Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Ain't That America

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327/0854086

I disagree with the premise that this 'brigade', let alone this one soldier, is 'a bad egg'. This representation of this circumstance is a prime example of a nation in denial. The people of this country cannot accept the fact that this is very common, that a 'drop weapon' is almost a requirement to conceal and legitimize civilian murder, and that the slogan of 'abandon all hope' is something that is slammed into the brains of our young men and women the moment they enlist.

We cannot have soldiers who are expected to murder indiscriminately impeded by conscience. We must deny these truths and hang on ever precariously to the shredded fallacy that we are 'humanitarians' who are 'spreading democracy' by 'winning the hearts and minds' of the peoples of our victim nations, as we send soldiers into civilian homes with concussion grenades, searching for 'insurgents'.

If a foreign country invaded your city, murdered your children, raped your women, would you be an 'insurgent'; perhaps so. As much as I am a proponent of peace, I know I would. If I saw the body of my beautiful 10-year-old son shot, dragged through the dirt, dismembered, mutilated, I would be an insurgent. I would be vengeful. I would do anything I could to fight against anyone remotely associated with his murderer. The very love that existed in the depth of my soul would fester, rankle, and rot to the point where I would not be able to see past my own destiny to destroy the very spirit that could create such an invertebrate treacherous creature.

In our country we would call insurgents patriots. But to the countries we invade, to the people from whom we strip every moral dignity, every civil right, the patriots are terrorists. We allocate ourselves the right to take their lives, to decimate their population, to destroy their infrastructure, to obliterate their culture. We use weapons of mass destruction. We murder babies. We rape their women. We place them in concentration camps. We starve them. We spray their villages with chemicals and deny medical care to their deformed infants.

And here, in our country, we spread the disease of our lie from one to the next generation, as we pass our murderous arrogance to our children. We salute and pledge allegiance in absolute idolatry to not only the flag, but to the politicians we 'elect' who support our murderous campaigns. We bow down each day to our imperialist masters as we prepare to enter the consumer trough.

It isn't even about conquest anymore, it's simply about death; about continual war; about profiteering; about the money - and this, my dear American friends, we call 'freedom'.

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