Permanent War And The Destruction Of Our Country

Chris Hedges has an article over at Truthdig (link below) which he titles "The Disease of Permanent War." He raises some good points. Why do we need to stay in Iraq? Why are we escalating the war in Afghanistan? The New York Times reports we're using chemical warfare now in Afghanistan (white phosporous). Why? They're poor people who live in rubble. What do we want? To pulverize the rubble, kill all the people? Why are we staging a proxy war in Pakistan, escalating our military commitments in the region? How can we ever fix our economy, create jobs, improve our schools, fund social security, get healthcare, if all our money continues to be used to wage wars against people in other nations? How will we ever have peace if we keep waging wars against other people?

Here's the introductory paragraph from the Hedges article, with the link:

"The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war. "

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090518_the_disease_of_permanent_war/