Right now, we have a horrific military invasion going on. There have been 4,279 coalition deaths -- 3,973 Americans, two Australians, 174 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, one Czech, seven Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 33 Italians, one Kazakh, one Korean, three Latvian, 22 Poles, three Romanians, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians -- in the war in Iraq as of February 29, 2008, according to a CNN count. (Source) The number of dead Iraqis? There is no way of knowing. One estimate is over 80,000, another stands at 40,000. I could go on and on searching and calculating all the dead. But I want to stick to one point, at least: it is my belief that these men, women, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, girlfriends, boyfriends, sisters and brothers are not dying as heroes. They are dying as pawns...Bush's Pawns.
Albeit, there are some who are doing heroic things. The closest I could get to a concise report of this was this CNN piece from 2003. I'm not really sure why this record keeping was done for only one year, but it at least lists examples of heroic actions.
To the rest of the thousands who have died as a result of "friendly - fire", road side bombs while in military issued vehicles with nothing more than a tarp as protection, drowning because their vehicles went off the road into a body of water, and "insurgents" (wouldn't we protect our lands against invaders too?).
But isn't that a fundamental truth of war? An insecure, self righteous man (historically) sits atop a thrown and commands that the lesser people of his land blindly follow orders while putting their lives at risk? Leaving home pregnant wives and small children to attack other villages and kill other men who have pregnant wives and small children at home?
And for what? More land? A stolen treasure? Oil fields? To make daddy proud?
I can justify the fighting if it was a matter of defending one's own land, people, family, or home. But to be forced to take other people's land and lives because someone told you to... That, to me, violates everything about the intrinsic rights we are born with.
I hear over and over the dead soldiers referred to as heroes. I beg to differ. The label "hero", I believe, is a tool used by our government, the media (run by corporations who help run the government), and possibly well-meaning associates to comfort and placate the bereaved families. It is used to give the family a reason. "Why did my son die?"
"Don't worry about the details ma'am. Just know he died a hero defending our country."
I will continue to ask the question: How is our country at risk? How are we in danger? Who is threatening us? What is being defended?
Our own government is more of a threat to our security and rights than any other country. With this war, and every other invasion going on around the world by the US, we are asking for it. Yes, I said it. We are asking for another 9/11-type disaster that is supposed to be a warning; an attention-grabber. But the media led our questioning in the wrong direction. Instead of asking who did it and who is responsible. We should have been asking, how did we let this happen, how are WE responsible? What can we do to change the course of our actions to prevent this from happening again?
There was an unprecedented display of heroism at Ground Zero that day. Was their not? Fire Crews, Policemen, EMT's, Coast Guard, nurses, doctors, and people who were already in the Towers when they were bombed and either went out of their way to help - or attempt to help - other people escape the building. And we cannot mention 9/11 heroes without mentioning United Flight 93 in which alerted passengers attempted to overthrow the terrorist hijackers.
And what about everyone else who died in the Towers or on one of the planes? Are they heroes? No. They are victims.
Just as the soldiers - from every country involved, and all the innocent women, children, men, and elderly dying because of Bush and his terroristic acts, are victims.
Call them whatever you want; whatever helps you sleep at night and find peace with your lost loved-one.
But channel your anger to the man who put them there, not the people who are trying to get them home and trying to get you and every other war-supporter to see the truth.
No, I don't support the war, but I do support the troops. Bring them home now.
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5 comments:
Well, it's hard to argue with your point. War is bad. Bush is a moron. Innocents perish.
All valid points. But also terribly simplistic. To put Bush's head in the middle of the bull's eye misses the whole point.
Bush is no more in charge of his own policies than I am in charge of what my kids do while they're in school.
As far back as 1998 you can find the blueprints and fingerprints of the Iraq war.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
iraqclintonletter.htm
The Project for the New American Century is a think tank made up of a who's who list of neocon window washers.
The above letter, to then President Clinton, is a road map for what would follow in George W. Bush's stumble into Iraq.
See? Read that letter, and see the people who signed it. This is not new news.
