There is a large literature about our disasterous foreign policy. One theme in both these books in the title is the need to learn from experience by realizing what has been done, and to understand how the same players are still up to their bad deeds.

In Dark Ages America the end of the empire is upon us and little can be done to stop it.

Economic Hit Men get a country to commit to a huge debt which is used to build infrastructure or exploit natural resources and bankrupts the contry. Now it is being done by the corporations throughout the world.

The link between our troubled economy and wars of choice will make it harder to deny learning from experience. Global climate change make denial harder as well.

But with the happy faces in the main stream media, maybe we can keep our heads in the sand for a few more years.

The only reason 'everyone' in America was for the war was because the Media said so. There were no voices against the war because they were effectively silence by lack of exposure, and the drum beat of 'inevitability'.

No, everyone was "for" the war. They were for it because America was pissed and wanted to "kick some ass" (read: mass murder brown people), you needed the oil, and your entire economy is based on war. Down deep, all Americans know this. It is most certainly what the rest of the world knows.

It takes two for a lie to work. One to tell it and one to believe.

Next time there is war planned, like the upcoming one in Iran, don't try to get "exposure" in the media. Take it to the streets. It's the only thing they listen to.

Don't blame the media. That is a terrible, sad excuse.

You are right about the "inevitability". If you make a rifle, inevitably you kill a man. America has a lot of rifles.

Thank you for making my point. You'd rather be loved than hated, hated than ignored.

What makes you think the 'world' and by that I guess you mean the world except for North America, most of South America, Western and Eastern Europe, India, most of SE Asia and the greater part of Africa, feels any different about what they hate about not being a member of the modern west than they did in 1920?

The Arab states comprise about 450-470 million people. Right up about 3 years ago the total economic output what approx the same as Spain or the State of New York. According to the UNDP annual report series those same states rank at or near the bottom, world wide for literacy, penetration of the internet, civil/human/gender rights, publishing, private and public education, infrastructure development, public health. If we throw Iran into the mix with its 25% unemployment and crumbling infrastructure things don't improve all that much.

Now that's more than 25 countries that the US (aka Great Satan) has almost nothing at all to do with. We don't worry about Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Syria etc etc they have their own relationships with their own partners including the EU, Russia, China etc.

And yet we're supposed to believe that all those hundreds of millions of people wake up every day, look around at their squalor and shake their fists at Allah for permitting the Great Satan to exist. It has nothing to do with their own failures, economic, social, political, cultural. It has all and only to do wit the Great Satan. Yes that must be it. Of course. They hate us because the King of Tunisia is a King. The Jordanians hate us because we don't have much to do with them at al. And the Syrians and, oh boy, all our ignoring them for 30 years, that must be a real thorn in their sides.

Fro the comments item quoted in the article:

"These war advocates, I would wager to a one, have learned nothing for one simple reason: They have no actual investment in the conflict they cheer for.

They and their families have not or will not serve in the armed forces.

They and their families are not at economic or emotional risk of losing loved ones overseas.

They and their families have insulated themselves through distance and willing ignorance against the devastation they've cheered for."

I think the case can clearly be made that not only have these war proponents not suffered anything directly or indirectly from from their bad judgment, they have actually BENEFITED a great deal, since they continue to receive widespread MSM access. They get paid to go on shows like O'Reilly, Russert, Good Morning America, write editorials for the NY Times, etc.

Hell, being wrong never turned out to be so right for these people.

Randy

Scott Horton had this on his blog the other day:

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told … It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster."

– T.E. Lawrence, Report to the Sunday Times (London), Aug. 2, 1920.

Lawrence was beat by a couple hundred years, though.

“The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries.” – Robespierre (1792)

At the time, French revolutionaries dreamed of conquering monarchy in Europe through violent revolution. Ironically, the continuing state of war in revolutionary France helped set the conditions under which Robespierre himself acted as a tyrant.

You have no sense of historical perspective, do you? Have you any idea how many empires were once where we are today? And we are, in fact, in decline. Some one else will be there seat in the not to distant future, if we haven't all been reduced to living in caves again. Who do you suppose your descendants will be cursing and shaking their fists at as they huddle around some fire in a dark and dank place? As far as the Arabs, you don't even realize that much of what you have today, you owe to their last empire. It was the pinnacle of civilization and enlightenment while your European ancestors were living through the dark ages. You still are.