It isn't fear of being called a pacifist which will keep Barack Obama from sending more troops to Afghanistan, or withdrawing them entirely. It is fear that being called a pacifist really means being called a sissy, especially since he hasn't packed a pistol for Uncle (not Aunt) Sam, himself, and because he is surrounded by a family of women.
Can schoolyard cruelty really be the subconscious determinant in sending thousands of men to their deaths (and now, women-- Equal Opportunity Death: let's kill the gooose that lays the golden egg too, eh)?
We will find out 10,000 or so victims from now, I am afraid.
Am I being unpatriotic the Day after Veterans' Day? I don't really know. Robert MacNamara lied to us throughout the Viet Nam War and beyond. Colin Powell was the instrument (perhaps unwitting instrument) of Administration lies about the need to send soldiers to their deaths in Iraq. And Condoleeza Rice? A mouthpiece too.
And the Great Emancipator, the loftiest speech writer in the English language who sought to operate "with malice toward none, with charity toward all"?
He used Divinity to excuse his slaughter: "For every drop of blood from the lash a drop of blood from the sword" is the Divine Equation that Lincoln concluded the Creator was using in permitting the horrible slaughter of human life on American soil: 'We're payin our divine dues for the inhumanity of slavery.' seems to have been Lincoln's self-justifying reasoning.
Poor man.
How could he sleep otherwise? He wasn't a Stalin or a Mao even though the Civil War's slaughter statistics are rival to theirs in terms of human suffering, if not of proportion.
And please don't tell me that battle is not slaughter.
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