The Decade Of Aggression

I wrote extensively last year about our total apathy and complete disregard toward our two wars, that what most Americans are doing is the least they could do. Truthfully, we aren't really at war. Congress has never declared it. Nonetheless, a trillion dollars and a few hundred thousand lives later we are on the edge of a paradigm shift and we'll finally abort our mission(s) overseas and get back to whipping our consumerist economy in shape.

Ha.

I doubt it. We are so entrenched that Obama will be mired in these two campaigns well into the end of his first term and if the economy stays flat, well, he'll be mired until the end of his one-term presidency. This is American warfare of the 21st century: bomb, attack and surge, then get bogged down in perpetual insurgency until some arbitrary and capricious date when we declare victory and pull out.

Question is, when is that arbitrary and capricious date?

Friday?
Next week?
December?
2010?
2013?
2031?

I could care less about our wars. In lieu of giving a shit, I was instructed to go buy a car, which I admittedly didn't do. I didn't follow the instructions. Perhaps I failed America by not doing so. Did I fail America?

Do I fail America by not caring a whit about Afghanistan and Iraq? Do I fail America by thankfully realizing the amazing luck that 1) I contracted diabetes and got out of the service before our decade of aggression, 2) my oldest son was just old enough to land a steady job before the economic slowdown/perpetual wars and 3) my youngest son is just young enough to likely escape all this when he comes of age?

Perhaps I fail America. Perhaps that old "Love it or Leave it" slogan should be hung around my neck while I'm pilloried on the public square for being so anti-American. Wait...there aren't any public squares here in Elk Grove...thank God for that!

I will likely refuse to accept any rationalization for our continued presence in either nation and, as Obama will likely announce at West Point this Tuesday, another thirty thousand troops to be sent to Afghanistan. I think I am entitled to an opinion, and this opinion -- particularly when I have made [recent] efforts to live a life not predicated on continued private solo motorization, the importation of cheap Chinese consumables, and the gross volumes of imported energy required to keep it all running. I firmly believe that our way of life is at the heart of a great many problems -- supposed climate change, a wholesale lack of meaningful places to live, a finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) economy not based on building anything anymore, exurban sprawl, poor social interactions, cheap consumerism, lack of places worthy of our visiting, the increasing importation of energy from foreign sources, $12,000,000,000,000 in debt and counting, and money-for-nothing expectations from the lowest class (entitlements) to the middle class (housal unit flipping and NASDAQ) to the upper class (CDOs & default swaps), from the youngest ($8,000 housal unit credit) to the oldest (cash for clunkers).

I am not a fan of this way of life. I am not a fan of the exportation of this way of life at the cost of a trillion dollars and more to the point, the wasted national effort in lives, resources, and energy. We are about to engage Thanksgiving and I will be thankful for the fact that my sons aren't overseas. These wars aren't about national defense -- they are about the continuation of a lifestyle (see above) that is wholly unsustainable. If you think that the defense of this way of life is indeed worthy of such wars, well, I suppose we will never agree.