Painless, endless war

By Creature

"In essence, the issue is whether we are a Department and a Service at war [...]" -- new US Ambassador to Iraq, and TalkingP Bot 2.0, Ryan C. Crocker, boiling down the essence of his embassy's ill qualified personnel woes.

Kevin Drum tackles the direct point of the embassy issue--disdain for competence and a love for cronyism and ideology when picking the initial Baghdad team--I, however, want to point just to the Crocker sentence above as the perfect analogy for the Bush administration's approach to war.

Let's play it again: "In essence, the issue is whether we are a Department and a Service at war."

Over the course of the last four years our Dear Leader, and his wingnut base, have preached to us that the United States is caught in a struggle of civilizations where our steadfastness is necessary and our weakness will be our demise as a nation. So, in essence, to analogize from Mr. Crocker, the issue is whether we are a country and a government at war.

We are told we are at war, yet we are encouraged to go shopping. We are told we are at war, yet tax cuts abound. We are told we are at war, yet profits continue to be made off the backs of our soldiers. We are told we are at war, yet the sacrifice is not shared.

It's time the Bush administration put their money where their rhetoric is. You want endless war? How about a draft--or at least send the twins. You want endless war? How about taking the profit motive out of the fight. You want endless war? How about a war tax to help pay for it.

Or maybe, just maybe, this struggle for our very existence is actually a bit of hyperbole meant to line the war machine's pockets with gold. Mission. Accomplished.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)