The Butchers’ Ball: Dancing with NATO, Gaddafi, Assad & Jesus

By: Jane Stillwater 

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2012/03/butchers-ball-dancing-with-nato-gaddafi.html

Poor Muammar Gaddafi.  That man was an idiot and deserved what he got.  Why?  Because Gaddafi had put all his eggs in one basket — and actually believed that the use of extreme violence would always win in the end.   The man had learned NOTHING from history.

Historically, the use of violence has only and always led to the constantly-escalating use of even more violence, more killing and more money being spent on guns instead of butter — resulting in a severely down-graded “homeland,” with more decayed infrastructure, more uneducated school children, more rotting teeth, more unhappy citizens, less security and, eventually, the decline of civilization as we know it.

Whenever your average citizen sees his or her nation’s leaders regularly spending over a million dollars just on the purchase of only one tank — while the citizens themselves get no benefits from said violence except for crumbling schools, no jobs and no dental plans?   Then these people eventually do tend to get rather pissed off.  Plus isn’t it committing a big sin to kill?

As one Sudanese general — who killed thousands in southern Sudan so he could willingly hand over his country’s oil properties to Pappy Bush — once said http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/23147/, “The best way to catch a fish is to drain the pond.”  Fine.  So then you drain it and you catch a few fish.   But now that pond is totally gone forever and no more fish will ever grow there again.  Ever.

And now even individual American cities are buying tanks instead of keeping their infrastructures safe and their schools open.  Is this really the best use of our funds?  In the long run, violence is never the best solution to problems.  Jesus was right after all.

Gaddafi obviously didn’t properly consider the possibility that violence will always lead to more violence — until nothing is left.  And now Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is also neglecting that simple equation as well.  Apparently Assad learned nothing from Gaddafi’s tragic end.  And apparently America, Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia and NATO haven’t learned anything from it either.   The escalation of violence always eventually brings down the man behind the gun.  Always.  It may take years, decades or perhaps even centuries.  But that’s what always eventually happens.

That’s why we have presidents in Washington now and not Caesars.

Scottish journalist David Pratt just wrote a very interesting first-hand report about the rebellion against Assad in Syria, http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/rebels-on-the-retreat.16922939, and guess what?   Those rebels are totally pissed off at Assad.  According to Pratt, one rebel told him that, “I will keep fighting until we win or I am dead.  If Assad steps down and offers free and fair elections, then I would happily put down my gun.”

So Assad is now falling exactly into the same trap that Gaddafi fell into — by butchering dissenters and fueling the flames of violence.  Get a clue, Assad!  Hold the freaking elections!

PS:  America and NATO have no more business escalating violence in Syria than Assad has.  They seem to be acting like idiots too.  And it’s also idiotic for the corporate Goliahs who currently control Washington to escalate violence against their own dissenting American citizens as well.  However, that’s a whole other story — but one that will eventually end badly too.  Just ask Gaddafi.  Or Jesus.  Or the last Roman emperor.

PPS:  According to British journalist Ziauddin Sardar http://www.amazon.com/Desperately-Seeking-Paradise-Journeys-Sceptical/dp/186207755X, Bashar al-Assad, like Saddam Hussein before him, thinks like a Ba’athist — and Ba’athists basically believe in the establishment of an elite upper class that practices socialism for the rich and welfare for the wealthy.  Sound familiar?  Sound a lot like the corporate dudes who are now running Washington DC?  American Ba’athists.  Saddam would be so proud of us.