Zero Sum

Americans love their wars as long as they believe they are winning them. Some love to see the bursting brown bodies, some want to prove their patriotism (god help us all), many are sadistic, and many more just don’t bother with it. All human beings are quite talented at dividing their brains into compartments where one set of rules and morals apply to one compartment, and another set of rules and morals for a different compartment. The Wikileaks video of American soldiers murdering people in Iraq is the perfect example of this compartment phenomenon. If the video had been one taken of Americans being blown apart in Times Square you can well imagine the reaction. But as it happens they were only citizens of Iraq whose murder Americans have a hard time getting worked up over.

Ask yourself this, did the Wikileaks video change anything? From my own viewpoint I would have to say it did not. People who are against war didn’t change while the people who like war enjoyed the site of brown people being slaughtered. But there is a third type, the Obama faithful. From one side of their mouth they say they are against war and out of the other side of their mouth emits a
constant stream of excuses for Obama’s enthusiastic pursuit of war. These people have compartmentalized their brain to the extent that their intellectual integrity has completely broken down. Not even the sight of a wounded man pathetically dragging his broken and bleeding body out of the way of the howling monsters gleefully laughing as they slaughter and murder has the power to move the Obama faithful. Apparently the Obama supporters are a cold hearted bunch.

With the latest Wikileak splashed all over the news media we are treated to the usual madness where, as always, nothing ever happens and nothing has ever happened. History is a blank slate upon which idiots write bed-time stories. It’s another form of that old time compartmentalized thinking we indulge in so much. People have suddenly discovered something, according to the news media, regarding the Wikileak. And even the news media has discovered the shocking revelation that there is a war going on in Afghanistan (and one in Iraq don’t forget). Who could have guessed? The war is going worse than they were telling us? Oh my goodness, gracious me, oh fret and worry, woe with us, of course the war is going worse than they tell us, it’s almost always the case, it’s a rule of thumb you can live and swear by.

Another example of our national lunacy is Congress. According to Congress they never heard of the Afghan War until yesterday. I can picture our Congressional leaders standing on their chairs holding up their dresses and pulling up their pant legs while screaming shrilly as the Wikileak mouse scrambles through. Why Congress had no idea the Afghan War wasn’t going swimmingly! How could they have known? Why I’ll bet people have lied to the poor ignorant rubes in Congress. Why, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why they shall continue to fund the wars because I know that Congress has our best interests at heart (barf). Surely since Congress is made up of mature adults they would never have funded these wars if they had just known the facts, surely.

Today the New York Times sets all our fears to rest and in doing so illustrates the true and profound effect of the latest Wikileak:

Link

While Congressional and administration officials said the disclosure of the documents probably would not jeopardize the financing bill or General Mattis’s expected confirmation, it could complicate how the White House tries to achieves its goals in Afghanistan.

There you have it, a net sum of zero, zilch, nada, zip, didn’t do anything. The wars shall roll along as scheduled.