Fixing America In 500 Words Or Less Chapter 11 IS OBAMA ANY SMARTER THAN BUSH?        According to George W. Bush, the United States invaded Iraq to “secure the peace” and, to “secure freedom and democracy”.  Is there any rational reason to believe this?  If war can secure peace then why, after 10,000 years of war, isn't there peace on earth by now? ¹        War didn't begin or end with the American Revolution; soldiers who fought against the British soon rose up in “Shay's Rebellion” against wealthy colonists who were taking their land and casting them into debtors prison.  Soon after, another war against England erupted.        Then came the Mexican-American War, Civil War, Spanish-American War and War in the Philippines.  And then WWI, the so-called “war to end all wars”, soon followed by WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq.        Spaced among this long bloody trail, were slave uprisings, a long drawn-out war against Native populations and many smaller conflicts.  Along with much targeted violence within the U.S., including mob murder of African-Americans, Irish, Jews, Mormons, Chinese, Latinos--even striking child workers have been murdered. ²        Yet today, after all this bloodshed, we find ourselves still at war.  In spite of overwhelming historical evidence, a morally bankrupt America remains quick on the trigger and very slow to understand war has never ever secured the peace.  Did President Obama act any wiser than Bush by increasing troop levels in Afghanistan?        Some might assume people like Gandhi are foolish because they end up as martyrs.  Yet, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and many others claim he inspired them.  Did Gandhi lose in the great historical battle for human rights, the battle against good and evil and only war that really matters? ³        Jesus has inspired millions to promote peace and goodwill.  Though martyred at a young age, he won a far greater victory than all of the military generals in history combined.  According to Jesus, the solution to war is to put down our swords. 4  Though a small child can easily grasp this crystal-clear logic of Jesus, many today pretending to follow him support U.S. wars of aggression.        It is logical if I promote peace and goodwill, I will help humanity and leave a positive legacy for others to emulate.  And, it is logical if I promote war as a solution, I will hurt humanity, extending the trail of tears of war's victims even further.5        We as individuals have little choice what our leaders or other people do. However, we each have a personal choice to make, to either stand up for peace and goodwill or, bow to peer pressure and promote war and other violence. 6        It takes courage to stand up against one's own society, which is why Isaiah and Jesus continue to be revered by millions.  While it takes only a victim of societal pressure to promote violence.  It is mature to promote peace and goodwill; it is childish, historically and patently absurd to promote anything else.        Is Obama any smarter than Bush? 7  When the United States engages in war, whose mission are we really accomplishing?  You decide. NOTES: 1. War is undoubtedly by far, the most irrational of all human endeavors.  One cannot logically expect peace to result from violence, any more than one can rationally expect to squeeze a glass of fresh drinking water from a petrified pebble. 2. According to an Annenberg Media documentary on 19th Century America, there were over 35 major riots in American urban centers between 1830 and 1860, as the American industrial revolution was coming into its own.  Middle and working class people today who support neo-conservative economic policies and believe that unions are unnecessary relics of the past, are victims of Fox News, religious and other propaganda, blindsided into voting against the best interests of themselves and their own children by modern-day Pharisees of the pulpit, "supply-side" ivory towerd economic liars and corporate lackey right-wing radio media hacks, all firmly in the pockets of the billionaire barons of a modern-day gilded age of unparalleled greed, avarice and excess.  Since the implementation of "trickle-down" theory under Ronald Reagan, ongoing business deregulation has succeeded in producing the widest gap between the rich and the poor in American history.  Our nation and the entire world is continuing to pay a significant price for the unbridled greed unleashed by extremely unwise deregulation policies enacted under Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr.  And unfortunately, Obama's policies have done little to curtail and much to encourage and enhance the anti-human rights agenda of greed-drenched corporate America. Over the past 30-plus years, union power has been steadily curtailed by overtly bribed political leaders of dubious motivation, while profits for corporations and salaries and bonuses of top executives have steadily risen; meanwhile, pensions and other wage-earner benefits have been cut back or eliminated entirely.  Gross malfeasance and mass corruption has flourished in insurance, banking, health, communications, transportation and other industries. Wages for middle and working-class Americans have mostly stagnated and in many cases, have gone down significantly when adjusted for inflation, during this same 30-plus year period.  And yet, our blind leaders of the blind continue to bail out and legislatively support the wealthy few who caused our nation's middle, working classes and poor to now be teetering in mass, on the corporate malfeasance precipice of long-term financial ruin. In order to enjoy the same approximate lifestyle today compared to that of a typical blue-collar family with one working parent in the 1960's, both parents often find it necessary to work two and more full-time jobs.  Thus, conclusively proving that supply-side economic theory is among the greatest of lies in the history of human civilization.  Instead of excess profits of oil companies translating into lower prices at the pump, the cost of energy and other basic necessities continues to spiral out of control.  Instead of excess business profits trickling down into the pockets of average Americans, they have been "supply-sided" more and more into ever larger and more expensive homes, yachts, jewelry, art collections and other outlandish toys and trinkets for the mega-rich, while the lifestyles of most working-class and middle class Americans continue to move ever closer to the 14-18 hour day, healthcare-less and other benefit-less, grossly unsafe working condition economic slave reality of the 19th and early 20th Century United States. 