America’s addiction to war and madness

By Frosty Wooldridge

Some historians say the brutal Russian dictator Joseph Stalin said, “God is on the side of the biggest guns.” 

Stalin killed something on the magnitude of 24 million people by various means during his reign of terror.  Hitler killed six million along with untold wreckage of humanity.  Estimates show Mussolini killed around 11 million people.  Some African brute in Sudan named Kony killed tens of thousands as announced by Facebook followers trying to stop him.

In the Muslim world, men execute 5,000 women annually for dishonoring the family.  Honor killings can be committed if a woman in anyway displeases her husband or wears jeans or steps out of the house on her own or in any way angers her father or husband. Thousands of other Muslim women suffer from acid being thrown in their faces.  In other words, methodically killing people ensures dominance.

Ten years ago, our own “brutal” President George W. Bush “snapped” and sent, thus far, over two million U.S. soldiers into Iraq and Afghanistan to give goat herders and tribesmen a piece of “shock and awe.”  Results:  over 100,000 civilians killed, hundreds of thousands of children left without families, 2.5 million Iraqi refugees and a completely devastated civilization left in tatters.

Last week, after four deployments in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales “mentally and emotionally snapped.” He executed 16 women and children.  When the inquiry finishes, it will be found that Bates lost his mind, went insane, or suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and transitory brain injury. He’ll be executed or sent to prison for life.

Yet who really stands on the guilty platform for these wars and all their atrocities?  Answer: George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, the Military Industrial Complex, bankers and the apathetic American people.  That’s who!

Do Bush, Obama or the U.S. military junta care about the individual carnage they perpetrate on millions of Iraqi people or  third world countries like Afghanistan,  filled with tribesmen and sheep herders?

No! Why? Answer: money! Loads and lots of it lining a bunch of corporate and banker pockets!  If the big money people had their way, they would carry on those wars for another 10 to 20 years ad infinitum.  

How can they do that?  Answer: they feed off the apathy and non-involvement of  the American people.  The “Great Silent Majority” of the 60s continues today.  With a volunteer Army, the MIC enjoys a never ending supply of naïve and gung-ho kids for their cannon fodder.  Without conscription, no one complains. That’s why Bales as well as millions of combat veterans, in varying degrees, suffer mental and emotional illness brought about by war. (200,000 Vietnam vets committed suicide upon returning home. And counting!)

Why did Bales kill all those people?  I remember my own U.S. Army Infantry training at E82 at Fort Benning, Georgia in June, July of 1968.  My drill instructor, Sgt. Pierce screamed into our ears, “What is your call as an infantry soldier?”

“To kill drill sergeant,” we screamed back. 

“I can’t hear you,” he screamed at us.

“To kill drill sergeant,” we screamed back louder.

The U.S. Army teaches young men to kill.  It does not teach or support mental, emotional or moral health techniques.

After starting the Korean, Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraq wars, is there any question that the United States of America and her people suffer addiction to wars?  Give any excuse such as the “Dominos effect” or “Gulf of Tonkin” or “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and our citizens cheer our military onward to killing and destroying some supposed enemy 10,000 miles away.

American presidents, through their soldiers, have killed millions of Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis and Afghans.

It’s really immoral and unprincipled on SO many levels.

It’s like the spurious “War on Drugs” for the past 41 years.  The U.S. government has thrown  37 million kids into jail for smoking a joint.   That’s 37 million ruined lives. In the meantime alcohol and cigarettes kill over 500,000 Americans a year for the past 41 years.  Example: 460,000 annually from lung cancer and 40,000 from traffic and liver deaths give or take a few, not to mention the wife beatings and child abuse from alcohol.   It’s absolutely insane how utterly thick we are as a people to carry on such madness.

Sgt. Bales’ wife, Karilyn Bales, bringing up two kids on her own, wrote a poignant diary of her tribulations as an Army wife.  Her gripping story should be told, but it will be forgotten while the Main Stream Media feeds off Sgt. Bales’ tragedy . (Look for “GI wife’s blog captured worry and sacrifices” by Karilyn Bales in the New York Times by Matt Flegenheimer, March 18, 2012.)

In the meantime, George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama enjoy their wealth, families and their status.  They will remain “untainted and untouched” from the wars they started and continue.  The lives of millions will suffer death and destruction not to mention ongoing misery and mental illness by Iraqis and Afghans.

As to our U.S. Army veterans, who will undo the slogan “To kill drill sergeant!” from their minds and hearts?  Those veterans were once some mother and father’s precious children just like yours—each important by their very essence.

Finally, we, the American people stand guilty with our disinterest and apathy to these 10 year wars.  I haven’t seen any mothers and fathers marching on Washington DC to stop these wars.  In the 60s, the college kids marched to stop Vietnam because they didn’t want to die for nothing.  Today with volunteers, nobody gives a ******.  That’s why these wars continue for 10 bloody years.

How many of us have called up our senators demanding that we exit Iraq and Afghanistan?  Phone your senators: 202-224-3121

Otherwise, Obama continues to conjure a war with Iran and the Military Industrial Complex licks its chops while the bankers smack their lips.  Once again, we will send millions of our kids into yet another combat zone via jingoistic fervor to create yet another Staff Sgt. Robert Bales who will kill because that is what the Army trained him to accomplish.   Ironically, we (you) the American people helped him.

How about a new way?  How about talking and listening to one another?  How about a “Department of Peace” to balance our “Department of Defense”?  How about the American people take a deep assessment at what the past four wars have accomplished?  Did those wars stop terror?  Did those wars create peace that we proclaim we desire?  Did those wars bring humanity to a higher moral and spiritual level?  If not, let’s intend peace.  Once we move toward peace, watch the “war paradigm” evaporate as we shift humanity to its highest and best.

“High principle is not bound to low precedent,” said Dr. Ernest Holmes.

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