posted June 27, 2008
It does not speak well of America for her great masses to believe that the economy is the most important issue in the presidential race when the Bush Wars and America’s libido for war is one of the main causes for the sorry mess that the economy is in, including the high cost of gas and oil.
It’s a terrible and tragic irony to realize that the moral path makes for a better economy and a better quality of life than the immoral path which only leads to needless suffering and destruction in the end, and yet godly, Judeo/Christian America believes that the economy is a more important issue than war and peace in the 2008 presidential election.
God help us. We’ve been conducting a war in Afghanistan since 2001, an illegal war in Iraq since 2003, neither of which appears winding down to an end, an all encompassing and never-ending War or Terror since 9/11 and are currently planning for an illegal war on Iran, and yet the common, everyday person believes that the economy is a more important issue than the war, according to the polls and the media.
One would dearly love to think that group-thought on a national level would have a much better chance of getting it right than someone crying out in the wilderness, especially when it comes to the great question of the morality of war and its connection to the economy and quality of life. But the facts do not bear this out.
The Bush Wars and America’s primitive urge, or natural inclination to accept war as a normal and necessary way to maintain her domination over the world and protect her economic interests, should be the major issue for all Americans as a matter of moral principle, far more important than the economy and the high price of gas, or anything else. But that’s not the case.
The fact that we are more than 60 years into the Nuclear Age on a collision course, very possibly within the next decade or so, with that final war that will leave no one left to name it, should have registered on the radar screens of Judeo/Christian America by now. If it has, they have shown no signs of being aware of it or troubled by it.
It’s almost as if Americans – Democrats, Republicans and all the rest – have been pulled so deeply into the black hole of immorality that no light can come out of them and they don’t even realize that it has happened to them.
War and peace should always be the main issue above all else, because all else depends upon it and because it is the chief moral issue that we face as the family of man. When Judeo/Christian America decides that the economy is more important than stopping the needless deaths and horrible suffering of millions as a direct and indirect result of our warmongering disposition and actions, something is stinking in the state of America, and has probably been rotting for some time.
When the religious become blind and deaf to needless killing and suffering for the sake of power, greed, oil and revenge, what good is it? It would be better for everybody if the religious would hang their religion on a fence post and put their shoulders to the wheel long enough to help us get out of this quagmire of endless war that is destroying our economy, our future and even the existence of life itself if we continue down this road.
How much spiritualism, religious understanding, education, wisdom, intelligence and plain common sense is required to realize that it might take a little gas and oil to conduct all these continuous wars and feed the greatest military budget than all other nations in the world combined?
Shouldn’t the American people have realized by now that even without the wars, we use a lot of gas and oil just to maintain the ships necessary and our military strategically positioned to make sure that the oil keeps flowing from the oil producing nations of the Middle East to America, which has only about two percent of the world’s population, only about two percent of the world’s oil and yet uses about 24 percent of the world’s oil?
At what point did the American people become so morally blinded as to not realize that when our government says it’s going to war to protect our interests, it most probably means that we’re going to war to protect our oil supplies, even if it means taking over a country and taking their oil for ourselves?
Wasn’t it really for oil that caused Saddam to invade Kuwait? Wasn’t it really to make sure that that same oil flowed to us, that the first President Bush decided that we couldn’t let that stand? Wasn’t it really for oil that his son, President George W. Bush, instructed his military leaders to draw up plans for an invasion of Iraq only ten days after his inauguration? Isn’t it really for oil that Bush is making plans to pull a preemptive on Iran?
After Saudi Arabia - which produces most of the world’s oil, provides us with most of our oil and has remained one of our most trusted allies despite the fact that 14 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were citizens of Saudi Arabia – the Middle East nations with the most oil are Iraq, Iran and Kuwait.
It’s another tragic irony that despite the fact that gaining control of Iraq’s oil was one of the main incentives for our taking over that country, the process of the war itself has pretty much ruined its ability to get it out of the ground and sell it, which probably has a little something to do with less oil on the market and higher gas prices in itself.
