War Propaganda Is Strong

We’re A War-Like People

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Here’s what makes no sense: attacking a sovereign nation that had absolutely nothing to do with September the 11^th, did not have a nuclear device, and was not conspiring to do anything other than what Saddam Hussein had maddeningly been doing for the 20 prior years before we installed him there.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Johnathan in Florida is next on the Mike Church Show.  How you doing?

Caller Johnathan:  I want to start off with, I’m a disabled veteran.  I’ve been to Iraq three times.  By all means, correct me if I’m wrong.  I have blood, sweat and tears over there.  I’ve seen brothers go down that — it’s not a subject I like to talk about.  Why did we leave?  I don’t want them on my soil.  I’d rather be over there fighting the war than them come over here on my home soil.

Mike:  Were the Iraqis threatening to invade California, Johnathan?

Caller Johnathan:  No.  It just makes no sense on — I really don’t know how I’m trying to say it.  It’s just we pull out of there —

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Mike:  Let me try to help you here.  Here’s what makes no sense: attacking a sovereign nation that had absolutely nothing to do with September the 11^th, did not have a nuclear device, and was not conspiring to do anything other than what Saddam Hussein had maddeningly been doing for the 20 prior years before we installed him there.  Invading the country of Iraq and deposing its dictator, installing what is now to be seen as a corrupt government for the wrong side of the Sunni/Shia divide, and then look at what has happened.  There is no justification for this.  I’m mortally sorry and I don’t have the words to describe the remorse that we should all feel for the loss of life that you and your brothers in arms had to endure.  But to exacerbate that by saying you should have stayed, you would then have to stay forever.  Unless you’re going to colonize the place and make it a colonial invasion like the Brits used to do when they went into a country like that, and the Brits did once upon a time, then there’s no justification.

First of all, in some of our opinions for the first attack there was no justification.  I think that history is already showing that that is the correct point of view.  Secondly, to compound that with another invasion or say that we should have stayed the course or whatever they’re claiming we should have done, I don’t see the point.  I do not see the efficacy of the effort.  The fallout from what has occurred since — to listen to the people that are now saying we’ve got to go back in there and do this, that and the other, I seem to recall — I bet I could go back in my audio archives and find tape of this, thousands of hours of it, saying that what we had to do was get over there and stop Saddam so we could stop the spread of terrorism in the Middle East.  We haven’t stopped it.  Hell, we’ve expanded it.  It’s gotten larger and worse since the invasion of Iraq

Caller Johnathan:  One thing I’ll say is, just because I was a Marine doesn’t mean I agree with what they said.  All we’re doing is, as you say, we’re just following orders.  All we want to do is protect the guy beside us.  That being said…

Mike:  I understand that.  That’s not at issue.  I don’t think that’s at issue with anyone that I know.  What’s at issue is the proposition that we should double down and go ahead and do it all again, which I just cannot understand.  I don’t understand the lack of — from what I’m hearing and seeing from too many people, the lack of remorse over what has happened.  The startling, shocking lack of humility, my heavens.  We ought to own up to the fact that that was an egregious mistake.  We certainly don’t want to do that again.  There has to be another way if national security is really at play here — I don’t think it is in most of what we’re talking about, but if it is, there has to be another way to do it without the tragedy and without the $1 trillion loss and the hundreds of thousands of innocents that were, through upheaval or outright attack, that either lost their lives or lost their homes.  That’s not something to hang your hat on is it?  You saw it.

Caller Johnathan:  Right.  I just don’t understand what the whole — I mean, I’m understanding what you’re saying.  It’s just we’ve got all this money — they’re actually creating jobs over there for contractors.  It’s just so much effort and time that was put into building up things and —

Mike:  If that’s the case, if we need to create jobs for contractors in the manner in which we did it in Iraq, let’s pick a couple cities in California and demolish them with air raids.  Let’s send the 101^st

in there and Howitzer shell San Diego for a couple of months.  Then we can send the contractors in there and pay them to rebuild it.  That’s the old broken window paradigm there.  For those of you saying, [mocking] “Stop being hard on the man,” I’m just trying to explain.  What I’m hearing Johnathan tell me is from the talking points of Bill Kristol, from the talking points of Lindsey Graham.  These arguments do not stand up under scrutiny.  I don’t want my friend here on the line, who almost offered his life for his country when he was called, to not at least be presented with the counter point of view that what they’re telling you and what they have successfully gotten you to believe is, I think, worthy of reconsideration.  I just gave you a few points to reconsider.  I’m not trying to be — I don’t want to come off as a jerk and that I know everything here.

Caller Johnathan:  I know you’re just saying what needs to be said.  That’s why I ask certain questions.  Like I said, I’m a disabled veteran.  I’ll never have to do this stuff again.  If I can go back with my brothers at any time, I would.

Mike:  I know you would.

Caller Johnathan:  I’d do it all over again if that’s what it took.

Mike:  That’s the definition of valor and humility.  You’re willing to lay your life down in order to save another’s.  I would just say let us all collectively agree that we don’t want any more of you in that place laying your lives down.  How about that?

Caller Johnathan:  I do understand that.  I appreciate it in a certain view.  From my point of view, I love my country I live in because of everything we have.  Just like Drew was talking about earlier, he was talking about everybody getting this free stuff from the government and how Afghanistan is a hundred years behind us and they don’t have plumbing.  When I see that, I’m so proud to be an American, to know that I have the rights and have things that I know I want and need that they have no clue what it is yet, if that makes sense.

Mike:  Yeah, it does.  Johnathan, thank you very much for the call.  Folks, I’m going to approach this with kid gloves.  Indoor plumbing is not a right.  An electrified rural countryside is not a right.  It is a luxury.  You can say it’s a necessity of life today.  Okay, it’s a necessity for us, as the caller just demonstrated.  There are people that live in third-world countries that don’t have any of those things and have survived for a couple of millennia.  Are we privileged because we have technological advancements?  I would surmise that most people would say yes.  Amongst our technological advancements is what is obviously a decadent morality that has now crept into the minds and crept into the thought process of far too many of our fellow citizens.

Folks, this cult of death, this is what this is.  It is a cult of death.  The idea that we should not be concerned with the deaths of others in strange lands because we’ve never been there is morally sick.  That is a symptom of a society that is doomed.  Hey, you know what?  We ought to be doomed.  Doomed?  We ought to be struck like Sodom and Gomorrah for thinking like that.  Let me follow that up.  [mocking] “What are you, a pacifist?  We should just stand around and get killed?”  No one denies the right to self-defense.  No one denies that there will be times when a just war will have to be engaged and fought for the preservation of our women and children’s lives and our homes and properties.  That’s not what we’re talking about here.

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These people are mad that seek to continue or reengage in a campaign that rained the kind of violence down up on the people of Iraq.  It bears, I think, sober, sober reflection.

The least we can do is be humble about it and say: That really didn’t go the way it should have gone.  But just to flippantly — I’m not accusing Johnathan of being flippant at all.  There are others of you out there that are flippant about it, [mocking] “You’ve never served in a uniform.”  It’s funny.

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When I was cheerleading the Iraq invasion — I pray every day for our Heavenly Father to forgive me for that.  When I was cheerleading that, you know what I was called by people like me today, or people that have similar views?  I was called a chicken hawk.  Now that I’m on the other side and think that I see clearly here and counsel prudence, humility, nonintervention and diplomacy over the war machine, now I’m called a pacifist, wussy, sissy, traitor.  You name it, they hurl it at us and hopes that it sticks to our character.  You know why?  It’s not so they can win the argument but so we’ll shut up.

End Mike Church Show Transcript