When someone makes a move
Of which we don't approve,
Who is it that always intervenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.,
They have their place, I guess,
But first send the Marines!*

From George W. Bush's war machine comes word that thousands more Marines will soon head for Afghanistan to fight the war he abandoned nearly five years ago for the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq.

This doesn't mean we're getting out of Iraq. We will probably be debating the Iraq war in the 2012 Presidential campaign, along with the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and God-knows-where-else.

Call it the endless war syndrome - the result of too many years of out-of-control policies that have left us with little choice but to fight on and on for fictitious reasons and an arrogant illusion of superiority.

Bush has placed this nation in an untenable position. We have no business in Iraq but we can't leave. We could have finished the job in Afghanistan in 2003 but we pulled out to fight his useless war in Iraq. Bush will spend most of his final year in office trying to find a way to declare war on Iran.

John McCain says he doesn't care if troops are in Iraq for the next 100 years. Hillary Clinton won't commit to withdrawing troops from harm's way. No other first-tier candidate in either party promises to bring all the troops home if elected.

America's war machine is on automatic pilot and no one knows where to find the break.

For might makes right,
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
'Till somebody we like can be elected.

American conceit exists on the notion that our way of life is the only acceptable way for all other nations to live. Our system, our leaders believe, is the only acceptable one for all other peoples.

We attempt to export an illusion of democracy that doesn't exist in our own country. We extol the virtues of a freedom that we, as Americans, lost long ago. We preach ideals that we neither support nor practice.

We are a nation built on a false premise, attempting to foist a lie on a world that no longer trusts or admires us.

Diplomacy is not an option because when trust dies, peaceful negotiation becomes collateral damage.

So the only thing we have left is military force and the constant, politically-expedient need to invent excuses to use it.

Members of the corps
All hate the thought of war,
They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.
Stop calling it aggression,
O we hate that expression.
We only want the world to know
That we support the status quo.
They love us everywhere we go,
So when in doubt,
Send the Marines!

*(Song lyrics from "Send the Marines" by Tom Lehrer)