“In this case, America spent $2 billion total and didn’t lose a single life. This is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past.” Vice President Joe Biden spoke these words soon after the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was confirmed last week.
If you listen close enough, you can almost hear the slow beat of the war drums as you read Biden’s victory call. You need not be clairvoyant to see these words as fanciful language for more perpetual war. The newspaper headlines will ring out in triumph over the death of a human being in a far off land instead of focusing on the death and starvation of Americans at home or the impending debt crisis threatening to destroy Social Security and Medicare.
So when Biden says, “America didn’t lose a single life”, he is absolutely right. But his inability to acknowledge another life as being just as valuable as one that happens to be born an American is simply intolerable. There is no doubt Gaddafi was an evil dictator, but regardless of his own lack of respect for human life, he was still a human being and deserved a fair trial as all Americans rightfully expect for themselves. People are people whether they are civilians, Gaddafi security forces or American soldiers. The human race lost thousands of lives in the several-month war illegally supported by the U.S. and NATO forces. A country is now ravaged by war, families are torn apart and displaced, and anger towards the Western world has grown stronger.
Our actions may have eliminated one man, but who will replace him? And with what type of government? The revolutionaries with al-Qaida among their ranks show no signs of establishing a peaceful and socially equal democracy. The U.S. will intervene once again, and the $2 billion spent thus far will likely blossom to $4 billion and then $10 billion. The money, of course, will be borrowed from China or taken forcefully from the pockets of hurting Americans. Don’t expect the hurt to go away as most foreign intervention nowadays done in the name of compassion and social justice, is nothing more than a facade for the transfer of wealth to the military industrial complex for the protection of resources.
It is unfortunate so many Americans sit back and say nothing when the truth is so clear. Perhaps the people will one day overcome the mind-numbing euphoria acquired by watching “Dancing with the Stars” and “Jersey Shore,” and instead band together and demand fundamental changes to our foreign policy.
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