But not to worry, Iran still has plenty of it, if we could just gain control of it. And so the war goes on, with more wars on the drawing board and the American people asleep at the wheel believing that the most important issue is the economy and the high cost of gas and not the fact that we’re heading down a dead-end street on a collision course with nuclear war, unless we wake up and begin smelling the stench of death which we have become the major producer of in the world.
It appears that we’ve already spent from $600 billion to $800 billion on the Bush wars and homeland security since 9/11, which is probably only about half the real cost when you figure in treatment for the wounded and disabled, and the affect that more than 4,000 deaths and 30,000 injured has on the economy, and all manner of other costly factors that are a result of these wars. Some experts believe that the cost could go as high as $3 trillion by the time the Iraq War is over, and that our children, not yet even born, could be paying on the war debt for their whole lives.
Isn’t it possible that all this war spending might have a little something to do with the high cost of oil and gas and the weakened value of the American dollar in the world? Not to mention our standing and our good name abroad. It is certainly probable that we could have fixed Social Security and provided free health care for every American with the money we’ve spent on the Bush wars.
Even if America could pump up every drop of oil it has underground and beneath the continental shelf, it would run out in a couple or three years, according to the experts, because we only have about two percent of the world’s oil but consume about a quarter of it.
What we need in this country, even more than cheap oil and gas, is a welling up of moral logic among the masses. Even a little bit of moral logic goes a long way. If Americans, with all their education and privileges, had a little bit of moral logic working for them, our country wouldn’t be running on avarice and greed (both individual and corporate), which is another major cause for the sorry shape of the economy and the nasty mess we’re in.
Take this problem with oil and our desperate need to use it up as fast as we can get it. Plain logic should tell us that it will run out one of these days all over the world. According to some experts, the world’s supply of oil may peak any day now and we’ll all go coasting down the other side a lot faster than it took us to get this far, simply because the nations of the world are gobbling it up faster than ever before.
So far we’ve been operating on the plain logic of get it while you can, in any way you can, even if it means killing and stealing, and making war on any nation you think might have the desire or eventual capability of taking it from you. There’s nothing wrong with that logic if your goal is to be the last man standing, period.
But, if America, her government leaders and her masses, would apply a little dab of moral logic to the problem, it would come to her that it is wrong to make war for oil or for any other immoral and illegal purpose, because such behavior can only make things worse and quicken our pace on the way to destruction.
With a little dab of moral logic, we could see much further down the road and realize that we are fast approaching the event horizon, from which no traveler returns, as the poet said, when it will be too late to reach out to all the nations of the world, the hand of friendship and respect, in the sacred belief that we are all a part of the family of man and that we’ve got to move war off the table forever and start working with each other and for each other out of love and for the benefit of humanity, in order that humanity might continue to exist for as long as possible, long after all the oil is gone.
Religion without an understanding of moral logic and how to apply it will not get us there from here, because it is the very lack of moral logic that keeps us from seeing our own faults and which has led us to the very mess that we’re in and which will keep us in it and which will cause us to dig ourselves deeper in it simply because it allows us to think we are right, have done no wrong and that the world is a better place because of our actions and can only get better if we keep doing what we’re doing.
President Bush drove this point home only a week or so ago in London during a joint press conference with Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has proved to be just as much a lapdog as former Prime Minister Tony Blair, when it comes to siding with America, kissing her ring and following her lead. It was part of a larger visit across the pond by Bush for the purpose of gathering support for the tightening of the noose around Iran.
Bush was asked by a member of the press if it was possible that he had got it wrong (his war on Iraq) and if, in retrospect, he would be willing to apologize for any mistakes.
Bush answered that history would judge the tactics, such as whether more troops were needed at the beginning, etc., but that “removing Saddam was not wrong. It was right for our security and the Iraqis.”
