Time to Surrender?

Man claims he is too fat
to have climbed stairs
to shoot his son-in-law.

“Tell General Howard I know his Heart. What He told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting, Looking Glass is dead. too-Hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are--perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

The above is the famous surrender speech of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce delivered at the Bears Paw Battle, October 5, 1877. It was clear that he could no longer deny being defeated and surrendered with dignity. Although the circumstances are entirely different, there are some eerie similarities between what happened to the Nez Perce and what is happening to us now. Many of our warriors are dead, or dying, or exhausted. Our children are hungry and without food, many are ill with no health insurance, more and more are becoming homeless, many are functional illiterates, there is no work, we have exhausted our credit, winter is coming, and we are facing defeat.

Unlike the Nez Perce, we are not facing defeat by enemies far too powerful to overcome, rather, we have defeated ourselves. Evil, greedy, power-mad men, temporarily in charge of our nation, took what should have been a relatively simple police problem and converted it into two completely unnecessary and illegal “wars.” The results have been and continue to be disastrous. We have spent ourselves into near, if not de facto bankruptcy, almost destroyed our military, become a pariah among the nations of the world, and are rushing headlong into potential oblivion. We have become weak and what we are doing is no longer in our own best interest. The only way we will ever recover from these terrible mistakes is to admit defeat, with as much dignity as possible, and begin to repair our seriously damaged country. In order to do this we must admit we cannot subdue and dominate the rest of the world by force, bring all our troops home, use the money we will save by reducing our obscene budget for the military/industrial/political complex system to pay off our debts and rebuild our country and our reputation. We should give up the absurd idea that we are the world’s policemen and tend to our own business.

Do I believe this will happen? Do I believe it is politically possible? Of course not. Do I believe it ought to happen? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Could it happen? I think so. The neocons and their fellow travelers who got us into this mess now say these are Obama’s wars. They are not. Obama did not start them, but he could stop them. He could apologize to the rest of the world, admit that Bush/Cheney made terrible mistakes, and announce that we will no longer pursue them. He could, and should, hold those responsible for these war crimes accountable. With the vast sums of money he could save he could easily reduce our outstanding debts as well as provide health care, more and better education, and rebuild our seriously deteriorating infrastructure, thus actually making us a much stronger nation than we are currently. Not only that, he could actually help other nations instead of destroying them. This, I believe, would be the right thing to do.

Of course if Obama were to do this, even though it would be the right and brave thing to do, those on the right who long for permanent wars and more killing, torture, and human misery, would be on him like a pack of attack dogs. He would be termed a coward, soft on terrorists, weak, unfit to be Commander-in-Chief, an appeaser, to say nothing of being a socialist, fascist, communist, treasonous scoundrel who sold out the country. He would probably lose his Presidency. But what a way to go! All the rest of the world would consider him a martyr, the President who gave up his Presidency to save his nation. What greater reward could anyone desire?

LKBIQ:
For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
Sir Winston Churchill

TILT:
The Ironwood tree is found only in the Sonoran desert, and only below 2,500 feet.