A Warmonger’s Sense of Shame

Do the creatures of the Warfare State feel shame, regret, remorse, guilt, or penitence? I have a hard time believing they can, but if they can leverage those same feelings among the population into supporting endless foreign intervention, they will make vigorous use of any emotion, in a manner similar to a used car salesman.

Case in point: appearing on CBS’s "Face the Nation," Senator John McCain recently employed an emotional reaction alien to his countenance in regard to his general inability to pull the rug out from under Ukraine. In lamenting his, at the present, powerlessness to arm the Ukrainian government, McCain let loose this howler:

"I’m ashamed of my country, I’m ashamed of my president and I’m ashamed of myself that I haven’t done more to help these people. It is really, really heartbreaking."

His public contortions in favor of intervention are grotesque, and his sense of shame seems to be confined to what the United State war machine cannot do. He doesn’t appear to feel anything at all for the wasteland he helped create in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and the myriad other Middle Eastern countries that have had a taste of McCain’s brand of "help."

He wants weapons and money flowing to the Ukrainian government to combat the separatists, and "Russia". Does he care what the consequences would be if Russia called his bluff? His entire history as a Senator is evidence of the amount attention he pays to consequences. How far is he willing to go with aid to Ukraine?

His sense of shame seems to have weighed lightly on his conscience in the aftermath of the last thirteen years of US intervention abroad, so it’s safe to assume that he will feel nothing after the US arms Ukraine and a bloodbath ensues.

This is the behavior of a sociopath. This use of emotion to twist his country’s sentiment into war is unworthy of a scion of America. It is ugly, base, vile, monstrous, hateful, and anathema to a civilization worth inhabiting. Libya, Iraq, Syria, bloodbaths all. And no hope of an order returning any time soon. McCain-approved interventions all.

John McCain has far more to feel shame for than his inability to generate one more homicidal failed state in some distant part of the globe. However, it does appear that he is experiencing an emotion. That emotion, though, appears to be frustration, the frustration of a con-artist that comes when he is unable to cajole his own country into a civil war, halfway around the globe that will end in genocidal chaos. What type of government does McCain think will thrive amid the wreckage he is so eager to produce in that country? At what point does the death toll become too great to continue the intervention? These questions will matter not a whit, because by the time they arise, McCain will be too busy feeling "shame" for not being allowed to intervene in the next distant crisis.

There is no low that the Warfare State will not stoop in order to achieve its goal of endless intervention. It will appeal to patriotism, revenge, glory, compassion, and guilt. It will promise wealth and prosperity. It will hold up pictures of slaughtered children, videos of beheadings, burning villages, and demand action. The Warfare State will promise anything, threaten anything, to let the volley rip. It will employ academics, generals, widows, orphans, survivors, victims, corpses, any and every devise possible to get its way. The creatures of the Warfare State are legion.

That this reckless, sanctimonious ass has decision-making power over our foreign policy in DC is a terrible thing to think upon.

Shane Smith lives in Norman, Oklahoma and writes for Red Dirt Report.