Think of that. After all these years since pulling an illegal, preemptive attack on Iraq, and after all his justifications for doing it have proved to be false, after the deaths of about a million innocent Iraqi civilians, the displacement of more than four million of them, the deaths of unknown thousands of Iraqis who fought against us, the loss of more than 4,000 American soldiers and the thousands of wounded, after all the hell and havoc and suffering that the Iraq War has caused, Bush believes that the war was right for our security and the Iraqis and that removing Saddam was not wrong.
That’s a hair-raising example of how blind a person can be if he doesn’t have the light of moral logic to guide him. If it was right to remove Saddam, why wouldn’t it be right to remove any no good, rotten dictator that we please, regardless of what the United Nations and the International Community thought about it? Because it goes against the rule of law and is morally wrong to attack a nation for the purpose of regime change, government change, nation building or for any other kind of immoral reason, including the purpose of controlling their oil.
If a nation of people have a desire to remove their leadership and change their form of government, that should be their business to bring about without another nation taking it on itself to do it for them. If Bush had a little moral logic working for him, he would have realized that and never taken us to war. If the U.S. Congress and the great masses of America’s people had a little dab of it, they would never have allowed him to get away with it and would not be thinking today that the economy is a more important issue than the war.
During the London press conference Bush went on to explain the Iraq War as an “ideological war” with a “strategic implication of a free Iraq,” which “will make it easier for the Iran issue.” For those who might be of the opinion that it has brought instability to the Middle East, he posed the question, “Is stability more important than the form of government?” He answered that question by stating that “an accurate reading of history shows that freedom can bring peace.”
If he had a little moral logic working for him, it would have dawned on him that America claims to have more freedom than any other nation in the world and yet it is still waging all these wars after all these years and is looking to make war with Iran because it insists on developing its own nuclear power program for civilian use. Even though Iran has repeatedly stated that it has no desire to develop a nuclear weapon and there has been no proof to indicate otherwise, Bush said that Iran can’t be trusted because it has threatened its neighbors.
We have no moral right to make war on a sovereign nation because it chooses to develop a nuclear power program. We have no moral right to justify it by claiming they have threatened their neighbors, without us even sitting down and talking to them about the alleged threats, what they actually said, what they meant and what their plans are.
We don’t even have the moral right to make war on a sovereign nation even if we have solid proof that they intend to develop nuclear weapons, or even if they announce publically that that is their intention. We never tried to stop Israel from developing her nuclear weapons and it has never disturbed us that Israel refuses to either admit it or deny it.
There is no moral logic in America, and the other eight nations that possess nuclear weapons, being able to deny by force and punishment the right of any sovereign nation to develop its own nuclear weapons. What gives America the moral right to have nuclear missiles in at least seven countries, with the stipulation that they cannot be used except by us, while denying the right to develop nuclear weapons to whatever nations we decide cannot be trusted with them?
There is no moral logic in the idea that this is the best way to prevent nuclear war or the best way to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. The moral logic is just the opposite. The technology and ability to make nuclear weapons was squeezed out of the tube a long time ago and cannot be put back, regardless of how many nations we decide to attack and conquer in order to stop them from developing nuclear weapons.
That leaves only one morally logical choice. We’ve got to move away from war and punishment and turn to more intelligent and non-violent methods, such as the hand of friendship and respect, in order to convince other nations that it is not necessary for them to develop nuclear weapons because we mean them no harm, but good, as fellow members of the human race, and because every new nuclear weapon makes the world a more dangerous place.
If our leaders and our great masses could develop enough moral logic to see this, that the only way to peace and prosperity throughout the world is through making peace instead of war, and turning our enemies into our friends, we would see an immediate jump in our economy and a heavy drop in the cost of gas and oil, not to mention a tremendous leap in the quality of our lives and the pride we take in being free Americans.
Perhaps we are in the right time and place for this to happen – when war and the economy collide, leaving us with no other choice but peace in order to survive. But then, perhaps not. The great masses, after all, have decided once again that it’s the economy, stupid, and the Republicans have even trotted out a Bush War enthusiast who has strongly indicated he will continue the Bush wars for as long as it takes to achieve victory and will never surrender to the terrorists, and will never allow Iran a chance to develop nuclear weapons.