3. See "Uncommon Sense"; Notes on the Great War for more information. 4. Matthew 26:52; repeated in Revelation 13:10 and agrees with several other teachings of Jesus, in spite of how badly and how often and how badly conservative Christians grossly misrepresent him.  erhaps they think they are smarter than Jesus, who can say for sure? 5. According to an August 2007 article published on CNN.com, over 2,000 Iraqis in Northern Iraq contracted cholera as a result of poor drinking water due to the illegal Bush Jr. war. There were reports of widespread disease in Baghdad and elsewhere and disease has long been a "hidden" significant cost of war.  It may be fair to state that human disease induced and otherwise aggravated by war, including transmission of disease from "protected" populations of soldiers to populations that have no built up immunities, has contributed to more casualties than all of the actual battlefield and related deaths in all of the wars of human history combined. Disease was a major contributing factor to uncounted deaths for generations in our own revolutionary war, our civil war and in every major conflict the United States has been involved in, as well as being devastating to Native populations.  And, the long and ongoing extending historical human trail of tears resulting from war, negatively affecting billions of people, includes not only battlefield and physical disease casualties, war also has significant negative psychological, social, economic and other devastating repercussions on families and friends of victims for generations to come.  There is no excuse for anyone who has ever picked up a Bible or a history book, to ever use a weapon as a means for settling a dispute of any kind between nations, or any perceived "side" within a nation. 6. Those who blame belief in God, which is not synonymous with "religion", for human violence and other oppression, are deceiving both themselves and other people.  War is very clearly greed-based at the surface root, involving either the protection or theft of wealth and almost always, war is about both.  Human beings are individually and collectively responsible for our own bad choices and resultant massive global suffering.  The Crusades and other so-called "religious" wars of European history for example, were clearly fought over the taking and acquiring of land, gold and other forms of wealth.  In the case of The Crusades, wealthy popes and nobles conspired together to take back land that had been taken earlier by Muslim invaders, literally bribing Richard Lion Heart and other leaders to participate, while using both religious fervor and promises of much rape, pillage and spoils to the victors, as tools for rousing up the common masses. In the historical past, religion seemingly played a more dominant role in war-related violence because societies in general, were structured differently than most modern societies.  The invention of printing and cheap mass dissemination of knowledge has gradually changed the excuses for war, while doing nothing to either change or lesson the reality of war.  From the so-called "age of enlightenment" forward, by no means all, but societies in general on a global scale, have gradually been shifting away from theocracy and more towards nationalism and intellectual idealism; democracy, communism, socialism and currently, emerging anarchism has gradually replaced religious excuses for war, though this shift is still in transition and thus, religion is also still used as a tool to rouse up the masses, typically in conjunction with nationalism and the rest noted.  However, there is no evidence that either religion or any of those noted or other ideals are the root cause of war, any more than science and education, which has greatly contributed to, aided and abetted war over the ages, is a root cause of war. Jesus and modern behavioral science evidence agree that what causes war arises from what is buried deep within all people and, the evidence of history clearly demonstrates that the love of wealth (human greed) is at the surface level, the root cause of war--there isn't a single war in human history that can't be traced to either the taking of or protection of wealth and almost always, both.  War and rumor of war (rumor of war causes great fear, social unrest and economic instability), murder, theft, rape and other violence and, the resulting human oppression and human rights suppression, mass displacement, homelessness, hunger, disease, psychological trauma, emotional sorrow, suffering and pain remains.  Only the names of naive, shallow and self-justifying human theories leading to a variety of new excuses for war have changed.  Over historical time, humans have invented all manner of sciences and education, religions, philosophies, technology, gizmos, gadgets, terminology and lofty ideals that aid and abet the destruction of our own species and yet, like the ancient author of Ecclesiastes says, there truly "is nothing new under the sun", for greed-fueled hatred, corruption, violence, slavery, poverty, hunger, disease, sorrow and death remains. 7. According to Bill Moyers, President Johnson early on was advised that it would take at least one million soldiers to "win" the war in Vietnam.  The United States ended up sending 2.5 million soldiers and in doing so, we not only destroyed the lives of countless American families as a result, we also destroyed the lives of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodian citizens.  It is more than likely fair to say that the cost of the Vietnam War was the main reason for the severe economic downturn under President Carter.  Unlike Johnson, President Obama has the benefit of Vietnam and other recent historical hindsight and thus, all people of conscience should be as hard if not harder, on any troop increase, drone attacks and other war-related decisions of Obama, than regarding decisions made by any of his predecessors. Click Here to Go Back to Contents Click Here to eMail the Author Copyright © December 10th, 2019 by Richard Aberdeen. Copyright © December 10th, 2019 by Freedom Tracks Records. ( including from several earlier copyrights ) No part of this material may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher and signed by the author. For inquiries, please contact Freedom Tracks Records.  The essays entitled Revolution and Revolution ~ Side B are open copyright and may be reproduced and distributed as desired.