Rick Perry: The Texas Weapon of Mass Destruction
BY SAM FIELDS
Up until the 1960’s, the great American belief was: “We have never lost a war.”
We can debate the outcome of Korea, The War of 1812, or even the Seminole War, but that’s for another day.
Since the 1960s, we have been in four real wars –Vietnam, Iraqs I and II and Afghanistan. They have three things in common.
First, unlike our wars that preceded them there was no dramatic public surrender like Japan on the U.S.S. Missouri.
Second, all were or are losing efforts that needlessly bled American lives and treasure.
All have a third thing in common. Hint: Rick Perry wants to be the next one.
The answer is that in each and every one of those wars the President was from Texas.
There has never been a President from Texas who did not get us into a pointless losing war. Remember Lyndon Johnson and the two Bushes.
Texas is a culture that glorifies violence as the first response to any perceived offense.
Think I’m kidding. Perry in his first week of campaigning threatened that if Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke increased the money supply to keep interest rates low: “I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”
And Bernanke is American. Can you imagine if one of those A-rabs did something Perry didn’t like?
Rick Perry With Grenade Launcher
Following on the Texas example, Perry doesn’t need an excuse. Other Texas presidents believed that when there is no real offense, make one up.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was founded on the lie that North Vietnam attacked the U.S.S. Vance. I’m pretty sure we’ve given up finding Saddam’s secret stash of WMDs.
Getting us into war…Texans are real good at that. Winning the war…not so good.
So here’s a little advice to Rick Perry. If you get elected and insist on being a wartime Prez, take a hint from Ronald Reagan.
On October 23, 1983, 241 American soldiers were killed by Shite suicide bombers in Lebanon. To distract us from this pointless debacle, The Gipper invented a relatively controlled distraction by invading Grenada. The Grenada invasion went by the code name–and I am not making this up–Operation Urgent Fury.
It was launched two days later and was over by Halloween. It was all a lie, but it worked out well. It was both a “trick” and a “treat.”
It was less a war than a pep rally. Three years later it got its own Clint Eastwood movie called “Heartbreak Ridge”. It was a remake of John Wayne’s “Green Beret” flick…but with a happy ending.
Unlike the wars of LBJ and the Bushes, we have fond memories of Grenada. It was like a long weekend of Paintball. It was professional wrestling and we were Hulk Hogan. It does not matter that the match was fixed or that our opponent was one of those midget wrestlers. It only mattered that we won!
So if President Perry wakes up one morning needing to distract the American people from an economy in the crapper, hopefully he will think Reagan and not LBJ or Bush. Think Lichtenstein/Andorra and not China/North Korea.
After all, it’s not about the reality of trillions of debt or even a Second Great Depression. It’s about feeling good about ourselves. And nothing does that better than opening a can of Whup Ass on someone we have been manipulated to fear and loath.
August 19th, 2011 at 10:49 am
Sam, Although, I appreciate your rhetorical technique, using exaggeration to make a point, and truthfully it is a blatant exaggeration, my point is that Perry is the wrong guy for the job, but for a whole host of more important solid reasons.
Not the least of which is that this man is a unique combination of Texas sized bravado and political technique combined with all with a peanut sized intellectual capacity. (Rhetoric is so hard to avoid, isn’t it?) There is no constraint be it moral, or ethical that he will not exploit in order to pull attention away from the others to himself. If he were truly worthy of all the attention he has been getting it would be his solutions to our problems that people would be discussing rather than his process and tactics that achieved his political goals.
I guess it just goes to show that the ideas of the other candidates are not so appealing or interesting to the voters either. Even Osama Obama had a difficult time on his pre-vacation mid-western tour. Either that or the intellectual capacity of the voters is similarly limited.
Scary thought isn’t it, but the majority continues to prove it over and over again. Thank you for your contribution to this process.
August 19th, 2011 at 11:24 am
Sam, I am not responding to defend Rick Perry, but to defend good history. JFK began the significant commitment of troops to Viet Nam, LBJ continued it. You might have been techinically correct had you cited Dwight Eisenhower, born in Texas but raised in Kansas. Ike sent the first “advisors” to Viet Nam. Also, what do you call our activities in Lybia? I know our Hawaiian born president says it is not a war, but if Mexico started bombing Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, Rick Perry would not be the only one to call it an act of war. Regards, Jack
August 19th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Sam might have thought he was being cute on his comparison of the movies Heartbreak Ridge and Green Beret. I understand his point. It might have been made without making the wrong comment that Heartbreak Ridge is a “remake” of Green Beret. The two films are nothing alike, except both are about war.
August 19th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
The Vietnam War was waged in order to combat communism. It was the policy of the US throughout the Cold War era to disrupt any effort globally to expand communism. The fear was that if one country became communist, it would spread like a disease to neighboring countries which would threaten democracy and capitalism.
Ironically, democracy is a system designed to ensure the will of the people. Interference with the will of people from other countries is arguably anti-democratic because it seeks to replace their preferences with someone else’s.
Capitalism is a system where every economic unit, working in it’s own best interest, helps every other economic unit to succeed. This is known as the invisible hand theory which is a prime driver of any capitalist economy. Communism is a socio-economic system that only appeals to the impovershed. Interest in it arises when the working man can’t make a living yet the rich are doing very well.
Capitalism has always struggled with the concept of properly taking care of workers. This gave way to unions so that living wages, safety standards, benefits and other standards be imposed to replace the often cruel and inhumane treatment workers got from the companies they worked for. Unions sprung from the communist movement.
All of it could have been avoided had capitalists simply been more humane in the treatment of their workers instead of singlularly focused on greed.
Bottom line is we have nothing to fear from communism so long as capitalism remembers that being kind and fair to one another is more important than making a profit. Those that died in Vietnam died in vane because that lesson escapes us to this very day.