That may not be exactly the same thing as threatening our neighbors, since Iran is way over on the other side of the ocean, but when viewed through the glass of moral logic it is the same type of threat we used on Iraq when Bush threatened that nation with a preemptive attack if they didn’t come clean with their WMD programs, which they had claimed all along that they didn’t have and which was proved to be so after the initial killing and the dust had settled.
This type of thinking may be logical if one’s goal is to conquer as many of the weaker nations as possible and transform them into democracies, while gaining control of their oil, and using them as stepping stones in a much larger campaign to rule over the world; but if one’s goal is to be a good citizen in the international community of nations and help bring peace to a violent and troubled world, it is completely void of moral reasoning and intelligent thought.
Naman Crowe
namancrowe@yahoo.com
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I agree with Mr. Crowe. The United States of America is the root cause of every single act of evil committed on planet Earth.
C.L. Miller
Hamilton County
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Let me say that Mr. Crowe is an amazing person. I can't believe that a person who lives in this country can write so many words about why this country is the greatest evil in the world today.
This is a great example of the current Democrat liberal mindset. They live to hate the greatest country in the world today which has freed more people from tyranny, spread its wealth across the world when people are in need (we even spend over $40 billion for our pets), and we are the country that those who do want freedom try to get to.
Yet Mr. Crowe spent an enormous amount of time telling us how evil we are. There is no reason to refute all his issues because a person with this much despair is beyond reason.
Bruce Caldwell
Signal Mountain
sarmatt25@comcast.net
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"America is evil." "America is the greatest country on Earth." It's not that simple. Americans who are not afraid of humble introspection and of being honest know that the truth about our country is much more complicated than these black and white declarations. Since its birth, our nation has done acts of both great good and great evil and the same is certainly true today.
I've had the good fortune of traveling to 14 other countries and I don't see the importance of stating that one country is greater than all others. America is indeed great, but other nationalities love their countries too, and we can learn from seeing how other countries operate just as they can learn from us.
To me, my country is more like a member of my family. I love her very, very much, but she can really drive me crazy. I'm completely loyal to her, but I'm well aware of the things she does wrong and when she does, she doesn't think that my saying something about it is being either unloving or disloyal. I'm saying something about it because I care.
Maybe we should realize that there is no such thing as the greatest country in the world and just concentrate instead on making ours better. We certainly disagree on how to do that, but that doesn't mean that we need to demonize each other or send out the patriotism police on each other.
Let's just agree that we can always improve and figure out how to accomplish that goal.
John Stegall
Quincy, Mass.
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The article was long, not Mr. Crowe's best writing, but the critics are missing the point.
"Isn't it possible that all this war spending might have a little something to do with the high cost of oil and gas and the weakened value of the American dollar in the world?"
Yes it's possible, it's even likely. Arguing over whether or not America is great, greatest, good or evil is kind of doggone silly, the house is now burning down, why argue about who set the fire? Get the water hose.
Brian Wood
Apison
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If we were fighting over oil, we would not be paying $4 a gallon for gasoline today. Our military, when used properly is the most capable fighting force on the planet. Occupational force, no. Fighting force, yes. We could easily strong arm any oil rich nation on Earth with our military and we'd be filling our V8's for less than a dollar a gallon. That's an obvious, concise rebuttal that doesn't require 5,000 words and contains far more logic.
As far as the Iraq War is concerned, there were some monumental management errors early. I even find myself questioning if it was in America's best interest, but history's answers take time. It will be a generation for the answers to become clear. It could be that our current President and his early actions against Islamic extremism saved millions of Islamic lives. If we sit and allow threats to gather it will only initiate retaliation by the free world that will cost millions of lives on each side. I bet most mothers of dead German soldiers wished someone stood up to Hitler before he was nearly unstoppable. War is not always the answer, but America fights the good fight.
Remember Mr. Crowe, there are an estimated 150 billion barrels of oil in Iraq's soil. If we had fought this war for oil I would not be selling my truck.
Roger Perdactur
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