogant President?

If Burma, or Venezuela, or North Korea should happen to have a person in that country that Bush labels a terrorist, can he then simply go ahead and send missiles into that country? Will he be justified in sending troops into that country and have the U.S. occupy it for generations, spending a trillion dollars in the process?

If Bush will not leave Iraq, telling the puppets he installed to go f...k themselves, but continues to build huge permanent military bases there, and continues to occupy a palace that Saddam built, now intended for a huge embassy, from which to dominate the entire Middle East, will the War ever be over?

How long will U.S. troops skulk the streets with cocked weapons at the ready to shoot anyone who seems to object to their presence? How many houses must they knock down, how many people must they kill, how much damage to a country is too much? If the war is declared to be “over” can Bush still be War President with unlimited powers?

Perhaps Bush wants to remain War President forever as it makes him feel good, powerful, courageous, and heroic?

So, are we in a proclaimed War? When will it be over? Who does the unproclaiming? If our President lied to start a War, must he now lie to stop one?

If Condi Rice stirs up enough fright with her new mushroom clouds to send missiles into Iran, will that be a War, a Police Action, or a “justifiable preemption based on evil intentions,” or another way to loot an Arab country and in that way get oil, land, puppet regimes, and proselytize the infidels at the same time?

I saw huge signs over Bush’s head, recently, proclaiming VICTORY, when he was making a speech justifying his imperial arrogance. Should not aggression cease if victory has been accomplished, unless it was another lie to bolster up his diminishing polls?

If all the “amazing progress” Bush reports nearly daily were added up, what is left to do? Is there no sane person in the Senate, or Judiciary, to tell Bush, “Enough is enough. Get our troops home, now.”

Would it not be cheaper, more effective, to send individual CIA assassins around the world to kill individual terrorists where they lurking?

Right now Bush is proposing the largest budget in world history. Most of the budget will go to his cronies for military expansion, rehabilitation of equipment, high explosives, bunker busters, helicopters, gun-ships, nuclear submarines, armaments, new tanks and humvees.

Certainly vast amounts of precious Petroleum will be burned racing around the deserts of Araby. More troops will be killed. But many more terrorists will be created by the brutal occupation, destruction, and deaths. Civilian deaths don’t matter to Bush. When will it be enough?

Bush supporters seem delighted to occupy Muslim territory and kill the infidel. Oil and money flow in abundance to rich Republicans. The poor, starving, homeless, illiterate, sick, aged, black, brown, and other people are all grist for the corruption mill.

Republicans seem to delight in death and destruction, at least praise Bush for his “accomplishments” in saving us from the terror he initiated or creates by murderous occupation. So there seems to be no rush to cease daily threats and acts of war.

The undeclared WAR will probably go on as long as Republican Senators remain confident in keeping their jobs by being sycophants of a petulant, carefree, egotistical, dry-drunk, failed executive. Death and destruction does not seem to disturb them, but perhaps the threat of losing their jobs might.

Anyone voting for any sycophant Republican must be gullible, stupid or a fully-committed True Believer with absolutist dogma and a wish for the Rapture to take them all to Paradise.

Dick and George could use a bevy of virgins, or perhaps a good stiff shot of heavenly Jack Daniels ambrosia, to take their minds off of killing for fun and profit.