Considering
the continued murkiness of the facts and evidence, I don’t believe this nation
should elect to war based primarily on a ‘prime time’ Presidential monologue. A
serious and comprehensive national dialogue is required. If I were to ask the
President some questions they would be -
1.
If
violence is the answer to our grievance, why wouldn’t violence be the answer to
someone else’s grievances a month from now or a year from now? Or is this war
projected to be the war to end all grievances?
2.
If
we bomb them, why shouldn’t we expect to be bombed? Americans have coasted too
long on the anomaly of WWII and our recent conflicts where we engage in war and
all the death and destruction happens “over there”. But war is not just us ‘doing
them’; it is also them ‘doing us’. That’s war! And if bombs go off in their
cities, we must expect they will go off in ours; exploded under the same
construction of “justice” that supposedly informs our actions. Unless the
President, in asking for authorization to go to war, is prepared to place this
real possibility before the people, to make the people understand and
appreciate the real consequences of war; that we must expect to see the blood
of our children flowing down the storm drains in our streets, then his request
would be less than his full moral duty. It would be an omission closely related
to deception.
But there are
other aspects equally pertinent to our national security and domestic
tranquility to consider. We are not only debating a foreign war, we are
debating a class war.
Over the
course of the past weeks, right up to today, there haven’t been any other or new
arguments presented differing from those generated on ‘day one’. No new
evidence or proof has surfaced to sway adopted opinions. All of the originally
held, various, and respective speculations are intact, in place, and unchanged.
And the entire population is exposed to the same corporate media. But I submit for consideration my admittedly
unscientific conclusion derived from anecdotal evidence and my personal interpretation
of the polls, that it appears that the economic top ten percent of the society
is for the war, and the bottom 90% is against it. Why this is the case is another
debate for another time. But “IF” I am correct I don’t believe it is possible
for the President to lay out a case, lacking some as yet un-communicated, overwhelmingly
compelling and believable arguments and proven facts that may have only emerged
in the past hours, to change this calculus. So, although it is another
discomfort in an uncomfortable and complex situation for a serially embattled
president, a choice must be made. The President not only has a military decision
to make, he has a political decision to make as well. His most vital and
meaningful decision in this scenario doesn’t involve which weapons systems to
employ, designating high value targets, or proving to the world how much of a
badass he can be. What will have the greatest impact on our security and
domestic tranquility is his decision on which constituency to appease. The historic
and social trajectory of our nation awaits his choice.