What we see now is the Communist becoming a Capitalist. They have realized that their system is imperfect and that it needs the market drive of capitalism to move it forward. Communism is evolving. This too is seen as a threat by the US. Yet Capitalism refuses to evolve. Our arrogance tells us we are perfect just the way we are despite the fact that the invisible hand is telling us to do otherwise.
August 19th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
dear dean,
what were the blatent exaggerations?
August 19th, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Dear Jack,
You are correct. But Ike is no more a Texan than Lincoln was a Kentuckian or John McCain is a Panamanian.
If we are going to play the blame game on Vietnam lets go back to Truman who reversed FDR’s decision to oppose the French re-occupation of Vietnam.
The basic truth is that LBJ, seeing the South Vietnamese loosing, created a lie to justify a couple of million GI’s going on a fool’s errand of interfering in a civil war.
I would hope you can see the difference between Grenada, Serbia Libya (which is about to be successfully concluded with no loss of American life)versus the Iraq, Afghan and Vietnam debacles.
If you are going to get us into an “optional war” it would be nice to win it…something the guys from Texas seem to be less than skilled at.
As for Heartbreak Ridge, the theme was that Eastwood’s character is a disillusioned Vietnam vet vindicated by the U.S. Army defeating a half a dozen Cubans armed with hunting rifles. Let’s call it “Green Beret –Part Two–Salvation”
August 19th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
three wars and now the threat of us invading LABIA..!!
August 19th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
But Perry’s Texas STILL has opened up 37% of all new jobs. Jobs are the issue. And Perry generates them.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Heartbreak Ridge a remake of The Green Berets???? Really?
Sam,
I think you need to watch them both again.
August 20th, 2011 at 12:10 am
hey red…the majority of the new jobs in texas are with the government….ooops
August 20th, 2011 at 7:30 am
How many of those new jobs are the result of military base expansions around his state?
August 20th, 2011 at 9:23 am
Perry had nothing to do with the rise in the price of oil and all the energy jobs it brought.
The difference between Texas and Florida is the energy industry.
Much of the rest of the jobs he claims are low wage or minimum wage.
August 20th, 2011 at 10:29 am
Totally off topic (well, sort of), but the best movie about the early Vietnam years is “G Tell the Spartans” with Burt Lancaster. It is hard to find but a very good film. “The Green Berets” was a terrible film (basically a personal statement by John Wayne).
August 20th, 2011 at 10:29 am
er… I mean “GO tell the Spartans”
August 20th, 2011 at 11:21 am
To compare LBJ and the Bush Clan to Perry is really lame. (It would be laughable if Sammy had one ounce of a sense of humor.) LBJ is nothing like Perry and the Bush family really are political adversaries of Perry, and not much alike. Because Sammy has no real ammunition, he just throws his own excrement at the wall and sees what sticks.
To Smartmove, China is NOT becoming capitalist but is in fact Fascist. The USA is NOT capitalist anymore but is somewhere between it and fascist/socialist.
August 20th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Sam…I like your work but you must have misread Jack’s comment…he’s not playing the blame game…he just thinks his view is “good history”
August 20th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
“Watcher” says most of Perry’s new jobs were in government. He’s wrong.
“Dear Red” gets it better. They are NOT in government, but they are also not high-paying jobs. To which I say: So what? A job is a job. Or do only executive jobs count?
August 20th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Drill baby drill!
August 21st, 2011 at 12:17 pm
watcher, whoever you may be, thanks. JL
August 22nd, 2011 at 11:41 am
Jack is absolutely correct. I find it amazing how self important “pundits” draw bits from history that support their assertions, but leave out pertinent facts that don’t.
August 23rd, 2011 at 7:39 am
Boy has this gotten off point.
What I plainly said was that every President from Texas has gotten us into unnecessary wars with nations that did not attack us–including Afghanistan.
Let’s remember that it was Al Qaeda and not the Taliban that attacked us. It was a perfect time to use the Constitutional provision for “letters of marquee and reprisal”[See the Tripolitan War of 1798 for a similar situation] rather than sending in an army to a nation known as “the graveyard of empires” –see the Brits, Russian, Mongols Alexander the Great, etc.
The rest of the Texas wars were all pointless loosing efforts that gained us nothing except debt and a bigger Arlington Cemetery.
I don’t think it is a coincidence. It is their “shoot first” culture.
August 24th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Miracle, I feel you bro but I can’t agree that China is fascist or that the US is no longer capitalist. This would be exaggeration on both accounts.
I can say that throughout history there have been two constants in economic and political systems alike. One is evolution and the other resistence to evolution. Both have been useful in that one ensures progress while the other slows it down just enough so everyone can catch up. Each time, progress wins. Historically, that has been a truism. Even American capitalism, since the creation of the country 235 ago is very different today than it was then. So too with communism. You cannot compare Russia in 1917 with Russia today. Evolution in all things is inevitable.
People are sometimes offended by the notion but the fact is that Capitalism and Communism have been destined to merge together since well before the Cold War started. In fact, what was the Cold War except resistence to that evolution? Capitalism is a great system but an elitist one that trades humanism for profit. Communism means well but it is hugely inefficient and confuses compassion for the poor with their instinct to earn and produce. Some combination is inevitable.
That fact should not scare anybody. Instead the effort should be ensure the survival of profit motive, freedoms and self-reliance which are common to capitalism, and the caring for the working people that is basic to communism. To be eliminated is the selfishness of capitalists and the totalitarianism of communists.
I recall Bush discussing compassionate conservatism and thought it appropriate that a Republican take that step because it resonates with classic conservative dogma. Silly me. It was just Carl Rove and his propaganda machine.