Pay the Fiddler

--U.S. forces landing at Normandy,

6 JUN 1944

____________________

Friday was the 70th anniversary of D-Day, that horrible day when United States troops so bravely stormed the fortress Europe to tackle the gargantuan task of eliminating Fascist powers from the scene.

We know how we did it on the Western Front, but the question is, "Why?" The European Wars I & II were caused by Europeans and the savagery and inhumanity of those endeavors is unquantifiable, so why did the U.S. get involved?

Same-same today regarding Libya, Egypt, the Sinai, Syria, Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. If there is a concept called "responsibility", why isn't France and England shouldering the burden of the colonial messes they created? Why must the U.S. always carry their water?

It is possible to start with the Crusades and end with the balkanization of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires following WW I. This created the majority of the fault lines in the Middle East extending to Kashmir, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The only place the U.S should feel any responsibility is Iraq and mainly Iran, as we created or enabled the sepsis of their society via our interdiction in their national situations. However, war will also not solve either country's dynamics, as Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) clearly demonstrated. The answer to these society's ills will never be settled by proxies on the battlefield.

American security is secured by oceans, intercontinental missiles and our vast military, economic and political structure.

So the question is, why does the U.S. continue to fight other people's battles to the detriment of our own welfare? Is that not why so many Americans died on the beaches of Normandy 70 years and three days ago?

Too Big to Succeed

__________________________

In my short life, the United States has been continuously enmeshed in wars, big and small.  The purpose, besides funding the military complex, is unclear.

Are we for Balkanization, or for the preservation of national state's status quo? Are we against secret or entangling alliances?  Have we learned the lessons of World Wars I and II?

Why did the U.S. enter the world stage in WWI? This is salient to what is spooling out in what we are calling the Syrian Civil War. The situation is similar to that of the Balkans in August, 1914 when the Western world tore itself apart over an insignificant assassination in Sarajevo. (Interestingly, a U.S. combat unit presence remains in Kosovo under the aegis, "peacekeeping".)

As in the Balkans of 1914, there is a similar fault line in Syria which could rupture into a regional war. One little spark (like the self-immolation of Tunisian fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi) can set off the tinderbox of the one reality: this is a highly factionalized region, now as then

Did U.S. leaders fail to recognize this before destabilizing the region by invading Iraq? What has happened to realpolitik? For what reason did the U.S. rush in then, and why would they do so now?

Does it matter if their governments are democratic, autocratic, theocratic, Sunni, Shi'ia or any combination thereof? If so, to whom? Of what strategic concern is this to the U.S. government? What progress has been made since the wars in the Crimea and the Balkans?

WWI and II solved nothing; there were no victors, only losers. What did the U.S. gain from either war that we didn't have  or wouldn't have if we had stayed strictly neutral?

Why has the irrational response of war become a rational choice in our current condition? What democratic nation can prosper by maintaining a war footing for 100+ years?