"THE OLD FOOL SAID TO PUSH ON"

Robert D. Gates, retiring as the U.S. Secretary of Defense, has complained that the European member-states of NATO are not supporting the U.S. the way they should, financially. Their governments aren't spending enough on "defense"--which used to be called "war."

Gates thinks that the Europeans should all follow the U.S. into bankruptcy. When the U.S. only had two major wars going--in Iraq and Afghanistan--it was spending $1,000,000,000 a day on its wars. That was all money that the U.S. didn't have, of course. Now Mr. Obama has expanded on what Mr. Bush--remember his "mission accomplished" claim?--started but didn't end. We are now at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. And maybe several more countries: Mr. Obama has already proclaimed that he will send troops--or other, non-human drones--anywhere in the world to murder any future would-be Osama bin Laden.

And how will Mr. Obama pay for these wars? He won't. The U.S. will just keep spending money it doesn't have. Murder is expensive: how much did Obama's office say he spent before the U.S. actually caught Osama bin Laden and murdered him? Was it $13,000,000,000?

Osama bin Laden's death was indeed murder: U.S. soldiers illegally operating in another country, shot at close range an unarmed man, and killed him. Who ordered his murder? Mr. Obama. Never mind law.

Mr. Obama--a lawyer--has no respect for law. He held Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for 365 days, torturing him. His justification for this was simple: though Manning had not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of a crime, Mr. Obama justified his treatment by declaring, "he broke the law."

There is no law, it seems--just as there is no money.

And with the U.S. as a part of it, NATO is a farce. And Robert Gates is a fool.

The U.S. should close down its absurd and disgracefully un-American Defense Department, and start spending what little money it has on its poor and its homeless--and on education and health care and paying its debts. Then someday our great, great grandchildren may have a country they can be proud of. And with the U.S. no longer trying to lead the world, their world should be a much safer world--and better, too, and cleaner and healthier and happier.

I suppose Mr. Gates's comments were welcomed by his NATO colleagues with roars of laughter. Or maybe they weren't listening. Maybe they weren't even there.

Does anybody remember the night the Smothers Brothers had Pete Seeger singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, and the Old Fool Said to Push On"? That was back in 1967. CBS in New York tried to cut the song--and did, but the response to their censorship was so strong that they relented, and aired the show. Seeger sang his song for Lyndon Johnson and his war in Vietnam: "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, and the Old Fool Said to Push On."

The CBS station in Detroit, Michigan refused to air the song--and then, to prove that they were correct in censoring it, played the whole song the next night--with the words running across the bottom of the screen so the audience could read as well as hear them--as a feature on the six o'clock news. Of course, the six o'clock news had a much larger audience that the Smothers Brothers did: even conservatives watch the news.

The U.S. is 'way more than "waist deep" now.