"This is not the USA my generation fought to preserve"

[jamiroguy1]

"This is not the America my generation fought to preserve"

by Paul Findley

(Monday 02 February 2004)

During my long life, America has surmounted many severe challenges. As a teenager, I experienced the great depression. In World War II, I saw war close-up as a Navy Seabee. As a country newspaper editor, I watched the Korean War from afar. As a Member of Congress, I agonized through the Vietnam War from start to finish. During these challenges I never for a moment worried about America’s ultimate survival with its great principles and ideals still intact.

Today, for the first time, I worry deeply about America’s future. We are in a deep hole. I believe President George W. Bush’s decision to initiate war in Iraq will be the greatest and most costly blunder in American history. He has set America on the wrong course.

I must speak out. As best I can, I must bestir those who will listen to the grave damage already done to our nation and warn of still greater harm if Bush continues his present course during a second term in the White House.

When terrorists assaulted America on 9/11, killing nearly 3,000 innocent civilians, President Bush responded, not by focusing on bringing to justice the criminals who were responsible, but by initiating a war against impoverished, defenseless Afghanistan, a broad attack that killed at least 3,000 innocent people. Even before the dust settled in Afghanistan, the president initiated another war--this one in Iraq, a war planned long before 9/11.

In the name of national security, the president has brought about fundamental, revolutionary changes that threaten our nation’s moorings. At home and abroad, he has undercut time-honored principles of the rule of law.

Abroad, he has made war a ready instrument of presidential policy instead of reserving it as a last-resort should peril confront our nation. In public documents, he claims the personal authority to make war any time and any place he alone chooses and the authority to use force to keep unfriendly nations from increasing their own military strength.

His power is unprecedented. He directs a military budget greater than all other nations combined. At his instant, personal command is more military power than any nation in all recorded history ever before possessed.

He proclaims America the global policeman and for that role he has already expanded a worldwide system of U.S. military bases. Four new ones are in place in Iraq and four others near the Caspian Sea.

He orders the development and production of a new generation of nuclear arms for U.S. use only, meanwhile threatening other nations—Iran and North Korea, for example—against acquiring any of its own.

Unleashing America’s mighty sword, he brings about regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq but mires our forces in quagmires from which escape seems unlikely for many years.

He isolates America from common undertakings with time-tested allies. He trivializes the United Nations and violates its charter.The president offers wars without end, and the Congress shouts its approval. But his use of America’s vast arsenal is so reckless that he is regarded widely as the most dangerous man in the world.

Here at home, in his frantic quest for terrorists, he stoops to bigoted measures based on race and national origin, tramples on civil liberties, and spreads fear and disbelief throughout the land. Those of Middle Eastern ancestry, and many others, buckle under government-inflicted humiliations and abuses with trepidation, sorrow and resentment.

Frustrated by Iraqi dissidents who protest the occupation by killing U.S. troops almost daily, the president reverts to war measures. He orders heavy aerial bombing in wide areas of the countryside.

Even as body bags pile high, the president seems oblivious to war’s horror. The rockets and one-ton bombs may kill a few Iraqi guerrillas and cause others to pull back and pause, but they kill and maim innocent civilians, level homes, turn neighborhoods into rubble, and permanently blight many lives. They create deep-seated outrage, not cooperation.

The Iraqi carnage is piled alongside the simultaneous destruction and blighting of American lives. More than 500 U.S. military personnel have been killed and, according to one estimate, nearly 10,000 have been wounded. Ponder that fact. Ten thousand American families permanently blighted in a war the United States initiated. Mark Twain, writing of war, once asked, “Will we wring the hearts of the unoffending widows with unavailing grief?â€

The president overreacts to 9/11 by leading America into a lengthy fiery trial that may last far into the future—years of U.S.-initiated wars designed to punish regimes believed to harbor terrorists.

This is not the America my generation fought to preserve in World War II.

Full editorial

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/4546/?PHPSESSID=f457254dd189fe12414c6d5d5785ae47

[ghhhhhost]

:clap:

now thats what im talkin about...good to see americans who risked their lives for this country aren't as blind as some of the chickenhawks on the board...who sit at home in their comfy computer chairs and talk about what they would do in Iraq..manifesting their video game fantasies here..calling us with an opinion differing from theirs traitors..

[kramadas]

good article!

[pattbateman]

fuck

that

shit

[howardstone]

yeah, word to yo moms biatch:mad:

[ghhhhhost]

yeah ..thats right bitch..no response when you cant throw out the usual traitor rhetoric

[howardstone]

yeah, those damm chickenhawks:laugh:

[jamiroguy1]

Yes, this guy Paul Findley has an interesting perspective on the war and occupation.

[pattbateman]

im not gonna bash the dude

i just do not feel the smae way he does

am i not entitled to my opinion

my grandfather was in WWII and feels the exact opposite

[igloo]

Fri Feb 6,11:12 AM ET

By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer

TIKRIT, Iraq - For Staff Sgt. Isaac Day and many other American soldiers serving here, ridding Iraq (news - web sites) of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) made the war worthwhile — regardless of whether anyone ever finds weapons of mass destruction.

"I'm glad we got Saddam," said Day, of Tarpon Springs, Fla. "When I grow old I can tell my grandchildren that we liberated this country."

That was a sentiment expressed in dozens of interviews with U.S. soldiers stationed near Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and a center of resistance to the U.S. occupation.

"Saddam lived in splendor while the rest of his people had to fend for themselves," Maj. Paul Lehto of Kingston, Mass., said over lunch here.

Despite widespread resistance from some of America's oldest and closest allies, President Bush (news - web sites) launched the war last March because Iraq allegedly possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Senior administration officials also said Saddam wanted to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program which was cut short by the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).

However, no such weapons have been found. David Kay, who led the weapons search after the end of active combat, has said he doubted that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in recent years.

"My satisfaction came when we were riding through from Kuwait and all these children were shouting 'America is number one'," said Staff Sgt. Temu Gibson from Schenectady, N.Y.

Most of the 130,000 American troops stationed in Iraq have access to the Internet and other media and are aware of the growing political storm over the failure to find any weapons.

A number of them say Saddam's brutality to his own people justified the war.

"I have a shoebox full of pictures of people who have gone missing over the last 30 years," said one soldier who asked to be identified as Mac. "And people are getting all tied up over the WMD issue. Coming here was the right thing to do."

Still, the ongoing attacks by insurgents and the continuing loss of American lives underscore the political problems facing the Bush administration over the absence of any weapons of mass destruction.

Lt. Jerry England said it appeared that Bush had "played on the fear" of weapons of mass destruction in arguing the case for war. "It was a harder case to sell without them," said England, from Overland Park, Kan.

[mr mahs]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

"This is not the America my generation fought to preserve"

by Paul Findley

(Monday 02 February 2004)

The president overreacts to 9/11 by leading America into a lengthy fiery trial that may last far into the future—years of U.S.-initiated wars designed to punish regimes believed to harbor terrorists.

OVERREACTS?

This statement here shows this guy is out of touch with reality....

[igloo]

Originally posted by mr mahs

OVERREACTS?

This statement here shows this guy is out of touch with reality....

Exactly...the whole article is hyper-hysteria and a distortion of reality