Never Forget

They were so colossal that they didn't even seem real. When seen from New Jersey, they were striking for their shear size and how they stood alone above everything else in a city of tall buildings. They were just big and square blocks but they were beautiful.

Just like all the souls that perished when they were destroyed.

When I see those images today, I feel exactly the same today as the day it happened.

I want to kill them all.

And we did that first time in Afghanistan. We killed plenty in a wide variety of ways. Then more came and we killed them too. And then they made more and we've been killing them ever since. The targets become more elusive and we become more adept at finding them. It's an ongoing battle that has changed the United States from a freewheeling democracy interested in personal freedom and how far an individual can go in life, into an armed camp brimming with costly defenses and increasing the misery index of every American. Such is our modern world of constant surveillance, wide-spread tracking and endless regulations. We used to lament that there were cameras everywhere and now we look for them everywhere to give us a sense of safety. Good luck with that.

The Twin Towers were attacked because they were the symbol of American commerce, American achievement and the freedom or our marketplace. That they were in New York City was fitting because NYC represents everything the country has to offer. And for the most part you can walk to it.

So after the Towers were destroyed by Muslim Terrorists, what does that self-absorbed lame-brain New York Mayor Micheal Bloomberg do? He turns their replacement into a stupid design contest. And the building that went up, The "Freedom Tower" looks absurd at best. It's shit.

And it only took 11 years to put it up! That's a year longer than it took to complete both of the Twin Towers.

They should have gone to city hall, gotten the old plans out of the basement and put the towers back the way they were in the same amount of time to put up.

THAT would have shown the people around the world who hate the United States for being the United States exactly how futile their efforts to destroy us was. But it didn't happen.

They did destroy us.

Now we have representatives in the United States Congress like Ilhan Omar, the US House of Representative's Jew-hating official from Minnesota who, for the life of them, will not mention what happened on 9/11 and by whom it came about. They will not acknowledge that so many people died who had nothing to do with their killer's zealous self-righteousness Islamic judgment.

And when they exhibit their callousness and disgust with the country they represent what happens? Why they are surprised by the fact that few Americans agree with them! Then they openly lament that it is THEY who are the victim of a terrible religious hatred. The majority of the people who agree with Representative Omar are the racist bastards who live in the 5th district in Minnesota and who voted her into office.

And the rest of them live in Washington DC.

We shall never accept such judgment or cynicism from anybody. Not from the former crazed mayor of New York City Micheal Bloomberg, not from the racist and America hating Rep. Omar and not from the Political Left in this country who would rather see our cities and towns over-run with the world's great unwashed than to see our own hard working, tax paying people who are not THEM succeed.

For all it's faults, the United States is still the most giving and benevolent society on the face of the Earth.

But you won't hear that from Representative Ilhan Omar or her ilk.

Trump Ending Frivolous Wars

Can this even be happening?

Not since Richard Nixon has an American President actually managed to end an armed conflict that wasn't just won outright. Let's face it, this country no longer fights wars with winning them in mind. Not at all, we fight them to keep the military arms industry afloat.

The United States is the top seller of military arms in the world. We sell twice as much weaponry around the world as #2 Russia. For our weapons industry, PEACE is the enemy. Having peace break out anywhere in the world is bad for business. And because of the diligent efforts of past Presidents and war industry Senators in the U.S. Congress, business has been very, very good.

Since the end of WWII, the war strategy of the U.S. has changed from winning to a constant rotating presence that hasn't proved a bit effectual in winning, stopping or preventing further pain and misery to the countries we occupy. It's really about not killing the job. And if some people get killed along the way, well, that's just business.

Finally out of Syria

We had no business being there in the first place. It was not our conflict since Syria is and remains a sovereign nation. That's supposed to mean something. If it wasn't for the Obama financed "Arab Spring" and his blatant arming of ISIS in the region, the Syrian civil war would have been over years ago and much less blood would have been shed. This intervention only prolonged the war and the pain war inflicts. Russia has every right to defend it's interests in the country since it has had a strong and legally binding relationship with Syria and Assad since at least WWII. That's supposed to mean something too.

Colonial interests drive Europe to press for Syrian intervention. The French in particular remain keenly interested in getting their hooks back into the region and have been behind much of the information surrounding the phony "gas attacks" that seem to serve as an excuse to deplete Syria's dictator Bashir Assad's ability to defend his government from the outsider-backed insurgency.

We were only in Syria so that Bashir Assad and Russia would not win. But legally and in the eyes of the world, there was only so much we could do. Our government and that of France kept trying to manufacture a reason to commit more resources to ultimately overthrow Assad to plunge the country into Libyan style chaos in the hopes that Russia would find their base on the Mediterranean no longer tenable but U.S. public opinion and independent voices in our government would not support such subterfuge.

