Is there anything in the world that will finally wake the American people to the fact that our current foreign wars are clearly illegal, immoral and totally without any kind of justification? Have we Americans allowed ourselves to become so mentally conditioned that we can no longer differentiate between right and wrong? These wars are wrong and if we continue to accept and condone them, then we are more than wrong. We will become part of the problem instead of part of the solution.
By our actions and inaction, we are allowing America to be defined as a nation of war, intent on the conquest of other nations for personal gain. After so many, many wars that have taken place in our history, is war now in our blood, embedded in our national psyche? I would certainly hope that this is not the case but the evidence indicates that we are unable to shake off the war mentality that has America in a suffocating grip.
The last war that America waged that can be considered as being honorable was World War II. The many wars since then, including those against the tiny nations of Grenada and Panama, as well as the fiasco called the Vietnam War, are a reprehensible part of our history. These wars and so many others have accomplished nothing of value and positive results but, rather, they have greatly tarnished our reputation in the world. Nations that once respected us now fear us.
Speaking of World War II, the years proceeding that very dark time in history were an example of one of the most successful programs of mental conditioning in history. The German people, highly intelligent, industrious, and normally peaceful succumbed to the psychological techniques of Joseph Goebbels, a highly educated and skilled master of communications, who became the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. He cleverly planted the seeds of war into the minds of the German people and they passively submitted to an expansive, destructive war agenda.
Is there currently an equivalent to that Great Communicator of those disastrous times? Today's equivalent of Goebbels is not one person in our government; it is the mainstream media that has become masterful at spreading misinformation and fear into America's national psyche. It is now common knowledge that this media is the communication division of the military-industrial complex that profits from the agenda of perpetual war. That is the mission of the many bloodthirsty ministers of war and propaganda on right wing radio and TV.
They are masters and very, very skilled at doing their assigned job of selling war. Many of you will remember the masterful job they did in selling the Vietnam War, one of the biggest blunders and disasters in our history. Their grip on the American mind at that time was finally broken when the fearless and greatly respected journalist, Walter Cronkite, had finally had enough of that war and exposed it for what it was. At that time, President Johnson, who had continuously escalated troop deployments, made this famous quote after Cronkite had turned against that war: "When I lost Walter Cronkite, I lost middle America." And he was right as both his presidency and the war went down the tubes after that great point in journalism history.
This controlled media fed us the many lies that led to the Iraq War, another historical disaster. And the same techniques were used to convince Americans that we had to invade and occupy Afghanistan to suppress Al-Qaeda. The problem we have today in America is that there is no Walter Cronkite or an Edward R. Murrow to tell the truth to the people and to cancel out the great propaganda machine. And that's why it's running rampant and out of control.
There are a few TV hosts that have spoken out against our current wars, albeit only on occasion and not with any great appeal to Americans to reject it. Most of them are on MSNBC; Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. They appear to be against the wars but they know full well that if they speak out too often and too strongly, they will be muzzled; and that is simply because they work for a massive corporation that would in no way tolerate anti-war statements.
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