Maher: U.S. Needs To Give Up War Addiction And Define ‘Peace As Strength’ - RawStory

[WillyT]

Maher: U.S. needs to give up war addiction and define ‘peace as strength’
By David Ferguson - RawStory
Saturday, April 13, 2013 10:44 EDT

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No, he said, the real threat here is the war-mongering Americans who are looking for “any excuse to ramp up the war machine again.”

Be careful, North Korea, Maher warned, “With Afghanistan winding down, America is dangerously close to not having a war. And if you know our history, you know that is something we will not tolerate.”

With no war, he said, we’d have to concentrate on things like poverty and infrastructure issues, “and that’s not fucking fun.”

“Just like we’re the gun country,” he said. “Come on, we’re the war people. We don’t need a lot of encouragement. Have you ever met John McCain? Offering to go to war with the U.S. is like offering to go out to drinks with Lindsay Lohan. We’re already in the car.”

“Just in my lifetime, we’ve invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again,” he said. “That’s when you know you’re war-mongers, when some countries are coming up twice.”

“At some point, don’t you have to look in the mirror,” he asked, “and say ‘Maybe it’s me?’”

“America needs to start defining peace as strength,” he said. “Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot.”

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Link (w/Video): http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/13/maher-u-s-needs-to-give-up-war-addiction-and-define-peace-as-strength/

[TimberValley]

1. It works as long as the other side isn't initiating the attack.

If North Korea were indeed to attack South Korea, then the decision would boil down to a stark choice.

1. Intervene?

or

2. Don't intervene?



Where would the philosophy that "peace is strength" come in in that situation? Not intervene, then?

[Warpy]

2. Nobody denies that we need to be able to mount a strong defense

This isn't an all or nothing proposition, light switch mentality sort of thing.

What it means is we gradually cede Empire, closing all but the most strategic bases, and consider making friends worldwide rather than intimidating everybody with 150+ foreign bases and multiple wars of corporate convenience.

We're ahead of the UK and other empires in that we have relatively little actual conquered territory to cede, just what our bases are sitting on, and no governments to assist in building from the ground up once the colonialists are out of power.

Constant warfare has bankrupted most empires. It's about to do that to us, especially since the plutocracy has declared itself exempt from paying the costs of it.

[RKP5637]

3. And what we teeter on - "Constant warfare has bankrupted most empires." n/t

[Manifestor_of_Light]

7. But is it a civil war? Like Vietnam?

[NJCher]

4. already there

Look at what Robert Young Pelton said the other night in a radio interview:

While American troops are dwindling down in Afghanistan, private contractors are on the increase there, he reported. Many retire from the US military, only to get similar jobs as contractors for more money, he explained. "I was surprised at how many contractors were integrated into the fighting force," non-uniformed civilians performing things like intel gathering, interrogations, training, and servicing of equipment, he remarked. If a quick military action is required such as setting up a drone base, "they use contractors because they can call them up and they can be there with exact skills and then they can send them home and nobody knows about it," Pelton revealed.


Cher

[WillyT]

5. Privatizing War... On Steroids... And We Wonder Why They Hate Us...

Thanks for that info.

[spanone]

6. i'll agree with that 100%....!!!!!