Learning Not to be a Warmongering Nation

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may122008/unsound_policies_5-11-08.php

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." - Thomas Jefferson.



(SALEM, Ore.) - Some strange truths have emerged as part of our society, that many of us never saw coming, or even imagined. If you look at the United States and its current government as a role model of how nations should behave, then you are seeing a manifestation of the dead opposite of everything we are taught in school and in church as American citizens, about how people are supposed to treat one another.

We are not supposed to be an aggressive nation, but in truth we are the purveyors of a Red Dawn for the people of Iraq and we have displaced the political and military balance with neighboring Iran. Any journalist who studies Middle East affairs could have predicted this and many did, but sound reasoning has no voice in this White House.

I think most of us agree that people who are picked on and abused, often seek out smaller and weaker people, or animals in some cases, to treat the same way.

It can be a child abused by a parent at home who lashes out at others as a school bully. It can be a matter between siblings and often is. The point is that when we are abused, it is easier sometimes for people to relieve their own stress by becoming abusers. It fulfills a need in damaged people and reminds them that they too can be the one in charge calling the shots.

I see a direct correlation between this pattern of abuse, and the way Americans have in many ways become in their position toward Iran. False media reports on FOX News and other mainstream media have mistranslated statements from the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and told Americans he said things he simply didn't say. The directly modified translations are used by American media outlets to color the water red. They are simply not true.

Tehran had the second biggest candlelight vigil in the world, to mourn the victims of 911 in September of 2001. We are hostile and skeptical of simple goodness from Iran because it doesn't fit the Bush team's goal of eventually seizing the country in order to take their oil, like in Iraq. He has the media convince Americans that the country is devious, when in fact he is the devious one who kills hundreds of thousands by proxy.