Ending Two Wars or Just Concentrating on the War at Home?

Barack Obama constantly tells us that he has “ended two wars.” Has he really? Or have the wars of which he speaks actually continued, but in which he has chosen to refuse to play a part, while he has been promulgating a war against his own countrymen?

There are a number of things going on in the world right now, each of which could be loosely defined as “war”. On the other hand, it could be argued that there is only one thing going on that could be called “war”, but that it’s happening in multiple places simultaneously. There is of course the war in the Islamic world which is supposed to be aimed at the world’s favorite whipping boy, the United States, but which actually results in an enormously larger number of Muslim-on-Muslim deaths than any that have been inflicted on Americans. It is spread over an area that encompasses Afghanistan, Pakistan, the entire Middle East, across the whole of North Africa, down the east coast of Africa into Somalia and in Nigeria with the behavior of Boko Haram. Then of course you have the war in the nations surrounding Russia, of which Crimea and Ukraine are the most active examples. Toss in the war in Venezuela which lobs verbal blasts at America, but is really aimed against its own people with a government in power trying to forestall an actual revolution, and you have a good case for which ever description that makes you feel comfortable.

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One could reasonably argue that wars don’t really settle too much. The famous American inter-family war, the Hatfields and McCoys is a perfect illustration of the failure of years of bloodshed and death resolving absolutely nothing. And wars that don’t resolve the underlying conflicts that trigger aggressive acts may pause occasionally, but then break out again between the same antagonists over the same conflicts. Of course a notable exception to that would be the end of the Carthaginian conflict which was probably the most definitely ended war in history with the Third Punic war in 146 B.C. when the entire city of Carthage was destroyed, never to be rebuilt. That pretty much eliminated those underlying conflicts pretty thoroughly. But wars don’t happen because of the geo-political equivalent of spontaneous combustion. Someone, some human being, actually decides that war is the thing to do. So who has decided that all these wars should be fought? And an even more important question, are these people insane?

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.— Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg trials, April 18, 1946

When we talk about the sanity of those who begin wars, regardless of what their justifications might be, we are talking about those for whom there has been a total break with reality. True insanity in the clinical sense. Look, if you will, at the violence directed at the smallest possible level, one-on-one personal attacks. If one only defines war as any violence directed externally, losing one’s temper could be viewed as a form of temporary insanity, couldn’t it? If someone punched out his brother-in-law because he took the turkey drumstick that he wanted for Thanksgiving dinner, most people would instantly say “That’s nuts!” And it is. Of course the result of that momentary insanity might be tragic and permanent, but it is still the result of insanity. If a person declared that God had told them to kill anyone and everyone who didn’t believe that the moon was made of green cheese, most people would agree that these Green Cheese evangelists were crazy. If an individual explained that everyone simply had to do exactly as that individual said because he or she was the most brilliant person who had ever lived, the vast majority of people would probably agree that he was a good candidate for a rubber room. Not to make light of the work of psychiatrists, but in reality no truly insane person can be cured. They can be treated, and drugged to the eyeballs to reduce the risk to themselves and others, but they cannot be cured. And they are obviously a danger to others, because the danger might be reduced, but it is not eliminated. But what about conflicts that do not involve violence in the commonly understood sense of the term? War is not merely the manifestation of violence, but a battle of wills between two groups or nations or even between two individuals. One side, the aggressor, wants the other to do something, while the other side refuses to comply. There is no possibility of compromise because both sides are absolutely convinced of the correctness of their positions on whatever the issue might be. This sort of aggression does not always appear as armies with deadly weapons. In the United States today, a war is being fought between the government and the citizens who believe their “leaders” have become too tyrannical and are threatening their personal freedoms. Guns and open violence have not displayed themselves in this conflict – yet. Other weapons are being utilized, however, in this form of warfare. Only the Liberal-Progressive statists/fascists prefer to call it “lawfare.” Legislation, regulation, executive orders, petty tyrants in the bureaucracy are the weapons being employed. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous book Democracy in America, clearly foresaw this situation. He noted that:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

de Tocqueville continues, describing what we are seeing now, daily:

“A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. -- Chapter VI: What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear

War often holds an existential threat from the aggressor. Witness the situation between Israel and Hamas. When Hamas is determined to end the very existence of Israel and every Jew in it, how can one “negotiate” a settlement? When Barack Obama is determined to destroy the strength and very essence of America, how can a compromise be reached? Progressives use the very tools described by de Tocqueville to accomplish the dismantling of individual freedom in this nation, and this has been going on for over a century. Look at the administrations of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and now Barack Obama. No matter how often these megalomaniacal messiah types are defeated for re-election at the polls, the damage they inflict has already been done. The rot in the foundations of our form of government “of the people, for the people and by the people has set in and the intervening administrations who were supposed to fix the rot never seem to restore the country to what it was intended to be. It is not enough to go to the polls, press a lever and go home proud of yourself because you did your civic duty. We are involved in an existential war for our very survival as free people, so constant vigilance, and the proto-fascists and their enablers of either party, need to be rooted out and advised that they might have a great career ahead in the hospitality industry. Those who “go along to get along” are equally guilty and should be treated as the most obviously overreaching politicians that we see today and sent packing.