war lies from the Ministry of Truth?

[Joseph Tracy]

If all military enterprises had to be funded and staffed by the participants with no taxpayer help that would be a real test of what is in the common interest. 
 Over half of all suicides have been soldiers. 
On Aug 30, 2013, at 1:01 PM, Bekah wrote:

> If we want to get into a real "founding fathers" mentality it might be suggested we send a few million gun-owners over there in lieu of a "standing army."    But that's probably 1776 fathers - by 1800 times had changed already.  
> 
> For more along these lines see Rachel Maddow's "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power"  (2012)
> 
> Bekah
> 
> 
> On Aug 30, 2013, at 7:17 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
>> 
>> The British have come up with a novel idea - democratic decision-making. How about at least letting our not-very-democratic Congress vote on whether to spend a few stray billion bombarding Syria for vague reasons, in order to teach that government a lesson, while maintaining it in power?  Or is that too Founding Fatheri-sh and old-school democratic for America to swallow?
>> 
>> LK
>> -----Original Message----- 
>> From: David Morris 
>> Sent: Aug 30, 2013 7:59 AM 
>> To: "kelber at mindspring.com" 
>> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" 
>> Subject: Re: war lies from the Ministry of Truth? 
>> 
>> http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/british-parliament-defects.html
>> The case of Obama and Cameron against the Syrian government has some holes, but it isn’t a bad case. But it involves murky allegations of weapons of mass destruction use by an Arab regime, and a unilateral Anglo-American shock and awe aerial attack. It looks way too much like Iraq, and there is no telling where it might lead. Britain is not very far from Syria and the repercussions of an attack could be significant. Britain also has a significant Muslim minority population that is die hard set against an attack on Syria.
>> The vote puts President Obama between a rock and a hard place. The formerly solid Anglo-American solidarity has been broken. Obama does not have the Arab League and he does not have the UN Security Council. He does not even have a consensus on the European continent.
>> Obama should pivot now and choose vigorous diplomacy over a military strike. The latter will now have no legitimacy in international law, and would not be supported even by the British parliament.
>> The duplicity of Bush and Blair has deeply injured faith in government, even on the part of members of government. Their use of the high-flown rhetoric of protecting helpless populations from tyrants and deflecting dire threats of WMD cheapened those endeavors and trivialized them They bent the sword of state and rendered it useless in any similar situation.
>