Post by deovindice on May 21, 2007 8:27:01 GMT -5
The war in Iraq is but a shining example of the arrogance of man.
History can be viewed as a cookbook, full of wonderful recipes, that when followed as intended, can yield delectable repasts of solutions to problems and answers to questions. It can provide guidance. It can instruct us, as a nation, on the proper course to chart through the turbulent waters of the world and on the proper and prudent means of discourse with those who exist within its confines.
Yet we often find ourselves forgetting one irrefutable fact and disregarding lessons learned. That fact is that human nature really never changes. The lessons learned constitute, and are derived from, history itself.
Once again, this nation finds itself in just that same situation. The torch of knowledge was passed from one generation to another in the wake of Vietnam, with a mandate to remember the mistakes of the past. Once again, that mandate was ignored. Once again, we find ourselves mired down in the concerns and struggles of other nations populated by people who do not share our views and with whom we have no common cultural, religious, or political ties. What renders our current boondoggle even more incredible is that, in a free society such as ours, debate and the exchange of views and ideas should foster a stronger environment in which history and the guiding hand it provides would be viewed, and perhaps even heeded. One could be forgiven for missteps committed in ignorance. We have no such excuse.
We are simply arrogant.
Then Defense Secretary Cheney commented at length on the challenges and difficulties associated with an occupation of Iraq following the First Gulf War. In January 2003, a National Security Council report entitled , "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq," lent us some insight into what we might expect in attempting a pacification of Iraq. This was mission specific information. Quite frankly, it was not even necessary that this treatise had ever come to see the light of day. We had much more tangible information at hand.
"In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter."
Washington's Farewell Address
Washington, and Jefferson as well, expounded at length on the necessity for us to avoid the squabbles and perpetual warfare that engulfed Europe. Europe was peopled by those with whom we shared cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious, and political similarities.
Today, we choose to embroil our nation in struggles with people with whom we share none of these things. Thus, the difficulties encountered in doing so are merely compounded.
Shameful. Arrogant...............and considering the loss of 3422 of the best the nation has to offer, damned costly.
I share these thoughts with those of you who choose to read them and I beseech you to view them objectively. We often regurgitate platitudes about "taking America back", "forcing change", and "returning to the principles that made America great". All good and honorable aims, indeed. Yet an attempt or desire to do so without a return to the thinking that engendered those principles is merely an exercise in futility.
We put them on our currency, yet we don't hold them in our thoughts.
Remember the Founders........................for once.
History can be viewed as a cookbook, full of wonderful recipes, that when followed as intended, can yield delectable repasts of solutions to problems and answers to questions. It can provide guidance. It can instruct us, as a nation, on the proper course to chart through the turbulent waters of the world and on the proper and prudent means of discourse with those who exist within its confines.
Yet we often find ourselves forgetting one irrefutable fact and disregarding lessons learned. That fact is that human nature really never changes. The lessons learned constitute, and are derived from, history itself.
Once again, this nation finds itself in just that same situation. The torch of knowledge was passed from one generation to another in the wake of Vietnam, with a mandate to remember the mistakes of the past. Once again, that mandate was ignored. Once again, we find ourselves mired down in the concerns and struggles of other nations populated by people who do not share our views and with whom we have no common cultural, religious, or political ties. What renders our current boondoggle even more incredible is that, in a free society such as ours, debate and the exchange of views and ideas should foster a stronger environment in which history and the guiding hand it provides would be viewed, and perhaps even heeded. One could be forgiven for missteps committed in ignorance. We have no such excuse.
We are simply arrogant.
Then Defense Secretary Cheney commented at length on the challenges and difficulties associated with an occupation of Iraq following the First Gulf War. In January 2003, a National Security Council report entitled , "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq," lent us some insight into what we might expect in attempting a pacification of Iraq. This was mission specific information. Quite frankly, it was not even necessary that this treatise had ever come to see the light of day. We had much more tangible information at hand.
"In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter."
Washington's Farewell Address
Washington, and Jefferson as well, expounded at length on the necessity for us to avoid the squabbles and perpetual warfare that engulfed Europe. Europe was peopled by those with whom we shared cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious, and political similarities.
Today, we choose to embroil our nation in struggles with people with whom we share none of these things. Thus, the difficulties encountered in doing so are merely compounded.
Shameful. Arrogant...............and considering the loss of 3422 of the best the nation has to offer, damned costly.
I share these thoughts with those of you who choose to read them and I beseech you to view them objectively. We often regurgitate platitudes about "taking America back", "forcing change", and "returning to the principles that made America great". All good and honorable aims, indeed. Yet an attempt or desire to do so without a return to the thinking that engendered those principles is merely an exercise in futility.
We put them on our currency, yet we don't hold them in our thoughts.
Remember the Founders........................for once.