. . .
+ “Can you hear the drums?”
– “Loud and clear. Five by Five. I can smell them; I can feel them; I can taste them; I can see them. Those who decide have decided to go to war with Iran.”
+ “I sense it too. O’Bama’s comments before the Super Bowl were not reassuring. Some of the militaristic rhetoric may be designed to force the players to reconsider diplomatic alternatives. Von Clausewitz and all. Most efforts appear to be directed at concocting a ruse or pretext or charade to go to war.”
– “The only thing left to do is to fool the public. That doesn’t even require creativity. The American Empire is now committed to prosecuting two wars at all times. We lost in Iraq, proclaimed victory and claimed to withdraw. Now America has a free, but very expensive, pass to invade another country.”
+ “There really is no overriding strategy. Imposing sanctions is the tactic to date. The problem with sanctions is that a people may learn how to hunker down and live with them. That which does not kill me and all. And God bless the American public. However, forty-five percent of the public will not even notice the different consonant.”
– “The ‘Iraq, Iran, who cares, they are all towels’ mindset. When the war starts, the most likely public reaction will be a quizzical look and a question asking whether we didn’t just leave there.”
+ “The group known as the Press does not seem as united in support of an attack as the gang was in early 2003. Yet those calling for war are muting the few voices of dissent. The drums are drowning out the guitars.”
– “We just refuse to learn from our mistakes. What if we decided to do something right and learn from our success?”
. . .
+ “Some say Falklands; some say Malvinas.”
– “If you look at the map, you say Argentina.”
+ “If you wander around the Isla and talk to the folks, you say Britain.”
– “Geographic location versus self-determination. History seems to emerge historically and not logically.”
+ “History is like that. So the only way to settle the matter is to embrace the time-honored tradition of killing batches of eighteen year olds.”
– “Certainly trendy through the ages. It is about sovereignty, yes, yet it is always about oil.”
+ “Perhaps they need to respect each country’s sovereignty and work on an arrangement to share the offshore resources in shared waters.”
– “Deploying Billy was entirely ill-advised, provocative and unnecessary. We just refuse to learn.”
+ “What if Billy had refused to deploy.”
. . .
Bumper stickers of the week:
No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations against Iran
I’m already against the next war
Jeremy Lin
Peaceful Presidents’ Day
The guitars of peace
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