The piece was interesting indeed. Thank you.

My interpretation of the Chinese proverb was one of an admonition to introspection just as Einstein warned, "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."

Recently more attention has been drawn to the half billion dollar embassy/palace that the US has built in Iraq as well as the permanent super bases. Very simply, there is no intention to leave. But as usual the media misses the point: building of such an embassy is an insult to the religion and culture of that entire region. We have built what amounts to a symbol of Christian imperial domination in an Islamic land. I am sure it is possible to get more blasphemous but I am not quite sure how. In short we are fomenting what we say we are seeking to quell.

The fact that OPEC central banks are helping to fund this war should not be overlooked. Ultimately this means they are continuing the history of central bank profiteering by funding both sides of a conflict. This also raises the question of whether this 'long war' is to be won or sustained?

One of the critical questions the article fails to consider is whether the conflict is meant to be “won” or sustained. If the 'war' is not meant to be won then there is no need to define victory. If this administration views the war policy as part of a broader plan to maintain expansionist economic policies meant to keep the US economy and therefore the global economy afloat (on life support?) then there is no need to define or seek victory. There is every reason to “stay the course” and to 'surge'.

The Cold War victory was anything but a victory. In the short term it seemed like a victory but it is clear that we have had problems shifting to a peacetime economy. The loss of United Nuclear which built nuclear reactors for subs, and the reduction of Trident submarines contracts cost many jobs at EB in the Groton/New London region. The region hasn’t recovered yet. These are just microscopic examples of what has happened to the Cold war military industrial complex and its effect on the economy.

However, for Russia, this has been a boon. They have been essentially able to downsize and restructure, which has enabled them to emerge on a more solid economic footing. Russia is operating in a surplus and is sitting on much coveted energy reserves. This is not to say that Russia doesn’t have problems, they do, but the collapse of the Soviet Union enabled them to emerge with a much stronger balance sheet comparable to the US. The question that no one bothered asking is, what does a Superpower do with all that military industrial capacity when it no longer has a viable threat? The answer so far seems to be, create a new threat.

In actuality, Cold War policies created the threat for us. All of the black ops and proxy wars and land grabs created the Islamic threat we see today. We may like to think of ourselves as Saints but to the Islamic Middle Eastern community which have endured decades of interventionism by Christian Westerners we are anything but. The Shah, Saddam, and Bin Laden are creatures of our policies, as is the hatred we now face. In that sense we are simply reaping what we have sown.

A couple of the questions facing us now is, how far down this path will we allow ourselves to be led? What are the alternatives in choosing new leadership? Hillary has voted on the wrong side of just about every important issue. She has been to secretive meetings with the Bilderberg group. And regardless of her rhetoric she is backed by large hedge funds to whom she must bow once in office. Personally I am wary of the dynastic quality of having power shift back and forth between two families for several decades. This seems antithetical to a democratic republic.

Just as antithetical is the attendance of secretive meetings with powerful elites. Obama is also beholden to large hedge funds and believes, as does Hillary, that 12-20 million illegal aliens should be put on the fast track to US citizenship through hasty legislation formed in secretive meetings without any thorough study or serious debate of the true complexity of the issue or its ramifications, societal or economic. How can Obama speak of fundamental change?

With the exception of Ron Paul if you vote Republican we will get more of the same pre-emptive, perpetual war madness. At least they are against an open borders policy. As far as the North American Union that is being attempted by this administration, no one is asking and no one is telling. How far down the rabbit hole will we go? The two-party system seems broken with no fix in sight. But all are complicit. The American consumer’s refusal to consciously change behavior patterns despite the facts by continuing to go deeper into debt to live beyond their means is a substantial part of the problems we face.

I repeat that six years after 9/11 this government has failed to do the most basic things to protect its citizens, secure our borders and ports. Our borders remain wide open at the behest of corporate interests and an economy dependent on cheap labor. The lunacy of this balancing act of maintaining the financial charade of a healthy economy and sending an open invitation to terrorist to kill our citizens will soon be clear. The dysfunction of the government of the world's only superpower is utterly incomprehensible but rest assured it will not go long unrewarded.