The world is waiting for the newest Deciders to decide the fate of Afghani citizens and thousands of U.S. troops preparing to deploy to the land where Empires come to die. Do I send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan? He is thinking or, rather for General Stanley McCrystal, stalling the Empire�s Manifest Destiny plans.

President Barrack Obama wants new troop plans!

The U.S. government believes war is the answer. No resistance will go unpunished and no excuses will be tolerated. War and more war is the only reasonable course of action.

I came across an interview with author Gordon Goldstein (Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam) on C-Span. Near the end of his life, Bundy, who served as National Advisor for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, admitted that the Vietnam War could not be won and should not have been fought, said Goldstein. This was Bundy�s �lesson of disaster.� When Kennedy, in 1961, faced the first proposal by his generals and advisors to send ground combat forces, some 200,000, to Vietnam, Goldstein recalled, he was encircled by war hawks who promoted the proposal for war. Kennedy, skeptical that the U.S. could prevail in Vietnam, held his ground and denied their request. Kennedy�s courage in 1961, Goldstein suggests, should inspire a President Obama in 2009 as he decides on McCrystal�s proposal to send 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan.

Kennedy�s �courage� did not end the pursuit of war for Bundy, McNamara, LeMay, and Wall Street bankers. Something else needs contemplation.

I also remember the Kennedy of November 22, 1963.

Kennedy was assassinated. Many believe Kennedy, as does private investigator John Judge and others that the generals, headed by Joint Chief of Staff, Curtis LeMay, gave the order because Kennedy said NO to war. The full history of the U.S. and its engagement in violence includes war and assassinations.

All the rhetoric of American innocence cannot clean away the contamination of American violence. There are unfortunate consequences for challenging the War Lords and war profiteers in the U.S.! Our anti-war stance should include a debate on those assignations associated with war industry.

Surely the Decider is considering his immediate surroundings there in Washington D.C. where the extremists, he himself placed around him, make him pause. It is a matter of strategy, now, Goldstein points out. Then, for Kennedy, it was about the numbers. It is strategy now. Strategy.

Before November 5, 2009, when Major Nidal M. Hasan, Army Psychiatrist, decided to point his non-military guns and kill 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian and wound 31 soldiers, the Fort Hood community experienced on the average some 10 suicides per month. A reported 75 soldiers have taken their own lives at Fort Hood this year. Those are the numbers. The strategy at Fort Hood is to deploy troops anyway. Blood has to be spilled in order to sustain the madness. People have to suffer for the Empire to stay alive.

American born son of Palestinian parents, Major Hasan had recently received his marching orders: He was on his way to war in Afghanistan. From all reports, the news came at a time when Hasan was becoming a devoted Muslim, particularly since arriving at Fort Hood in July after his transfer from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He went mad thinking about a war he did not yet see.

But Hasan saw something while he listened, observed, and counseled returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. What did he see when he sat before Americans traumatized by war but who spoke of the �enemy� while describing their actions in combat?

Did he project an image of himself in a country surrounded by the enemy as an American or as a Muslim? Did he see fellow soldiers like those he counseled, standing beside him, one minute speaking of him as the �camel jockey� and, the other minute, storming a village home occupied by women and children?

Did he ever think - how did he and these soldiers get to this place where the business is to kill or be killed?

And the drones from the Third Estate push on: Is he a Muslim? An Extremist? Did Hasan, as one report asked, harbor extremist thoughts? Would that be killing? Would that be killing?

An honest debate would have to recognize the expression of cruelty on the ground at Fort Hood, further lessons of disaster that are labeled as singular and monstrous aberrations of a sick mind. Citizens of a beloved community would have to put themselves in Hasan�s shoes and experience the shaky foundation. Am I an enemy, a Muslim or am I an American - a potential American hero? Who is courageous enough to step into those shoes when it is easier to speak of a Muslim, a singular monster, an extremist? Do extremists reside in some particular geographic space and are they distinguishable from their thoughts - thoughts about killing?

In the frantic rush to discover a motive, a video tape emerges. It is from June 2007 when Major Hasan was a senior-year psychiatrist at Walter Reed. The residents and interns are presenting to their classmates and supervisors on medical topics. Hasan opts to discuss, according to Washington Post writer, Dana Priest, �Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.� It is an odd power-point presentation, an elephant among a sea of hopeful residents and interns talking about - what? - medical treatment for the severely wounded by IEDs, perhaps? Is this presentation the evidence that Hasan was mad? Is this it? Is this the moment - sure to pass as a usable lesson, until another moment, in which, to everyone�s horror, another Hasan or even John Smith arises and says no?

Behind Hasan are thousands of enlisted ready to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan - thousands considering the consequences of war.

The Decider, too, has to consider war - U.S. style - where killing and dying for War Lords and war profiteers makes heroes to mourn at Arlington National Cemetery.

What happens if President Obama backs off? If he decides that war is not the answer and request a withdrawal immediately of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? What if he used his rhetorical skills, for once, wisely, and he recalls Eisenhower�s warning about the military industrial complex and its accompanying intelligence agencies? How would the world respond? How would citizens in the U.S. respond if the drones for war assure them that war is reasonable? How swift would the real Deciders take their revenge?

The Deciders born and bred of capitalism are relentless.

But there are some people who are courageous and not deterred by the insanity of war.

At Fort Hood, on November 10, Private Michael Kerns was present at the memorial services attended by President Obama and the First Lady where, ironically, our man of peace will speak of justice paying a visit to Hasan while he withholds justice for the War Lords and profiteers. Kerns, trained to kill, puts his weapon aside. Instead, a member of Iraq Veterans against the War, he holds out a letter, plea for sanity, in which he attempts to hand to President Obama. The Commander-in-Chief, the Decider, greets Kern until he sees the letter. He doesn�t shake Kerns hand. Instead, he, the Decider, decides the letter is not part of the procedures, not proper protocol. He moves on to the next soldier in line. The secret service secured the letter!

 

Will he, President Obama, listen to the soldiers? Will he hear what Hasan heard about war? Will he as Commander-in-Chief keep his promise and provide the care these veterans require after they return from theatre, as the War Lords call it?

What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers,(sic) are broken.

It is not just the soldiers who are broken. In the years since November 22, 1963, the U.S. has fought a never-ending stream of war and the military and military intelligence budget has soared to the detriment of domestic security. We have trained a generation of young people to torture only to be tortured by their memories. We have produced enemies who sincerely hate because they are hated. And yet the war Lords and profiteers are still willing and able to kill presidents and soldiers for the blood and gore (not glory) of war to continue. War is too profitable and presidents, soldiers, and citizens who get in the way are thought by them to be expendable. How far we have come from 1961 when Kennedy thought this nation capable of being �confident and unafraid� to �labor on - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace�?

We, citizens of the U.S., have a second chance again to say NO war to the military and intelligence War Lords and profiteers in Washington D.C. and to McCrystal and his cadre of sable rattlers.

We have a second chance and may not have another!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.