Bacevich: On Aghanistan, It's "Conditioning" (and scalable incoherence)
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: Bacevich: On Aghanistan, It's "Conditioning" (and scalable
incoherence)
Date: Oct 12, 2009 8:09 AM
ARTICLE BELOW
============================
You know, like the homos.
We're being *conditioned* to get used to perversions. "Perverted"
is ever the new "normal," like what happened in the 1950s and
60s with psychiatry, where perverted became "normal" or "common."
Where "Sex Cures All Diseases." Like, where Freud's Sexual Abuse
Victims, *LIKED IT,* and, according to the pervert Freud who was
doing
his sister-in-law on the sides, weren't getting enough! Sex-Cures-All!
What's next?
What's the next shocking atrocity that we're supposed to be
conditioned
to believe is normal?
The problem is that we can't get hold of the cotton pickin TV sets.
We normals can't get reality on TV. This seems like a simpleton's
solution but Ameritards really do get sucked into the tube. It's like
facts hurt their/our brains and they/we go out of our way to return
the common, daily verbal subjects of the likes of our petty, imagined
jealousies and offenses between neighbors. Like, life really *is* a
soap opera. American Life today really is a case where Everyday
Americans make their own reality.
I hear the teenagers tell me directly that they're entitled to believe
whatever they want, regardless of the truth or the facts. Are they
being taught this in school?
Are they, the high-schoolers, being taught that reality - social mores
- is entirely subjective and that the only "wrong" is in correcting
another person's delusions because the other person is entitled to
them?
Like this war-story in the WaPo, where the soldier does not recognize
the military's need for cohesion in thought and deed?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/09/AR2009100902570.html?nav=hcmodule
Like this gay soldier can't recognize how the normal soldiers might
feel about a pervert in their midst? The gay soldier has no respect
whatsoever for what the normal soldiers feel by having a queer around
them? As if it isn't possible that the normal soldiers would be
wondering what's on the mind of the gay soldier? That they'd be
wondering what other ideology might go along with being queer? Does
the gay soldier wonder whether or not by his being queer the other
normal soldiers would wonder in what other areas this gay soldier's
thinking is abnormal?
Does the gay solider *care* that the rest might feel threatened?
How many people know a gay fairly well?
Is it fair to say that gays have other funny ideas besides about
sexuality?
In my experience, it's never limited to just sexuality. In fact,
every single one of them I know feels the need to talk about it. And
more... ("Too Much Information, Thanks.")
Their NEEDS TO BE A COMMON CULTURE in the military, despite we
Americans believing one culture should be imposed upon the entire
nation. Every daylifers in America don't suffer the same threats as
the soldiers.
I had a gay person flat-out *TELL* me he intended to "condition" me to
his perverted ways. It didn't matter how many times I told him sex
was an off-topic topic. He was hell-bent on sex being the primary
topic. He felt as if it was his obligation to liberate the world into
pan-sexuality. 'Like he was a Pervert Crusader.
Now that I've been told directly their agenda, I see it now every day,
every where. Psychiatry did the exact same thing. With their
personal manner and in their affect, they elevated themselves and
said there was no such thing as evil or the devil... But they have no
explanation for any real, measurable phenomena, like Fatima, correct?
Seventy thousand people witnessed that event and it was recorded by
newspapermen *sent* *out* *to* *debunk* the seers. Today, we see
Ghost Hunters record - at least parascientifically - paranormal
phenomena. We see crop circles scientifically explained as caused by
some physical event, like radiation, like microwaves:
http://www.ufo-blogger.com/2009/04/physicist-offers-scientific-proof-that.html
What does ^^ that mean?
Doesn't that mean that psychiatry's paradigm is all wrong?
Do people have a right to be wrong?
Do they have the right to *force* the exposure of the rest of their to
their perversions and dementia?
Here Bacevich says we're being conditioned to be the new Sparta with
the Afghanistan rhetoric. Notice how the sum of these bogus
philosophies cancel out. How could a Love-lover (a lover of the sex
acts and not the objects) be a War-lover? Why isn't the American
Psychiatric Association screaming their eyeballs out about Making Love
and Not War? Why did they instead keep their mouths shut for 8 years
over the Bushie/Israeli torture abuses? It would be morally and
medically wrong to say nothing, but nothing did they say, and still
they say nothing...
Search their homepage for the word "torture"
http://www.psych.org/
It's not there.
Search it for "war."
It's not there.
But these osychiahoes are the permanent and ultimate judges of human
behavior? Despite not producing a single article on the State of the
Times in America?
It is because false philosophies have that hallmark of scalable
incoherence.
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
===============================================
By Andrew J. Bacevich
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/11/afghanistan___the_proxy_war/
October 11, 2009
NO SERIOUS person thinks that Afghanistan - remote, impoverished,
barely qualifying as a nation-state - seriously matters to the United
States. Yet with the war in its ninth year, the passions raised by the
debate over how to proceed there are serious indeed. Afghanistan
elicits such passions because people understand that in rendering his
decision on Afghanistan, President Obama will declare himself on
several much larger issues. In this sense, Afghanistan is a classic
proxy war, with the main protagonists here in the United States.
Discuss
COMMENTS (30)
The question of the moment, framed by the prowar camp, goes like this:
Will the president approve the Afghanistan strategy proposed by his
handpicked commander General Stanley McChrystal? Or will he reject
that plan and accept defeat, thereby inviting the recurrence of 9/11
on an even larger scale? Yet within this camp the appeal of the
McChrystal plan lies less in its intrinsic merits, which are
exceedingly dubious, than in its implications.
