Sun Tzu
I have heard it said that fear is the most effective emotion, when it comes to getting humans to act the way you want them to. I think that is most likely true. Fear of what ever can be used to massage the masses into just about anything, no matter how stupid or easily debunked or against their own best interest it is, if you scare people enough, they will do what ever they have been told will protect them.
Fear has been used by politicians and pundits and salesman of all kinds of useless wares, since before the first army existed or the first war. Yes indeed fear is the granddaddy of the motivational emotions.
I have also heard fear broken down into the following; fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. That may not be correct in all cases of mass hysterical fear, but many modern out breaks of pandemic fear, fall right in line with that concept.
It was the false fear that Saddam had nukes that caused us to sacrifice the limbs and health of tens of thousands of young, healthy and mostly poor Americans. More than four thousand gave the ultimate payment for our collective fear. Yet, the evidence was false and they, shamefully died as a result of a sham.
The fear that 9-11 instilled in us was potent and potentially the most valuable mass emotion that the military industrial complex ever could imagine and they along with our scoundrel leaders at the time led us into the most costly and least beneficial conflict in the history of this country.
Now nine years later, that fear is still the fuel that causes us to allow stupidity and ignorance to guide our foreign policy. The fear of the next terrorist attack has done more damage than any attack ever could.
Looks like Osama was wiser than they made him out to be. If he was actually the mastermind behind that terrible set of events in September 2001 he must have known how we would respond, and that is where the trick resides.
9-11 was a significant event but how significant? After all, in a nation of over 300 million, the death of 3000 is terrible, but by no means is it worth destroying ourselves and that is what we have been doing for nine years.
In fear, we watched as our constitution was subjugated and transformed by the Patriot Act. It was fear that caused otherwise moral, honest, kind Americans to turn their heads in the face of torture and secret prisons and the suspension of habeas corpus. That fear is still being used and I for one feel it is time to not be afraid anymore.
What ever the news and the politicians and the corporate war mongers are telling us we should be fearful of, we should ignore. In the final examination, our fear has never stopped anything from happening. So I am not now nor can I honestly say I was ever fearful of those brown skinned bogeymen they want me to believe are out to get me.
To think that any nation could stand up to the billions of dollars in bombs we have dropped on Afghanistan and Iraq is seemingly stupid. To think that a rag tag group of mountain men living in caves could survive that is silly, but to believe that they both survived and now pose a threat is the height of self-deception. If there is any of them left, they are the ones we have created by killing their family and bombing their farms.
But we are told and told and told that we are in danger and we can not question the wisdom of war, cause there are terrorist that want to kill us. I don't buy that kind of bull, ever.
Are you afraid of terrorist? I’m not. I can’t bring my self to believe that some dude in a cave, halfway around the world posses any threat to me or my loved ones. I don’t believe the hype. No how, No way.
Perhaps there are terrorist out there and perhaps they are dangerous, but so are bears and mountain lions and rattle snakes and I know they are more likely to show up in my back yard than the Taliban or that creation of the imagination they call Al Qaeda. I just don’t buy that shit and I urge you to return your fear and get yourself a good dose of reasonable reality.
Someone wants me to believe that after nine years of constant violence, smart bombs, depleted uranium, millions of rounds from hundreds of thousands of M16’s that there is actually someone in a cave of Afghanistan or Pakistan that has the ability to cause me or you harm. That is ridiculous.
I think that we have fallen for the same trick that the Soviet Union fell for and caused them to implode. We have reacted and continue to react to false evidence which continues to appear to be real. But it can’t be.
Then today, the Taliban, that evil organization that has been the justification to send our children off to war stated that they have no intention of harming the west in any way. Perhaps they missed the translation, maybe they really stated that they CAN’T harm the west if they wanted to and therefore pose no threat to us. Perhaps they are trying to stop us from killing them by revealing that they have no way to attack us, unless we are there, in their back yard.
They went on to state "Still, if you (NATO and U.S. troops) want to colonize the country of proud and pious Afghans under the baseless pretext of a war on terror, then you should know that our patience will only increase and that we are ready for a long war."
If the tables were turned and we, Americans, were the host of an invading force wouldn’t we vow the same? Wouldn’t we fight to the last man? Why would we continue to fight a war that has no reward? To keep face? To maintain our “Military Stature”? Bullshit.
When President Obama goes along with the prevailing ignorance and contemplates sending more troops and spending more of China's money on a useless, pointless, un-winnable war we have to know that he is serving the only interest that are profiting from this nonsense. He is being what the American President has become since Truman, the top salesman for the Military Industrial Complex.
For those of us that thought it would be different with a man like Barack in office, it may come as a shock and we may feel a patriotic nerve twitch as we try to defend his position, but ultimately we need to be real and not be afraid to call it what it is. War for profit, violence as a form of diplomacy and a idiotic fear of the harmless.
I’m not afraid, are you?
What do you think?
I agree with Mos Def on this one.
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