George W. Bush is nothing more than a skin puppet, a bad talking head, the joker wearing a rubber peins on top of his head, a cheerleader for the academic floor of the conservative movement.
Bush is who he is in spite of himself. And speak nothing of the brilliant strategy of taking over Iraq.
Those plans were written well before Bush hit the big house. And they were written by people named Rumsfeld, Libby, Pearle, Armitage, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Gaffney, and of course, Cheney.
Bush was simply the boy who answered the door at the big party. It was never his house.
But why not let him be the host? What harm could it do?
The big names were installed into the Defense Department and the NSA.
Al Qaeda simply provided the neocons with the silver bullet they never deserved by attacking us on 9/11.
It was a wet dream for the neocons. Unfortunately for the rest of this country, and millions across the globe, we got to pick up the wet, sticky socks.
So get angry at Bush, if you want. I don't want to spoil anyone's fun or target practice, but I'm afraid to say it is very much like hating the bad guy in a good movie.
At best, it raises your blood pressure and makes you appreciate the act. At it's worst, you see through it all, and grow short of breath and feel sick to your stomach.
The beauty and horror of democracy is that we get what we deserve.
Truthfully, there are no good or bad guys, only spectators. Those with the money get the best seats. They get to yell at the participants and throw their beer on them. The rest of us squint to see what is going on.
When it's over, someone tells us what happened and tells us how it will affect our future.
And it never seems to have a happy ending.
No matter who is President.
Also, nothing will ever change for us if we stay in the Middle East. As long as we strong-arm people for their resources, we will always be in the cross hairs for people with nothing to lose.
When with the neocons ever learn this lesson? The imperialist world died in the last century.
Pretending and acting otherwise is begging for another 9/11.
In fact, it is almost certain that the estimates provided - 40,000 to 80,000 - are far too low. Johns Hopkins epidemiological approach using cluster sampling (which is a respected and accurate methodology used following famines or other natural disasters where records are not available) estimates that over 650,000 Iraqis have died since the War on Iraqis began. Hopkins press release here:
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html
Now, since the pre-war population of Iraq was around 26 million, we can easily calculate the equivalent per capita death toll in a country - like America - with 300 million: that would be about 7.5 million Americans dead.
While I agree with deaner66 that it is shortsighted to blame Bush, I would argue it is very nearly as myopic to take only a single step up and blame the Neocons.
If you want to cure an ill, you MUST first spend the time and effort to accurately and comprehensively identify its source. The root cause of this evil has been with us for far longer than the Neocons, and will be vastly more difficult to root out than a simple election would be. An election will not begin to address the real problem - the underlying evil, if you will.
Americans - by dint of the public schooling they receive, primarily - have little to no sense of history. If they did, they would be experiencing a profound sense of deja vu.
The USS Maine - the Lusitania - Pearl Harbor - the Gulf of Tonkin incident - 911. There is much in common here. Interestingly, 3 of 5 occurred under Democrats. Thus, this is NOT a problem of political *party*. So even *that* level of scrutiny is insufficient. We must travel still higher.
I think this single essay sums up the ill, and its cure, better than anything else I've read:
The Song That Is Irresistible: How the State Leads People to Their Own Destruction:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/
article.asp?id=2051
BTW, it's worth noting that the Neocons actually originated as left-liberals - from Wikipedia:
"The forerunners of neoconservatism were often liberals or socialists who strongly supported the Allied cause in World War II, and who were influenced by the Great Depression-era ideas of the New Deal, trade unionism, and Trotskyism, particularly those who followed the political ideas of Max Shachtman."
So to paint the neocons as "conservatives" is inaccurate.
The historical ignorance alluded to in my last comment has, in essence, allowed a group of ex-Trotskyites to capture the Republican Party without the so-called 'conservative' base even grasping this fact.
This origin also helps to explain another fact I alluded to that appears to be contradictory to some who are unfamiliar with the actual history of the US: that Democrats have been just as happy, or even moreso, to monger for war as Republicans, historically speaking.
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