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The Live Bait Approach To National Security
excerpts from a column published on optruth.org. June 29, 2005
His speech says basically "we were attacked on 9/11 and so we went to war." And then he goes on to "we're fighting terrorists in Iraq." But it's like, woah. Wait a second. They weren't there before we fucked it up. That's an important point that needs to be addressed. And he loses credibility by not doing so.
It's like assaulting a building because you're convinced WMD-wielding terrorists are there and want to kill you, discovering there's nothing there but a big warehouse full of newspapers, accidentally lighting the newspapers on fire, and then when people ask what the fuck you're doing in the building in the first place answering, "putting out the fire."
That shit may be convincing if you just arrived on the scene, but we saw the whole thing go down up close and in person.
And I've just never been a big fan of the "live bait" theory of national security. That being that it's better to send volunteer Americans to a target range in the middle east so they can be killed there rather so that non-volunteer Americans don't get killed on our own soil. If we're going to be sending Americans to a war that WE start, it had better have a pretty damn good, well-thought-out strategic objective from start to finish, and I don't think that standard was met.
I'm furious every time I hear some asshole say "it's better for Americans to die overseas than here at home." To paraphrase someone much more famous than me, the point of combat is not to die for your country, it's to make the other poor bastard die for HIS country.
You have been reading excerpts from "The Live Bait Approach to National Security" by David Chasteen. You can read the entire piece here: optruth.org/main.cfm?actionId=blogShowExcerpts&blogId=14&entryID=632. Thanks to the good people at optruth.org. We visit them often and we hope you will too.
excerpts from a column published on optruth.org. June 29, 2005
His speech says basically "we were attacked on 9/11 and so we went to war." And then he goes on to "we're fighting terrorists in Iraq." But it's like, woah. Wait a second. They weren't there before we fucked it up. That's an important point that needs to be addressed. And he loses credibility by not doing so.
It's like assaulting a building because you're convinced WMD-wielding terrorists are there and want to kill you, discovering there's nothing there but a big warehouse full of newspapers, accidentally lighting the newspapers on fire, and then when people ask what the fuck you're doing in the building in the first place answering, "putting out the fire."
That shit may be convincing if you just arrived on the scene, but we saw the whole thing go down up close and in person.
And I've just never been a big fan of the "live bait" theory of national security. That being that it's better to send volunteer Americans to a target range in the middle east so they can be killed there rather so that non-volunteer Americans don't get killed on our own soil. If we're going to be sending Americans to a war that WE start, it had better have a pretty damn good, well-thought-out strategic objective from start to finish, and I don't think that standard was met.
I'm furious every time I hear some asshole say "it's better for Americans to die overseas than here at home." To paraphrase someone much more famous than me, the point of combat is not to die for your country, it's to make the other poor bastard die for HIS country.
You have been reading excerpts from "The Live Bait Approach to National Security" by David Chasteen. You can read the entire piece here: optruth.org/main.cfm?actionId=blogShowExcerpts&blogId=14&entryID=632. Thanks to the good people at optruth.org. We visit them often and we hope you will too.
