The Mittbot gave aforeign policy speechon Columbus Day. He’s discovered, not the new world, but the fantasy President Obama. You know, the dude who runs around apologizing for America instead of deploying drones and shit. That’s right: the one who doesn’t exist. Mitt’s speech was typically vague but since all his foreign policy advisers are B-list neo-cons such as Dan Senor and John Bolton, we know he’s ready to go McCain on the world’s ass, and invade anyone who the neo-cons don’t like. Anyone? I guess I meant to sayanywhere, anyhow, anyway I choose…
Time to circle back to the post title. Other than the heavy drinking and his time as a Liberal government minister, American conservatives love Winston Churchill, or at least think they do. He and Mrs. Thatcher are probably the only British PM’s they’ve heard of. Me, I’m more partial to Atlee, Asquith, the pre-Iraq War Tony Blair, and Disraeli, who makes me dizzy, but I digress. One more digression: that picture of the never totally drunk nor completely sober Winnie with the tommygun scares the shit out of me. I keep imagining some sensible chap in the back taking cover out of concern that the PM is about to fire a few rounds…
Where the hell was I? Oh yeah, an unarmed Winston Churchill. My favorite Churchillism is “better jaw, jaw, jaw than war, war, war.”
Mitt and the B-list/chickenhawk neo-cons have inverted that formula. Like John McCain, Romney never met a country he didn’t want to bomb and never saw a world crisis that he didn’t think could be resolved by military action. Of course, Senator Walnuts *actually* meant it whereas with the Mittbot ya never know. Let’s hope we don’t find out. There’s one formerRepublican US Senator who loathes the idea of the chickenhawk Romney as Commander-in-Chief as much as I do.
I’ll let those staunch Republicans, Silvio Dante and Tony Soprano, have the last word this Columbus Day:
I do find it interesting how it’s always the pols who found a way to stay well away from the bullets and blood when their country called, who like to talk tough, act tough, and who are always hot for a good war(guess it’s because they’ll now be the ones saying “go on, boys” rather than “come on, boys”…).
Addendum: I keep thinking of Tricky Dick Nixon (supply officer on Green Island–well away from the fighting) vs. George McGovern–“the candidate who would rather beg than bomb” (25 missions as a B-24 pilot over some of the worst flak traps in WWII Europe)…
And then we have George “Champagne flight draft-dodger” Bush vs. John Kerrey, who actually fought in Vietnam–bravely, despite what the lying Swiftboaters said. And let’s not talk about Dick “better things to do than fight for my country” Cheney…
As another site put under a picture of Romney, “Had the chance to go to war and went to France instead.”
Perhaps I’m too rough on him for this. As France had previously been at the center of the Nam Quagmire. Romney can indirectly claim service for Nam. Would be more truthful than a lot that he has said.
And on a wider scale, how many of our current problems are easily traced back to our imperialist tendencies of the past? We were part of the coalition that carved up the Middle East into countries without attention to any existing tribal governments. How is that turning out?
We supplied arms to Afghanistan. CIA was very active with the Taliban. Any problem there?
We divided Korea into North and South to establish an eternal sub-war. How is that turning out? And Didn’t Bush lump them into the axis of evil.
Both Iran and Iraq we were active in instating and removing the power structure (examples include Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein). What problems?
In Nam, we had a decade of the quagmire and got out. Oddly, of the places listed above, Now that we are out of Nam the nation has united and is flirting with capitalism.