In his interview with Grist, Dennis Kucinich urged us all to recognize the connection between global warming and global warring.
In that spirit, I thought I’d pass along an astute observation from Glenn Greenwald, who on matters of media and war/terrorism is without peer. About this quote from Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), a conservative member of the DLC:
Bill Clinton ordered our troops and worked with NATO in Bosnia. That’s the kind of pro-war Democrat that we ought to be: the war that we fight wisely, the ones that we engage in wisely.
Greenwald says this:
This is the most extraordinary aspect of our political culture. Rep. Davis’ assumption is that we are going to be fighting a series of “wars.” That is just a given. And the only question is whether we will fight our wars “wisely” or unwisely. We are a nation more or less permanently at war, and we really do not debate whether that should be the case. Enforced Beltway orthodoxy requires that this is a given and anyone who challenges that premise will be deemed extremist and insane (see e.g., Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, “paleoconservatives,” the “anti-war left”, “isolationists,” etc.).
The Grand Beltway Consensus, one that encompasses both parties, is that War is how we rule the world. The only debates allowed are how many we should fight, where we should fight them, and how “wisely” we prosecute them. And the principal reason that we don’t really debate the fact that we are a Nation permanently at war is because such a tiny percentage of our population — and an even tinier percentage of our Beltway opinion-making elite — actually bears the burdens of those wars (at least directly).
(via Jim Henley)
