quote of the week:
"...they are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them." - one-star General Janus Karpinski, quoting instructions given to her by two-star General Geoffrey Miller, on how to treat prisoners. commondreams.org
The "few bad apples", I guess, includes a few Generals.
As is so often the case, the Founding Fathers saw the danger, and clearly warned us about the pitfalls and dead ends the Republic might stray into. And, as so often the case, we have ignored their warnings:
"She [America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit." - John Quincy Adams, 1821 |
