Neocons have had a tough couple of weeks. First, the British government voted against attacking Syria. Then the American public smacked down the President. Finally, the coup de gras was delivered by Russia (a favorite bogeyman of the warmongering set) who thwarted an attack by acting as peacemaker.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Vladimir Putin then eloquently lectured the U.S. Empire with an op-ed in The New York Times. For once, it is the neocons who are lying on their backs like frightened turtles.
As a result of this beating, no one should be surprised to see some neocons lash out in anger. That’s exactly what Eliot Cohen provided in the war hungry Washington Post this week.
Cohen has had enough of the “war weariness” talk:
The families of the fallen are entitled to war-weariness. So are those wounded in body or spirit, and their loved ones. The mother who has sent her son to war has a right to war-weariness, as does the father who prepares to send his daughter to battle again and again. But for the great mass of the American public, for their leaders and the elites who shape public opinion, ‘war-weariness’ is unearned cant, unworthy of a serious nation and dangerous in a violent world.
Imagine the nerve it must take to make such a ridiculous statement. Does Cohen think that 300 million Americans are just outside spectators?
Who pays the bills?
The ‘quick-n-easy’ and ‘in-n-out’ war in Iraq has cost over $800 Billion! Afghanistan over $600 Billion! That doesn’t even factor in the costs for the rest of the Empire, which is sprawled out all over the globe.
Does Cohen think that the money just falls from the heavens? Perhaps Americans are tired of clocking in to work every morning to pay for this disgrace.
What about the danger to Americans that the Empire’s foreign policy creates? What about the blowback that brought to us the horrendous events of 9/11? Those were not troops that perished, but people working their day-to-day jobs. What if Americans are tired of the Empire swatting baseball bats at hornet’s nests in the Middle East?
How about the NSA & TSA?
What if Americans are tired of having every digital and financial move tracked? America is supposed to be the land of the free, not the land of the monitored lab rats!
What if getting groped at the airports by government employees is getting old? Is a Military Empire worth having your most intimate areas touched for no good reason at all? Many Americans say “No” and can’t stand the abuse!
Finally, it is not just the family who suffers when they lose their children to the Empire. Friends, co-workers, and acquaintances all suffer the loss as well. So does the rest of America; for we’ll never know what the deceased could have accomplished in the private and productive areas of our society. The peaceful gifts and talents that those individuals could have expressed, are now gone.
America is far past the stage of hitting war-weariness, and every single individual has the right to speak out, and do their best to put a stop to this madness.