Absolution is not this simple

Max Boot has sad feelz about cheering on useless death and destruction

The Neoconservative policies, ideology and effect on the country have been an area of interest to me for the last 20+ years, especially as they determined my fate while serving in the military. The grand ideas and goals they have tried to implement in foreign policy took me around the world.

I was not a high-level analyst or spook, yet even as a 22 year old kid my intuition and background told me that many of the actions after 9/11 did not pass the logic test. Shortly after that event, I went to the library to expand my prior knowledge and research the region of the world I was being sent to for an all-inclusive business trip courtesy of Uncle Sam.

A book that really affected how I saw things happening was Raphael Patai’s “The Arab Mind.” This book, while generalizing the culture, customs and traditions of the Middle East, gave an insight into how the countries came to be formed after WWI, and the multiple tribes that inhabited each country.

If a young enlisted kid could recognize the futility of trying to establish the concept of liberal democracy amongst the former nomadic Bedouin tribes that now, playact as “nations”, surely the men and women at the highest positions of US political power and advisement knew this as well. To believe otherwise is a sure indication of their lack of sanity.

There was no Arab Thomas Jefferson or Afghani John Q. Adams waiting in the wings to step in.  Saddam was not the Arab Hitler figure ready to capture and rule the lands between the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean. At the time (2002-2003), the no-fly zones were in effect, military bases surrounded the country.

The greatest treasure of a nation is the youth, yet this was wasted in places like Fallujah, Baghdad and dusty hovels of no use.

The blessings of NeoCon ideology gave us needless death, a surveillance state that rivals anything the USSR could have dreamed, more restrictions on civil liberties, and a host of other maladies we still have to deal with for a long time.

This year will be the twelfth anniversary for the passing of a great man who lost his life in a backwater country that we had no business trying to instill values or civilization in. I will host a drink to his memory and honor, while cursing the NeoCon demons who sent him there.