To Invade or to Invite? (Part 1)

The American relationship with the Muslim World is at once cynical and naive, simultaneously culpable and ignorant, defined from every angle as an inability or unwillingness to acknowledge obvious truths about the immorality of invading peoples' home and the absurdity of inviting them into ours.

So, to invade, or to invite?  In my opinion, we should do neither.  As a statement of unfortunate fact, we are doing both.  This is immoral and stupid.  Were we immoral without also being stupid, we would pick one or the other.  But, since our policy is both immoral and stupid, we find ourselves doing both.

First things first: what is the cost of invading Muslim nations?

The first Gulf War of 1991, fought to redeem and restore a disgusting, anti-Semitic, medieval family to the throne of an artificial nation created 30 years before as essentially a naval refueling station for the West, killed 150,000 people in 6 weeks.  All for Kuwait.

Because what kind of world would it be without this guy?

The ruling family of Kuwait thanked us for our efforts by carrying out ethnic cleansing, expelling the tens of thousands of Palestinians living and working in their country.  And we thanked ourselves by building what were meant to be permanent U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, the holiest land for Muslims.  

Many Muslims were not impressed by the persecution of the Palestinians or the stationing of American soldiers in Arabia.  One Muslim who wrote and spoke about this event extensively in the 1990's comes to mind....

What could go wrong?

After the 1991 war, the United States enforced sanctions on Iraq that killed 500,000 children. Children.  The U.S. did not dispute this fact; instead Bill Clinton's Secretary of State solemnly informed us:

Not big into that whole "conscience" thing, huh?

This is the woman who said that any woman who did not support Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 deserved a "special place in hell".  Way to keep things in perspective, Masters of the Universe!

The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to the death, by decade's end, of one million Iraqis.  But it was all for a good cause, right?  We had to invade Iraq because...oh honestly, fuck it, I can't even pretend to make light of this anymore.

So we switched Presidents in 2009 and got a man who didn't believe in "stupid" wars.  A man who was judicious by nature and who would never overthrow a government he found distasteful because of the sober realization that what replaces such governments is usually much more dangerous.

Ah yes, No Drama Obama would surely spare us any more of this nonsense, for practical reasons if not moral ones.  Yeah, no.

"Hey, nice to meet you.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go borrow some money from China and use it to destroy your
country."

Libya was one of the safest, most prosperous Muslim nations with perhaps the highest degree of respect for and mobility of women.  And now?

The above picture needs no caption; we all know the drill by now.  Christians used to thrive in Libya. Now they are beheaded as the satanic thugs in black gaze across the Mediterranean towards Europe, licking their chops.

When America goes to war, most of our country treats it as a TV show.  It is not.  It is death.  That's all war is.  There's nothing heroic or romantic about it.  It is the ripping apart of human beings, the evisceration of men, children, grandmothers, and everything else.  It is 4 year old boys with their intestines spilling out of their stomach because a cluster bomb exploded too close to their house.  It is the father watching his child die, unable to do anything but swear revenge.

When the United States goes to war, what we are doing is killing people.  Thousands upon thousands of people, most of them entirely innocent.  Even the "guilty" ones are usually "guilty" of nothing other than what most people would do in such situations: defending their homes from invaders.

We need to grow up as a nation.  We need to understand the inherent immorality of war.  We need to stop the narcissistic nonsense that tells that people will "welcome" us if we invade their homes.  We need to develop some sort of consensus that civilized people are supposed to have almost without thinking about it:  killing is wrong.  It may occasionally be necessary, but it's always wrong.  And it always has consequences.

American interventions in the Middle East have not only killed literally millions of people in my lifetime; they have also forced millions more out of their homes.  Those broken and brutalized people are fleeing their homelands.  Before we can assess where they should go, we need to be honest about why they are leaving.