If the president approves the McChrystal plan he will implicitly:
■ Anoint counterinsurgency - protracted campaigns of armed nation-
building - as the new American way of war.
■ Embrace George W. Bush’s concept of open-ended war as the essential
response to violent jihadism (even if the Obama White House has
jettisoned the label “global war on terror’’).
■ Affirm that military might will remain the principal instrument for
exercising American global leadership, as has been the case for
decades.
Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding
fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global
military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection,
and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis. The
McChrystal plan modestly updates these fundamentals to account for the
lessons of 9/11 and Iraq, cultural awareness and sensitivity nudging
aside advanced technology as the signature of American military power,
for example. Yet at its core, the McChrystal plan aims to avert
change. Its purpose - despite 9/11 and despite the failures of Iraq -
is to preserve the status quo.
Hawks understand this. That’s why they are intent on framing the
debate so narrowly - it’s either give McChrystal what he wants or
accept abject defeat. It’s also why they insist that Obama needs to
decide immediately.
Yet people in the antiwar camp also understand the stakes. Obama ran
for the presidency promising change. The doves sense correctly that
Obama’s decision on Afghanistan may well determine how much - if any -
substantive change is in the offing.
If the president assents to McChrystal’s request, he will void his
promise of change at least so far as national security policy is
concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his
first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions
of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more
American combat deaths - costs that the hawks are loath to
acknowledge.
As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of
US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will
become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war
as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That “keeping
Americans safe’’ obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and
exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly
uncontroversial.
If the Afghan war then becomes the consuming issue of Obama’s
presidency - as Iraq became for his predecessor, as Vietnam did for
Lyndon Johnson, and as Korea did for Harry Truman - the inevitable
effect will be to compromise the prospects of reform more broadly.
At home and abroad, the president who advertised himself as an agent
of change will instead have inadvertently erected barriers to change.
As for the American people, they will be left to foot the bill.
This is a pivotal moment in US history. Americans owe it to themselves
to be clear about what is at issue. That issue relates only
tangentially relates to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or the well-being of
the Afghan people. The real question is whether “change’’ remains
possible.
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations
at Boston University. His new book “Washington Rules: America’s Path
to Permanent War’’ is forthcoming.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
October 11, 2009
NO SERIOUS person thinks that Afghanistan - remote, impoverished,
barely qualifying as a nation-state - seriously matters to the United
States. Yet with the war in its ninth year, the passions raised by the
debate over how to proceed there are serious indeed. Afghanistan
elicits such passions because people understand that in rendering his
decision on Afghanistan, President Obama will declare himself on
several much larger issues. In this sense, Afghanistan is a classic
proxy war, with the main protagonists here in the United States.
Discuss
COMMENTS (30)
The question of the moment, framed by the prowar camp, goes like this:
Will the president approve the Afghanistan strategy proposed by his
handpicked commander General Stanley McChrystal? Or will he reject
that plan and accept defeat, thereby inviting the recurrence of 9/11
on an even larger scale? Yet within this camp the appeal of the
McChrystal plan lies less in its intrinsic merits, which are
exceedingly dubious, than in its implications.
If the president approves the McChrystal plan he will implicitly:
■ Anoint counterinsurgency - protracted campaigns of armed nation-
building - as the new American way of war.
■ Embrace George W. Bush’s concept of open-ended war as the essential
response to violent jihadism (even if the Obama White House has
jettisoned the label “global war on terror’’).
■ Affirm that military might will remain the principal instrument for
exercising American global leadership, as has been the case for
decades.
Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding
fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global
military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection,
and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis. The
McChrystal plan modestly updates these fundamentals to account for the
lessons of 9/11 and Iraq, cultural awareness and sensitivity nudging
aside advanced technology as the signature of American military power,
for example. Yet at its core, the McChrystal plan aims to avert
change. Its purpose - despite 9/11 and despite the failures of Iraq -
is to preserve the status quo.
Hawks understand this. That’s why they are intent on framing the
debate so narrowly - it’s either give McChrystal what he wants or
accept abject defeat. It’s also why they insist that Obama needs to
decide immediately.
Yet people in the antiwar camp also understand the stakes. Obama ran
for the presidency promising change. The doves sense correctly that
Obama’s decision on Afghanistan may well determine how much - if any -
substantive change is in the offing.
If the president assents to McChrystal’s request, he will void his
promise of change at least so far as national security policy is
concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his
first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions
of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more
American combat deaths - costs that the hawks are loath to
acknowledge.
As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of
US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will
become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war
as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That “keeping
Americans safe’’ obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and
exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly
uncontroversial.
If the Afghan war then becomes the consuming issue of Obama’s
presidency - as Iraq became for his predecessor, as Vietnam did for
Lyndon Johnson, and as Korea did for Harry Truman - the inevitable
effect will be to compromise the prospects of reform more broadly.
At home and abroad, the president who advertised himself as an agent
of change will instead have inadvertently erected barriers to change.
As for the American people, they will be left to foot the bill.
This is a pivotal moment in US history. Americans owe it to themselves
to be clear about what is at issue. That issue relates only
tangentially relates to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or the well-being of
the Afghan people. The real question is whether “change’’ remains
possible.
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations
at Boston University. His new book “Washington Rules: America’s Path
to Permanent War’’ is forthcoming.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci