what if we threw a war and nobody showed up......

In his Presidential farewell speech to the nation in 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the American people of a powerful menace, that unleashed, could be the very demise of our nation as well as the world. He wasn't the first president to do so, as George Washington's words warned the country of the very same dangers many years before.
A country that places all their faith, time, and money in weapons and military does little to help the commonwealth of a country grow and live in peace.
Eisenhower would pen the phrase "military industrial complex", and warned that if left unchecked, power would rise beyond control of citizen votes, and into one of military and government rule. Any of this sounding familiar? You betcha! We are in the midst of this menace now with no exit plan we can count on.

We have already traveled to this abyss since Eisenhowers speech when we entered into Vietnam. Even the most trusted man in America (Walter Cronkite) spoke out against the "war" (which it really was, but nobody wanted to call it that), saying it was unwinable. It was then that Lyndon Johnson knew that if he had lost the confidence of Mr. Cronkite, he had lost the support of middle America. It was one of the reasons why Johnson dropped out of the Presidential race in 1968. The American public had had enough, and were looking for a way to bring their boys home. To them, this was a civil war of which we had no reason to be part of; and not just the poor of this country were fighting it, as drafted boys were taken from all walks of american life. It took a few years, because there is no easy way to shut off a war, but a peace agreement was signed in 1973, and we finally pulled out altogether by April 1975. Just a year before, President Nixon was caught in the throes of the Watergate scandal, which had led to his downfall and ultimate resignation. Gerald Ford, through complete default, assumed the office of President.... and he had a very large job ahead of him in trying to reassemble the trust lost by the American people in their government. It proved a hard road to walk, and Ford committed political suicide by pardoning Nixon of any wrong-doing in the Watergate scandal, either then or in the future. Many Americans did not see that Ford's major concern was to put the past behind us, and forge on ahead to the future and healing. Ford would lose in the polls to Jimmy Carter over that decision.

One of Fords cronies from the "old days" in the House of Representatives was Donald Rumsfeld. When Ford assumed the Presidency, Rumsfeld was called back to Washington to serve as a transition chairman, and then on to the position of White House Chief of Staff. It was during this time that Rumsfeld introduced a friend by the name of Richard Cheney to Mr. Ford, who would become an assistant to the President. This is the point in time where Rumsfeld and Cheney began a political coup of consolidating power in the American government. Their first orders of business were to remove Henry Kissinger from the post of National Security Advisor, tell Nelson Rockefeller (Ford's vice president at the time) to look for a new job, and have Defense Secretary, James Schlesinger fired. They then assumed the positions for themselves: Rumsfeld became the Defense Secretary, and Cheney became Chief of Staff.

With Fords defeat in the presidential election of 1976 (of which Cheney was campaign manager for) , Rumsfeld returned to the private sector, but still held many positions under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush. Cheney was elected to the House of Representatives from Wyoming, becoming Chairman of House Republican Conference from 1981 to 1987, and in 1988 he would become House Minority Whip. From March of 1989 to January 1993, Cheney would serve under President George HW Bush as Secretary of Defense. After Bush Senior failed to secure a second term in office, Cheney returned to the private sector as well. This is the time where he secured his little job at Halliburton as CEO and Chairman of the Board.

In 1997, Rumsfeld and Cheney formed a think-tank called "Project for the New American Century", whose self-stated goal was to "promote American global leadership." The PNAC promotes itself to be a non-profit organization of major political players and well known pundits, all in the belief that American leadership is good both for America and for the world. There are seven basic core views and beliefs, but in a nutshell, it has a classy way of promoting the American nation of becoming the worlds police. Some of these beliefs are good, but as in the debacle over the start of the Iraq "conflict", the words of the wordsmiths rarely estimate the actual effects, and most estimates are blown out of proportion to state a cause...... All except the loss to life, sadly. I can say that I don't agree with a few, but I'll let you judge them for yourselves. If you look it up under wikipedia, all seven are listed.

