I'm basically pro-peace and anti-war these days and the idea of going to war just doesn't fly with me and it even makes me mad to think about it. Going to war is a serious business and shouldn't be taken lightly. I realize certain well financed and connected lobbies will do everything they can to get us into another one shortly- got to keep the war machine financed and justify paying those useless consultants- but I have no interest unless the national security of the United States is directly affected and my definition is strict and narrow (like somebody directly attacking us or about to). Hopefully President Obama will get to complete ending the Afghanistan War in 2014 and we can have a long period of peace and prosperity. I don't think it is a coincidence that the US economy prospered during Bill Clinton's time in office when we had no wars...Invariably we will hear, as we always do, that we must go to war to ensure we don't have to go to war and that freedom isn't free and that fill in the blank is Hitler and all that baloney...Romney, of course, is advised by the neocons who specialize in manufacturing wars out of nothing and will look to do so quickly and take us back into a 2002 mindset. I can never understand why we can't just let Israel take care of itself. They are far far more powerful than Iran and it is insulting to Israel to think that the US has to "protect them" or even "help them."
I have a friend, Jewish, who works for a major US newspaper and writes about defense. He is obsessed with the need to go to war with Iran (in fact I can remember debating about Iran with him in the mid 1990s). Oh of course he talks a lot about the wounded troops in Afghanistan but it is like he can't wait to get into the next war. Drives me crazy. Of course, he never hesitated about the need to go to war with Iraq. The connections between the neocons, the pro-Israel lobby, and many journalists is worrying. Many American Jewish journalists go back and forth from Israel and have many contacts there. How could they possibly be impartial?
My family on my mother's side is Jewish down the line but I was not raised as such... I love Jewish people and the Jewish religion but I get tired of this we must go to war with Iran business.
