Declare Victory, Come Home? by Stanley L. Cohen

Not a bad idea. From Stanley L. Cohen at antiwar.com:

I have no idea who was involved in the latest atrocity in Paris, the Russian airplane bombing in the Sinai, the attacks in South Beirut or recent siege in Mali, but I’m pretty sure there will be a long line of those only too willing to take credit for the mayhem; and even more talking heads assigning blame based upon their “experience,” source information, or six figure paychecks from main stream media, as token resident “terrorism” experts for sale. Who cares.

The real issue is what, if anything, can be done to stanch the mindless bloodletting that has become routine in many corners of the world today. The answer is simple- as was successfully done in Vietnam, declare victory and get out.

Putting aside, for the moment, the lawlessness of it all, the days of identifying the “bad guy” and simply taking him or her out are long gone. Other than Israeli slaughters of Palestinians, the all too simplistic notion that there are tight- knit hierarchical organizations or a calibrated theology ultimately responsible for massacres of civilians, be it in France, Tunisia, Baghdad or Kenya, may sell to a now clearly numbed and frightened public, but ultimately it’s just so much fool’s gold. We all see how successful the targeted drone murders of “key” terrorists throughout the Middle East and Africa have been and, of course, the assassination of Osama Bin Laden did prove to be a watershed moment in turning back the clock to the warm comforting days of TV’s “Father Knows Best.” The bottom line: it’s all too little, too late, and if it wasn’t so damned deadly, downright silly.

For far too long, the civilian body count has grown higher and higher throughout the world, piled mostly with the remains of Muslims… some of whom just don’t seem to appreciate the superior Judeo/Christian traditions of peace and love which, to some degree, have fueled it… and who have long been the favorite targets of the marauding faith-based West and its surrogate states. Of course, when the mayhem is caused or viewed by the West as necessary to protect its own claimed interests or that of friends, or to fulfill so-called treaty obligations with other neocolonial powers, the bombs, drones, and water-boarding they use are just fine; always, of course, carried out in the name of democracy and security. The bottom line: the West needs to get out of the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia completely leaving the folks on the ground to decide their own fate, in their own countries, in their own ways, as they, alone, determine their course for existence

For generations the West carved up foreign regions where most of the fighting is ongoing today, stealing their natural resources, anointing archaic despotic regimes and promoting or turning a blind eye to human rights violations by regimes who host meaningless conferences in exotic ports with marching bands that can’t play their own national anthems yet are adept playing those of Western leaders who attend to protect their own colonial self-interests… even as those very interests crash and burn.

Unfortunately, at its core, the imperial notion continues that the “first” world has the best laid plans, the finest of motives and, of course, all the answers to dampen, if not extinguish, revolutionary fervor by hundreds of millions of mostly principled and determined women and men throughout the “third-world”, seeking nothing more than true independence and the ability to chart a future for themselves and their families… removed from shadows of world capitals thousands of miles from the streets and fields they call home. Tragically, it seems the cultural, religious and racial arrogance of the West is reason enough to cause an endless stream of alienated and angry youth to throw themselves under the proverbial bus and, in so doing, drag a bunch of other innocents along with them. To view today’s violence in a vacuum and simply the result of an age-old messianic religious call, is to guarantee future generations of death and destruction leading to continued head-scratching and failure to figure out reasons behind it.

To continue reading: Declare Victory, Come Home?