Now it's time to end the charade.

The United States efforts to overthrow world powers "we don't like" has no basis or support in our laws. It has no reasoning beyond those of a tyrant and have brought us no satisfaction or good results for all the money and time we've spent.

But the U.S. military machine has plenty of time and plenty of money, doesn't it?

Enter the War Hawks.

Representatives of the Military Industrial Machine have come out against President Trump's move to end a military conflict. Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been a big supporter of armed conflict in the Middle East in his 8 years in office. It didn't take too much checking to find out why.

Florida has the largest war industry machine in the nation with 20 major military installations and nearly all of the nation's leading defense contractors. Florida also boasts $13.6 Billion in Department of Defense contracts. In fact, the scope of the state of Florida's involvement in the American "War Effort" is outright staggering.

Now what are they going to do if we stop fighting in the Middle East? Doesn't America know that all those bombs feed people?

At least now I know how Senator Rubio got elected. He's made a deal with the Devil.

A quick search on North Carolina, home to Senator Lindsay Graham, another sudden war hawk, brags on it's "Invest in North Carolina" brochure that they have the Third Largest active duty and reservist population in the United States and yields a skilled workforce pipeline for the defense industry. It has 5 major military bases and is #4 in military economic output with $11 Billion in Department of Defense contracts.

This is why Senator Lindsay Graham supports continued fighting in the Middle East. After all, it's only uneducated non-American poor people we're killing.

The Longer We Stay, the More We Fight

I originally hadn't bought into the "We're making more Radicals" argument when it was originally posed, incidentally, by the Democrats who now suddenly want us to keep our military presence in the Middle East, but over time I find that the region just never seems to run out of people wanting to throw themselves at a tank with a bomb strapped to their body. It reminds me of Major Colonel Bill Kilgore's line in the Vietnam movie "Apocalypse Now" when he asks rhetorically, "Don't these people ever give up?"

It's easy to convince people that the United States is coming for them when they are in your country shooting the place up.

Getting out of Afghanistan

After 17 long, long, long, long years in this country, are they any better off? Are WE? I mean all the "good will" we have sewn over there will come back in Spades, right? They still hate us. They hate us when we are there and they say we've abandoned them when we leave. All they want is our money and they'll never become an independent nation if they take it. It's a circular paradox that is no longer our problem.

We defeated the Talaban when they blew up the Twin Towers in New York way back when and now they've undergone a number of reformations and they either are still a force to be reckoned with or they aren't but frankly they aren't. They are a bunch of armed radicals that will exist whether the U.S. is there or isn't there but without us being there, they will have less guns and weapons to be anything but a group of Muslim killing Muslims since there will be no more Americans to shoot at.

We can't stay there forever and at some point either they will have to take care of themselves or they won't. It's been 17 years. GW Bush spent 7 years trying to get the Afghans ready to fight for themselves. Obama spent 8 years trying to get them ready and they've had 2 years under President Trump. How much more time will they need if they still aren't ready after all this time?

Anyone saying we are "abandoning" Afghanistan now after spending more time there than anywhere in the United State's history of warfare, is just trying to stay on the War Gravey Train that being on the side of Rome often provides. It's a spurious argument.

The Kurds

There is no easy, cheap or quick solution to the Independent Kurdish State issue. The Kurds have always helped out the U.S. in the region. They've fought under both GW Bush and Obama and they're helping now but the glaring fact remains that the United States has neither the authority to establish a Kurdish State or the resources to defend one should they try.

Turkey will not allow an independent Kurdish state under any circumstances and will bring their considerable might against one if established. We weren't in Syria to help the Kurds establish an independent state. They know this. They will have to keep fighting for their independence.

We Have our Own Problems

And a major problem right now is Security at the U.S. Boarder. There is no logic in fighting foreign wars for foreign interests when are going to end up losing the nation here at home.

The American Taxpayer shells out more money than most people in the world produce in a year on defense and welfare spending and both are out of control. The working U.S. citizen scrimps and saves for their retirement and most workers try to sock away dough for their later years. This becomes increasingly hard to do when so much is taken out of your paycheck before it even gets to you.

War is frivolous when it accomplishes nothing. As an industry, it is immoral at best. At worst, it's industrialized murder and whether it is waged in a "humane" fashion or not makes no difference if we are just going about it by rote.

