We Should Have Known About the War in Pakistan
by paradox
In the movie Stripes, circa 1981, actor Bill Murray is exhorting his fellow soldiers to rally to the flag, hitch up the testicles and their packs and hustle up some rifle sweat because, well, hell, the greatness of America! “We’re 10-1!” He happily exhorts to them, the wry joke being we can finally admit failure and loss in Vietnam, even if our violent, jingoistic societal elements still won’t admit it for 1812.
35 times we have spun around the sun since, and what would Bill Murray proclaim our proud score to be now? The first Gulf War, a tepid win, only to be followed by losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why in the hell are you liberals complaining about war all the time? We’re 11-3!
With a sadness and alarm I find impossible to codify I’m afraid the joke is wrong again, we’re actually 11-4, we’ve been in a total state of war in Pakistan for at least 6 years and responsible for the deaths of at least 4,000 souls in 700 drone strikes.
For decades strict constitutionalists sounded the alarm that American methodology for war had gone horribly haywire, somehow we talked ourselves into the utter foolishness that some mega-penis patriarch Executive had the power to declare war and then, well, Congress just follows along.
In a horrible perversion no one saw coming a new technology—drone—was justifiably developed in secret, but then in vastly irresponsible leadership allowed to creep into a war theater weapon that secretly cascaded completely out of control, 700 strikes is total war, not even remotely a covert operation.
Journalist James Risen states President Obama fully embraced all militaristic elements of the previous Cheney administration so he could focus on the domestic goals of stimulus and healthcare. Complete twaddle, President Obama turned leadership of the Democratic Party into a brutally militaristic stance of violent war and weaponry so he could always beat off the inevitable Republican claims that Democrats are national security weenies who can’t fight.
Congressional and Executive leadership are ultimately responsible for this nuclear meltdown mess in Pakistan, but it never could have happened without a ridiculously compliant media who never reported any of it because of Secrecy, the almighty god of obsequious compliance. Stern Leaders told you to shut up, so amazingly you just did, there was never any war in Pakistan and we never did kill 4,000 human souls. We’re 11-3!
Long, long ago drones and all elements of their implementation became common knowledge, but with a scared and whipped journalism corps nothing was ever reported in Pakistan, the very worst humans could ever do to each other flew by completely under the radar of every average American citizen, none of us knew what was being blown up, who was being killed for why, how much was being spent for how long. Freedom!
Not only was the Pakistan war kept secret, but we should have heard the stories and heard from the people of Pakistan, somehow their geographic location and internet access (or lack thereof) stopped the reality of what they went though from getting out.
Lost. How vastly inadequate, how puny in scope the word actually conveys how we have wandered so far in serving our little people in this berserk rampage of war and weaponry, this reeking horror of splattered blood and explosions, the constitution in tatters along with our standing in the globe as a civilized, lawful people.
Show me the success, national security militarists, for the all the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan—all three we have or will lose, by the way—where is this security that you so rant about, this place of nirvana to be reached one way when all the violence stops? Well?
[spits] How well I know what violence can do, how easy it is to see the utter failure all of this war on terror violence has been since our century of grace was bestowed upon us. What terrible legacy violence always inflicts, it breeds and feeds upon itself.
Balefully looking to future Democratic Party leadership all I can do is plead for simple peace, what any of us can do who know this path of war is insanity that inflicts nothing but horrifying failure on our people.
Just peace, 2016 candidate, we don’t need secrecy, war, death and maiming to serve our people. If the 2016 candidate believes all this national security violence is the way to be we will fail as a Party and people, it can never work.