SUPPORTING OUR MILITARY VENTURE FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS...

WE ASSUME THAT AS AMERICANS,
WE ALL KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON...
We stay in touch! We're on the ball!

Right?

WRONG!....

If you have any doubt of that check what came through on NPR just today:


A Pew research study showed that 85% of the GI's in Iraq surveyed believe that Saddam was an active participant in 9/11--

We knew that GWB's arguments that said that Saddam and bin Laden were in bed together was proven false. We know that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We know that Saddam didn't have missiles that could be turned against the US in forty five minutes. We know that the story about the yellow cake was contrived. And we know that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, that bit of common knowledge has been repeated over and over again!

So then why are 85% of the sample so behind the times?

Are they being brain-washed to believe the lies? Is that what we have to do to keep our troops committed? Or is it that the Army is attracting the kind of young people who don't want to bother with the facts?

There is certainly more than a hint of "1984" here where we are being told what to believe and what not to believe. We hear it all the time in the your either with us or against us rhetoric that seems to spew from the hallways of power. In fact, we are drowning in this inverted logic that says if you're not one thing, you're the other. And, clearly, the young and impressionistic are buying into it.

As a professor of communications, I discovered that students were coming into my class-room unable to parse a simple sentence. If you can't parse a simple sentence, how then can you be expected to analyze propaganda when you hear it? How do you begin to separate facts from hyperbole....nouns from adjectives.

It is incredible to hear how poorly prepared many students are for the rigors of the intellectual life. But, more importantly, we question how without fundamental skills they can even survive in a world that demands you understand the language of contracts, that requires you to analyze your bank accounts or even communicate thoughts and meanings to your employer.

These seem to be the things that we are already deficient in. And the government seems to take advantage of it at every turn by saying anything to win support and then jetisoning it as if they were only words to be used for achieving one's objectives. It is the touted MBA approach that begins with the desired result and requires that the facts be turned on their heads to justify what is desired. Unfortunately, this is just the icing on the cake!

And it is the price we pay for people who don't have an appreciation of the past and who believe that the only thing that they need to know is who controls the power!

Moreover, that kind of thinking is at the root of most of the problems we face today!

Get wise, America, the hour glass is running down!

Les Aaron




Les Aaron