Enough is Enough!

We've all spent our lifetimes listening to the "Hawks" lecture us about the threats we face and how we must spend trillions of dollar, more then one trillion is unaccounted for, to be prepared to defend or nation. In the 1980's we needed more tanks, more warheads to counter a global challenger that we found out only a few years later was an enemy whose entire economic system was crumbling under it own weight. Many will say that it was all that military spending that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. To that I say "Bullshit". After the collapse we got to see a system that was in a state of disarray that does not happen in a few years. It was a system fraught will fraud and corruption. And when Defense Secretary Casper Weinberg sat in front of congress and talked about the Soviet threat and why we needed more tanks and more ships, That was also bullshit.The Soviet union was a threat. It was a nuclear threat and we countered that threat with a stand off. Through a process of inflating the threat of our enemies. The American people have been sucked dry and then some by what Dwight Eisenhower warned us against long ago when he said. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist"Today we stand in a totally different world. There is no standing army that is a significant threat. No nation is threatening global domination.. There is no battlefield for armies to engage to acquire more real estate except in places where the driving force is poverty and social injustices that create enviroments of conflict. There will always be regional conflicts, it the nature of man. those conflicts will have winners and losers and most likely the people that will suffer is the innocent people trying to live a peaceful life and to raise and provide for their family. And we must do all we can to promote peace and to find just resolutions. We must also provide aid for those that suffer from conflict. Aid that also promotes democratic ideals, funds secular education and promotes economic justice. We must recapture the torch of Honor, Justice and Equality. We must return to the ideal of leading by example.The treat we face today is terrorism. A terrorist organization is a criminal enterprise. Some how it has become considered weak to say that these days. But it is reality. Terrorist groups are like organized crime. To counter them you need to infiltrate them, expand your intelligence gathering and ability to disturb their sources of funding and weapons and establish close relationships with those mutually opposed to the terrorist group. Your not going to counter a terrorist organization with a battlefield mentality. You can not fight an enemy that can dissolve into the population by blowing up the whole neighborhood.The "hawks" of today lead by the Neo-cons have more then proven their incompetence to the American people. The have sacrificed the lives and futures of our soldier, degraded our military to a point that we will have no choice but to spent billions more just to replace the equipment the national guard has lost to war in Iraq.The actions of the Neo-con has brought disgrace to our nation. We have become a nation that acts to start pre-emptive wars against countries that are not eminent threats. We kidnap people off the streets of foriegn lands and wisk them away to be tortured in other countries. We are a nation that holds people, even our own citizens, in detention without due process. We are a nation that has lost it moral authority.We went into Iraq to remove a leader and are now left engaged in a war with a population that has along way to go to learn to live with each other and doesn't want us there. The only positive to our actions is we did indeed bring freedom from Saddam, but how the people use that freedom is up to them. That may seem cold and their probably will be an increase in sectarian violence. But they must learn to live together and to govern together. I question why some don't think that there will be great Iraqis that will rise to the occasion and bring the people together. That a great Iraqi leader will emerge from the rubble to unite the people. A leadership that creates a safe and stable nation with the potential for great wealth. One that allows for the return of Iraqi middle class and the intellectuals and professionals. that are now refugees in neighboring counties.Our nation stands today with a leadership that sees war as a legitimate toll of International Diplomacy. Ultimatum as a starting point to dialogue and a privatized military as one hell of a cash cow.The Neo-cons have shown themselves to be wrong time and time again and it time we stop listening to them. The war should end Now. We need to face up to the truth of the disaster that this has become and face up to our complicity for letting it happen. Unfortunately from the posturing of the Neo-con they will never listen and understand that this country is a democracy and that you can not ignore the will of the people, at least not for long.The only thing that could possibly convince the neo-cons that it time to leave would be a couple million people clogging the streets of Washington D.C. on the 4th of July. Only a massive demonstration of the will of the American People will show the Neo-con and the other hawks in our government that enough is enough. End the War Now.