So the military industrial complex has grown into four branches, where it once had three. The military, defense, and Congress made up the first three arms...... and, as of 1997, this complex includes a think tank to counsel the first three how to behave or act accordingly. All it needed to become effective was the event of "a match to a powder keg" to give it a nice test run. Enter the Bush Junior administration, with Mr. Cheney as Vice President, and Mr. Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary...... the same players of the first Iraq invasion under Bush Senior.

The American people were easily upset over the events of 9/11, as was the world. Our decision to go into Afghanistan to hunt for Bin Laden was justified, met with no big resistance, and was accomplished to the point of knocking the Taliban out of control, all within a relatively short amount of time. Bin Laden is still elusive to capture, though, so we leave our military to complete the one last detail of Bin Laden's arrest.
Here's where the lines get fuzzy in the eyes of our current administration. Even though the CIA Director, George Tennent had no real evidence or intelligence that Saddam Hussein or Iraq might be stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, or any large ties to Bin Laden, Tennent was told to go back and look through his files again.... to find SOMETHING. This process usually takes many years to gather, but Tennent was given two weeks. The Bush administration was hell bent on finding anything that linked Iraq and Bin Laden, because this would be the premise to make us step in and declare war on a country that posed as a threat. Funny thing is, we supported Hussein and Iraq in 1983 and 1984 when Rumsfeld was the special envoy to the Middle East, while Iraq and Iran were at war. (Just as we backed Afghanistan against Russia during the 1980's.) Ironic how yesterdays neighbors became today's enemies.

Going on evidence of a scientist who had escaped the Middle East, evidence that was mostly false, Tennent found his "slam dunk", and the American people were told that a major threat against our nation was imminent in the form of more terrorism. Still reeling from the events of 9/11, we bought into it..... even though the evidence was sketchy at best. Colin Powell may have addressed the United Nations prior to the first strike on Iraq , that Hussein was a threat, yet he still remained skeptical of the intelligence in front of him to confirm the WMD theory. It contained many facts left out or misconstrued to fit an agenda. He would later acknowledge that information, sources had supplied him with, were wrong; Powell then called upon a reform in the intelligence community.

What we can speculate through all that we've been able to weed through, is that the situation we are in the midst of now, was part of an agenda all along. The Middle East has been a hotbed of disruption for many years....... and why do we care? Because they hold the precious black gold every country needs to function: OIL. Notice how we didn't go into Rwanda to save their people from an oppressive society, and that's because they really don't have anything to give us in return. Anyway.... I'm getting off subject here. My point is this:

As Americans, it is our responsibility as free citizens to be able to point at our leaders and demand true leadership. Why? Because we elected them in those positions on the promises they gave us during their long months of campaigning. We want to believe that a person's word exudes trust, and a mans word is his bond. After all, the alternative is opposite to our own beliefs, so we vote in those who issues mirror our own.
Even when they come into office, I'm pretty sure they wanted the job not only for the prestige of the position, they probably really wanted to make a difference. Then the problems of the world, as well as breaking through the "old boys club" attitude were roadblocks they hadn't considered. Add to that the lobbiests deals made under the table, and we now have a controlled government.... held hostage by it's own decision-makers. This is why it is important to pay attention to who the candidates are.... they may be in charge one day, and like our current administration, play a bit of nepotism. They may also lead us into foreign disturbances under the guise of terrorism.

We have much to be afraid of as we watch the events of the Middle East unfold. Since terrorism is not contained to one country, the threat can be as close as our neighbors house.... so it's not all that unfathomable in the big picture. The problem is, we are reeling from these threats on a closer and steadier basis than we ever had before, and they are not contained to the US alone. Perhaps we stirred a hornets nest by invading Iraq, one which our collective politicians never saw coming..... as a matter of fact, they more than likely felt that it was the other way around. Perhaps this was all a matter time time before fruition anyway. Either way, our current terrorism is not going to go away quickly, even if we pull all our troops out today. We are in for a very long haul, as we try to comprehend some sense of dignity and semblance out of it.

We used to have a saying during the Vietnam War years that I have remembered to this day:
What if we threw a war and nobody showed up? Sadly, we'll never know.