SHRUB v ROOSEVELT

Copied in full below is a little article that came yesterday from The Iraq Insider:

Iraq supp expected in House this week
Posted By Travis Sharp to Iraq Insider at 6/17/2008 11:30:00 AM EST

It looks like the Iraq war funding supplemental package is finally going to come before the House this week, possibly as early as Thursday.

The supp has been held up by negotiations over GI veterans education benefits, unemployment insurance, and other domestic spending. The actual, you know, reason for the supp - $165+ billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year - is sure to pass. The Senate passed its version of the supp package on May 22, but since the House is poised to make changes to the Senate's version, the Senate will have to ultimately approve the same version as the House (that whole pesky legislative process).

When the $165.4 billion in DOD war funding is enacted into law, Congress will have approved over $860 billion in DOD, State/USAID, and Veterans Administration funding for Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. This would cement Iraq and Afghanistan's place as the second costliest conflict in U.S. history, with the United States currently spending about $12.3 billion per month on military operations.

Travis Sharp
Communications Director & Military Policy Analyst
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Council for a Livable World
Phone: 202-543-4100 ext. 123
Email: tsharp@armscontrolcenter.org
Web: www.armscontrolcenter.org

If your curiosity was piqued as mine was by the statement that the war in Iraq & Afghanistan is the second most costly war, you’ll be interested to see the data:

Iraq and Afghanistan To Date $695.7 billion
World War II $3.2 trillion

That knowledge triggered a string of thoughts about the difference in approach on the part of the administrations in those two wars.

The Bush administration’s first order to the American people about how they could help after 9-11 was to “Go shopping”.

The Franklin administration’s command was to “tighten your belts”.

The Bush administration’s approach included banning pictures of American dead or the caskets they come home in and embedding reporters so they could report back on “victories” like the staged destruction of a statue of Saddam Hussein.

The Franklin administration’s approach included reporters in uniform free to roam the fronts as on their own with military transport help. The pictures published for home consumption depicted the horror of the war and the sadness of the American losses as well as the glory of their victories.

The big question that arose in my mind, though, was, “How did the American people, who were making an average of about $3,500 a year at the time, support a war that cost 4 times as much as the one that is bankrupting us now?”

The answer – through tremendous sacrifice. That generation had been raised during the depression. They knew what hard times were. They knew, too, what sacrifice was and how easily death can wreak its havoc on a family. The war was nothing more than an extension of the rock hard times they faced during the thirties, so they tightened their belts and rolled up their sleeves. Everybody gave up some of their comforts to support the war effort.

Franklin D. Roosevelt told them, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself”, and they knew it was the truth. George W. Bush told us not to change a thing and everything would be alright, and we didn’t have the common sense to know what a crock of crap that was.

The situation was almost completely reversed for the two leaders. Roosevelt was leading a citizenry that was adamantly opposed to going to war so he had to resort to slight of hand in order to assist the British in their defense of their homeland. It wasn’t until Pearl Harbor that the people of the U.S. realized that they had no choice but to go to war.

In Bush’s case, the Pearl Harbor event came first and he was positioned as the head of a nation thirsting for revenge. Had he been the true leader Roosevelt was, his role would have been to calm the nation until he had clearly identified our true enemy and then lead the troops in pursuit of that enemy.

Instead, he took advantage of the ardor of the people. He led them on a wild goose chase that had been advocated by his advisors for several years before the 9-11. That attack gave them license to follow their dreams into Iraq even though they knew Hussein had nothing to do with the terrorism.

A wise leader would have tempered the steel of our resolve to punish those who had attacked us, but the rash, untested Bush, engorged by the power of his office but incapable of understanding the depth of the results of his decisions, strutted off to war thinking he was the new Roosevelt. He even labeled himself “the war president”.

It has been a costly lesson, but the bottom line is that it hasn’t really cost us enough. We only really learn when our mistakes bite hard into our comfort. This war has cost us over 4,000 of our most loyal lives, and it has cost us our status as a beacon of freedom and righteousness in a world of enslavement and dark intentions, but it has not cost each of us personally enough to make us, as a nation, recoil strongly enough from the kind of leadership that BushCo has foisted upon us.

World War II taught my parents’ generation what a real leader looked like and what sacrifices were worth making for a worthy cause. This war should have taught us just the opposite – what a bad leader looks like and how to avoid making unnecessary sacrifices in the name of false patriotism. How deeply I hope that it has, but because it really hasn’t impacted most of us personally, I fear that it has not been a lesson that will stick for long.

The generation that ultimately supported the war effort in World War II will go down in history as being worthy of the world’s undying gratitude for their sacrifices and their defense of freedom.

This generation that gladly supported the false cause of war in Iraq will reap the disdain of historians who will surely count the ways we failed to pay close enough attention to know that our good faith in our leaders and the Constitution of the United States of America were being abused with a resultant loss of freedom.

May we soon see the end of these gross abuses and, somehow, a return to some semblance of sanity. The “good old days” weren’t perfect by any means, but we are supposed to be able to learn from the past so we don’t have to repeat it. Hopefully the past eight years will never be repeated, but because those same despicable people will continue to hold sway in Washington, D.C., it will take a lot of diligence and hard work to avoid it.


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle