Wherever the Marines go in Afghanistan, ‘goodness will follow’?

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Apparently the Marines already have their orders and are getting ready for 9000 of them so show up in the Helmand province as part of President Obama’s 30,000 troop escalation of the eight-year war there.

No surprise there.  But listen to the Marine’s top officer, Gen. James T. Conway, who said:

Where we have gone, goodness follows,” Conway said. “But the fact is that we are not as expansive as we would like to be, and those probable additional number of Marines are going to help us to get there.”

Up to 9,000 Marines set to start deployment to Afghanistan – washingtonpost.com.

Which sounded a bit like Psalm 23, 6:

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

It also just sounds crazy. According to www.unknownnews.net:

At least 753,399 people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since the U.S. and coalition attacks, based on lowest credible estimates.
About 251 times as many people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq than in the ghastly attacks of September 11, 2001. More than 108 times as many people have been killed in these wars and occupations than in all terrorist attacks in the world from 1993-2004. The 2004 report showed terrorism at an all-time high, and after numerous experts suggested that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fueling the increase, subsequent reports have remained classified.

And who is Conway to believe that death is goodness?  A bit of mucking around reveals a “hero” who has Thanksgiving with
“his troops.”  But it also reveals that Conway wants to keep gays out of the military (after all, you can’t do God’s work if you’re gay) and a man who was a true believer in the Iraq invasion to find the imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Just as crazy as a Marine general who believed in WMDs and who believes the Marines bring “goodness” to Afghanistan by killing and maiming is the administration’s belief that more war will bring more goodness.  At this point, it seems that Obama wants to add about 30,000 more troops and withdraw by 2018.

War till at least 2018? If we continue the wars for that long then millions of people, millions of innocent civilians–children, old people, people who want nothing to do with war and death– will be dead and many times that number so wounded or so psychologically scarred from the war that they will never be fully able to function again.  In other words, they’ll be the living dead.  As will all those Marines coming back to the US in coffins or in pieces.

Goodness?  Godly?  Good gods.  At this point, the disconnect between reality and policy is so great, the continuation of Dubbya’s religious war so clear, that it is impossible to assume President Obama is anything but the most cynical of men.  Because unlike Dubbya, who actually believed crazy Christian talk about bringing “goodness/godliness” by killing, Obama is far too smart to believe such stupid things.  And so he is only operating out of a misguided sense that somehow increasing war abroad will lead to re-election at home.

But goodness and love will not follow Obama’s war in Afghanistan.  Instead, more anger against the US, more terrorism at home and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and none of us will even dwell in the House of Reality, let alone the House of the Lord.