Time to think of the people who fight our wars. We owe it to them and the military families that when we fight, we will fight with purpose and to ultimately win and not so that a military corporation can keep it's stock numbers up. We don't need to have a war for every generation to keep military traditions alive. We should try to interrupt this pattern one time just to see what happens.

Peace could become a habit. 

Middle East Solution: Quit Arming Everybody!

Quit trying to train one group of people to fight another. Quit giving anybody with a grudge and a Koran a gun and a reason to use it. Get the hell out of the Middle East altogether so they can reach equilibrium on their own.

The Middle East is just an open air market for weapons of mass destruction furnished by your “friends” the United States Government.

You may ask yourself now, after 14 years of buildups, pullouts, surges and training goals, just how many enemies can the United States make in the region? The answer comes in the form of another question: How many people are IN the region?

How much death and destruction can the Obama Administration sew? After watching the previous presidential regime of George W. Bush take a “Don’t Kill the Job” position in Afghanistan and Iraq where winning the war wasn’t really on the agenda. Just keep throwing people, money and arms into the place and SOMETHING good may happen.

Well, it never did and every day, week, month or year we spend over there will not bring us any closer to an ending. Get out.

There isn’t a working brain cell in anybody in the U.S. military who thought that they could train and arm a Syrian force to go after Bashar al-Assad.

It’s all been a colossal hoax, all a lie. And all the money, U.S. taxpayer money, a commodity that grows in shorter supply every day, is gone in an instant. What happened?

Nobody knows. It’s all a game to these people. Nothing is real.

If you wish to know why a general mood of despair is gripping the U.S. military, then look no further. The military has become a politicized den of ineptitude that cannot bring itself to actually do the job that it was designed to do: kill the enemy and take all their shit.

If our military can’t do this or its commanders lack the will to carry this out then it should NOT be deployed.

We’ve wasted 14 years on a mishmash of ideas and lack of an end-game. Just what were we supposed to do if we win?

But that’s a moot point now.

There are still people in our government still talking like we are going to send over a large force and finally end the war and wipe out ISIL. Just how delusional is that? 

ISIL is the best armed force in the region because we gave them the best weapons indirectly. We first gave them to our friends the Iraqi Army. They in turn dropped them into the hands of ISIL. There is also evidence that our U.S. forces actually trained some of ISILs’ top leaders just as we did the Afghans when the Soviets were pushing through the country.  Now the forces that turned the tables on the Russians are turning the tables on us by our own design. 

ISIL is our people, the Iraqi Army are our people, the Kurds are our people. They are ALL our people fighting each other over there. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we're training the Russians and supplying them with armored vehicles. 

We are done wasting resources on people who won’t fight for themselves and who are all too willing to enable ISIL to take over.

We’ve helped too. 

New Obama Strategy: Arm Everyone in Middle East!

“This really will solve a lot of problems.” 

So says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. “This way, everyone in the region has a chance to defend themselves from radical Islam.”

Mr. Kerry elaborates, “Since ISIL is now the best armed military force in the region thanks to the Iraqi military running away and leaving their U.S. supplied tanks, shoulder-fired rockets and other nefarious high-end devices of death to be picked up by this latest radical militant group, the United States has no choice but to now give EVEN BETTER weapons to somebody else in the hope that they can stop their advance. It's just common sense."

"It doesn't matter who we give weapons to really. All anyone has to do is take a pledge not to use them against U.S. troops in the future and it's “Here you go, boys!”.

Have a laser guided Hellfire missile installation! Here, take a couple of trunks full of night vision goggles! We were only going to give them to the Day County South Dakota police department anyway so that they could intimidate people who cross the street in the center of town against the light.” Says Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, “We just have so much of this war stuff lying around, it would be a waste not to use it for SOMETHING.”

U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf sums up the situation, “First the U.S. arms the regime of Bashir Assad. Then Assad falls out of favor so the U.S. government was forced to arm all the different opposition groups trying to overthrow Assad. In this manner the U.S. also is arming ISIL opposition groups even though they too are radical Muslims. We supplied military arms to the opposition groups in Libya who were working to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi too. Unfortunately, these were the same people who attacked the U.S. Embassy building there, killing ambassador Christopher Stevens along with agents Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, but those are the chances you take when you are try to win the war on terror, right?”

John McCain, U.S. Senator from the state of Arizona had this to say about his full endorsement of the new Obama military policy, “Since these radicals have very sophisticated weapons now, it is the obligation of the United States to keep arming opposition groups. What these groups are actually opposed to is not the point. As long as they are opposed to killing people, they are the people to arm and hopefully they will only kill for peace.”

