WISDOM FROM ELSEWHERE IN WORDPRESS

“Graveyard of Empires – Whatchoo talkin’ bout?

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Here Mr. John Jost, of www.jonjost.wordpress.com, comments on a recent column by Frank Rich of the New York Times. To see the original column and the whole string of comments on it, click on the “4”.

4.

Jon Jost

S Korea

June 27th, 2010

6:24 am

One of our problems is that for most Americans the concept of  graveyard of empires* doesn’t ring a bell, as most Americans, as they were taught, don’t think we are an empire, ergo, it can’t be our graveyard. We are instead the champions of liberty, saviors of Europe in WW2, pushers of democracy, and that is sufficient to explain our 700 military bases around the world, our policies of backing whichever corrupt dictator will suit the moment for us, and we’ll bend our perceptions to suit.

As one who spent 2 years in prison for refusing the draft (during the Viet Nam period all of 500 people went to prison thusly), and participated in the draft resistance movement, I must say the best thing for America would be to re-institute a draft that the likes of Cheney and Bush couldn’t evade or otherwise cheat on. This might have some meaningful effect on our foreign policy. It would seem the one thing (I was going to say two, but McChrystal missed on the other – controlling the press, which so far the government has done a good job on doing, unfortunately) the government learned from Viet Nam was that having a draft was to be avoided for political reasons. So now we have a professional military of so-called volunteers (economic refugees many of them), which consumes half the Fed budget, half the oil the US consumes (and hence must have oil wars), and the public sits on its ever broadening butt and doesn’t notice its economic situation is directly related to our Wars R US status.
Very Foxy.

www.jonjost.wordpress.com
www.cinemaelectronica.wordpress.com

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We done stepped in it again, folks!

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* Here’s the skinny on why Afghanistan has this nickname:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081222202100AAALz0a

And here’s a thorough treatments of the same subject:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/57411/milton-bearden/afghanistan-graveyard-of-empires