Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly.
He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
What’s the point in keeping on howling at him and the rest of the psychos? We’re incapable of prosecuting them, so we might as well either just shut up or do something real on our own.
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I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law.
With the passing of the Cold War, global hegemony seemed America’s for the taking. What others saw as an option you, Paul, saw as something much more: an obligation that the nation needed to seize, for its own good as well as for the world’s. Not long before we both showed up at SAIS, your first effort to codify supremacy and preventive action as a basis for strategy had ended in embarrassing failure. I refer here to the famous (or infamous) Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, drafted in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm by the Pentagon policy shop you then directed. Before this classified document was fully vetted by the White House, it was leaked to The New York Times, which made it front-page news. The draft DPG announced that it had become the “first objective” of U.S. policy “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” With an eye toward “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role,” the United States would maintain unquestioned military superiority and, if necessary, employ force unilaterally. As window dressing, allies might be nice, but the United States no longer considered them necessary.
President Barack Obama replaced the unilateralism adopted by former President George W. Bush with multilateralism, and thus effectively improved US ties with traditional allies and acquired their support. In particular, the US has improved its strategic relations with France, Germany, India, and Japan in the last four years. Since 2010, US “smart diplomacy” has outmanoeuvred China’s policy of non-alignment.
What’s the point in keeping on howling at him and the rest of the psychos? We’re incapable of prosecuting them, so we might as well either just shut up or do something real on our own.
So many lies..too little time to find them all.
http://youtu.be/nRqwjVNBWEo
Took the words out of my mouth.
What amazes me, but doesn’t amaze me, is that these fascists are doubling down on the lies and falsehoods about Iraq.
I do like his poetry.
Tomas Young wrote:
h/t tweet by Valerie Plame Wilson
Continuing the Clinton policy of intervention and regime change …