This Is Insanity
By Joe Clifford
Since 9/11 the US government has spent more
than 1.5 trillion dollars on the War on Terror. Fourteen nations have been
bombed or attacked by the US military, and we are no safer today than we were
one day prior to 9/11. As a matter of fact, we are probably less safe with the
world being torn apart by US bombs and the spreading of anarchy throughout the
Middle East, yet the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and
over again with the same results.
We have an insane policy of bloodletting and
killing, thinking this will make the problem go away, but as any rational person
knows the more people you kill the more enemies you create. Every time you kill
someone with a drone bomb, you create 10 new enemies. Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
the onetime commander of all coalition forces in Afghanistan, created the phrase
“Insurgent Math” when he rightfully pointed out “for every innocent person you
kill, you create 10 new enemies.” Every rational person would probably agree
with McChrystal’s assessment, but the US government doesn’t, and we continue to
make the same mistakes of killing innocents and thinking we can “kill our way to
victory”. The big question is; are we really as stupid as we seem by repeating a
fruitless useless policy, or are the decision makers bright enough to realize
that their policy only insures constant warfare, which just might be the game
plan. Sound silly? Then think about a different policy, and the result, if we
tried a sane approach to dealing with the world’s nations.
Let us assume that intelligent folk realized
you cannot kill your way to victory and embarked on a completely different
policy to fight the war on terror. What if the US government set aside 1.5
trillion dollars, the conservative estimate of our spending in the war on terror
so far, and decided to build schools instead? Think about it. What if we built
one hundred thousand schools in Afghanistan after 9/11? Do you think the
Taliban would have the same kind of public support from Afghanis?
What if instead of spending 1.5 trillion on
bombs and making war while killing well over 1 million people, we helped build
infrastructure instead. Do you really think they would “hate us for our
freedom”, probably the most asinine statement ever made by any US President, and
try to kill us? Yes folks we have killed over one million people since 9/11, and
using McChrystal’s accurate ratio, we have created over 10 million enemies since
9/11. This is insanity.
We bombed Libya for seven months, saying it
was necessary for “humanitarian” reasons, another classically stupid expression
which mainstream media, the mouthpiece of the US government, readily accepted
and used, without pointing out the total absurdity of bombing
people for humanitarian reasons.
What would have happened, if instead of
bombing Libya for 7 months and turning it into a failed state with chaos and
anarchy resulting, which led to the emergence of ultra-extremist groups who now
threaten the world with violence, we decided to use some of the 1.5 trillion
dollars to build 5,000 hospitals in Libya? Do you think they would still “hate
us for our freedom”, and would want to kill us?
What if instead of encouraging Saudi Arabia
to bomb Yemen, and supplying them with target information and the weapons used
to bomb Yemen into oblivion, we used some of the 1.5 trillion to irrigate land
so they did not have to import all their food. Would they hate us as they do now
for using drones to kill innocent people in their country, for supporting brutal
dictators in their country, for giving those dictators the weapons to keep
Yemenis “in their place”, and for supporting Saudi Arabia’s massive bombing of
their country?
And finally, we are able to find the money
to “bomb” groups in Syria, but cannot find the money to help feed and supply the
people of Syria, in one biggest humanitarian crises in the world. We continue
our insane policy of using drones in Pakistan, which is causing anti-American
hatred in one of the largest nations on the planet and armed with nuclear
weapons, while China quietly agreed to build a gas pipeline that will link Iran
with energy starved Pakistan. The gas pipeline will cost about $2 billion and
China has agreed to pay for 85% of the project and it is to be called “the Peace
Pipeline”.
We kill; they build.
Let’s try sanity for a change.
Joe Clifford lives in Rhode Island