Well, didn’t take long for the “beheading” video to have the desired propaganda effect, did it?  Gotta go to war, man!  Like yesterday!  ISIS is just too badass and scary, according to Chuck Hagel:

“They’re beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology with a sophisticated strategic and tactical military prowess and they’re tremendously well-funded. This is way beyond anything we have seen. We must prepare for everything. Get Ready!“

Oh brother…  This kind of BS is exactly what the people on the other side of the world are saying about us!  And they’re right!

Look, it’s terrible that whoever that was in the black mask beheaded whoever that was in the orange jumpsuit.  Of course it is.  But that doesn’t justify a new war.  Or an old war.  But Hagel can’t wait to bring up the beheading:

“Evidence is pretty clear. When we look at what they did to Mr Foley and threatend to do to all Americans and Europeans. There is no other way to describe it but barbaric. They have no standard of decency of responsible human behavior. They are an imminent threat to every interest we have.“

Is beheading barbaric? Yes.  But so is killing 500,000 Iraqi children then invading the country–which didn’t attack us and didn’t have WMD–and killing at least that many more.  Who’s the bigger barbarian, the one who beheads some people on video or the one who starts a war of aggression under false pretenses and kills millions?  Is that what we’re trying to do, eradicate barbarism?  Because we gotta do some serious soul-searching and self-examination if that’s the case.

In case you forgot, here’s Madeleine Albright not only not denying that the U.S. sanctions killed 500,000 Iraqi children, she said it was “worth it”:

Please heed the words of Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler about these matters:

“WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few — the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.“