Whitehouse Chief of Staff Denis McDonough explains the implementation of the new strategy, “With so many splintered groups opposing not only ISIL, Assad and Al Qaeda, the Pentagon has just decided to drop weapons into the desert and let whoever finds them form their own opposition group. They’re just going to shoot somebody anyway.” 

“And why wouldn't ISIL want U.S. weapons?” asks the rhetorical U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, “We make the most sophisticated weapons in the world. Nobody is even close, except maybe for China but you have Bill Clinton to thank for that. Just think about it, we can hover a heavily armed drone above your house for 20 hours a day almost anywhere in the world so when you eventually come out to walk the dog, Blamo! You never even know what hit you! How cool is that?”

Mr Holder goes on, “It’s not important who gets killed by these weapons but that somebody is putting them to use. Weapons are a big export of the United States and as long as somebody is using them, we can make more. It’s good for the economy. Hell, we've been giving them away to Mexico for years.”, he states proudly.

Vice President Joe Biden adds, “What’s the difference if people in the Middle East are killing each other with knives or top-of-the-line high powered sniper rifles? They’re just as dead, right?” In this part of the world we see a niche and we work to fill it, that’s what we do!

President Obama hopes to just declare this new strategy the law anytime now.

I Wish Dick Cheney Would Just Shut Up

I know there is some unwritten rule that past presidents don’t open their mouths and interfere with their successor while they are running the country and I think this should go for former Vice-Presidents as well. 

Especially since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are probably the biggest reasons why we got Barack Obama as President, Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader and that fiasco of fiasos, Obama-Care.

I hate to break it to Mr. Cheney but George Bush was no great shakes as president either. Although he didn't spend nearly the amount of money that Obama has, it wasn't for lack of trying. G W Bush still spent way too much taxpayer money on give-a-ways and vote buying. 

He piled onto the bogus and wasteful War on Drugs, forgoing education, prevention and treatment and instead focusing on attacking the demand side of the equation by channeling most of the money to law enforcement and building more jails. He spent Billions in his efforts to curry favor with the law enforcement industry and buying their votes. 

He also connived to expand Medicare with his Prescription Drug “Improvement” plan with its prescription drug benefit coverage which was just a vote-buying scheme for the AARP at the future expense of their grand kids who will be the ones left with the crippling balloon payments once grammy and grampy have gone to the big beyond.  Instead of cutting costs for Medicaid, which was pretty much broke at the time, George W. Bush expanded its benefit payouts, increased costs and provided no funding mechanism for the budget increases thus ballooning the deficit by an alarming amount. 

Then there was Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” attack on education. It provided all of the bureaucracy and none of the means to pay for its implementation of new testing for students or the hiring and training of more teachers. This funding was left for the states to provide at local taxpayers expense. Thank you Mr. President!

And ALL the Republocrats went along with it in the same lock-step the Demlican Leftists are being accused of now. People like the former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi and former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, people so driven to follow the President that they totally disregarded the political and financial fallout. History now shows how massive the fallout was. 

And for Dick Cheney’s part, just how "divested" of Halliburton was he when the organization when they got those massive contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan that reaped Billions for the company and it's shareholders at the expense of the American people.

The Bush Administrations prosecution of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq left a lot to be desired. It was almost as if they went about it like union contractors and didn't want to “Kill the Job” by actually trying to win. After all this time there was never any lasting change in the country. There were never any decisive victories and the Administration left legitimate Prisoners of War to languish in Guantanamo Bay instead of setting up a Military Tribunal to try them in a timely fashion, preferring to let the next administration do that part. The Bush/Cheney Administration should have tried them quickly and remove any future of botching the job. But that wasn’t the point was it? The Iraq war was all about the money.

Rand Paul isn't alone when he openly accused Dick Cheney of pushing for the Iraq War so that Halliburton could profit.

Until Barak Obama came along, it was GW who was spending money like a sailor on shore-leave. Obama just picked up his baton and ran with it. At this point in history the arguement shouldn't be so much a case for Obama being the worst President ever but more about who are the worst Presidents ever since back-to-back both GW Bush and Barack Obama have proven to be a deadly duo to this nation.
 

And one has to laugh when Cheney accuses the present Republican Party of Isolationism because they,  over a decade and Multi-Billions of dollars later, with little to show for the lives and other resources expended, didn't want to continue the wars in the Middle East! 

So for Dick Cheney to come out and say ANYTHING right now looks to me to be a FEEBLE attempt at political redemption.  It’s like saying “Yes, we were a bunch of fiscally irresponsible screw-ups but look at Obama, he’s really BAD!”

Please Mr. Cheney, haven’t you caused enough damage to the United States already?

Please just go away.