May 2, 2011
What do the First Nations peoples think of Bin Laden being given the codename, “Geronimo?” Why not call him Pol Pot, Idi Amin or Somoza? Geronimo was a terrorist?
Americans take to the streets in celebration, waving flags and chanting U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.
War on Terror. War on Drugs. War on Poverty. War on Obesity.
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Peace be with you.
June 10, 2008
Do you remember being told that the need to invade another country was directly related to one man’s despotic desire to threaten the security of our nation through the use of weapons that could cause massive and wide-spread destruction?
Today we are told that we are fighting a war against insurgents of that same country who, we are told, do not want to see their country become free and democratic. Some suggest that some of the insurgents are the last of the despot’s followers.
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When Saddam Hussein was captured, his captors decided to keep his personal handgun and mount it like a trophy. The intention was to present the gift to President Bush.
The intention was carried out, much to the delight of W. Apparently the gun is kept in the Oval Office and is used as a showpiece when visitors arrive. He is proud of what the gun represents: freedom for the people of Iraq.
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More than 800 U.S. young men and women have died in Iraq. What’s more, more than 25 have died at their own hands, suicide being the killer.
Now, the turnover of sovereignty later this montth appears will be little more than a symbolic event.
Why do most of us not seem to care about any of this? Why do we go about our daily lives not thinking about what the future will hold for Iraq?
We should be reminded at this point that there is no connection between 9/11 and our invasion of Iraq, other than a media that led many of us to believe there was a connection. Other than a president who made all terrorists his axis of evil.
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Here we are today. We are fighting a war. You and I are responsible for the killing of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers. We cannot be citizens of this country and excuse ourselves of not having a part in this violence. We cannot be guilt-free considering that the taxes we pay are being used to fund the killing. We may not be the ones making the decisions, but we are the ones who voted the decision-makers into office. One person is not responsible for waging a war.
This does not sit well with me, but it is true. If I am to be free at the expense of another human being’s life, then I do not want to know this freedom any longer.
Instead, I am searching for a freedom that results from dialogue and human understanding. We, if we are to posit that we are enlightened creatures, cannot allow our brothers and sisters to seek killing as a guarantor of freedom.
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The dictator no longer rules. His gun is no longer in his possession, yet insurgents who are of no threat to our national security are still dying by that gun.
I hate when people use guns to find freedom.
(written 13 June 2004)
June 9, 2008
It seems of late that every morning we wake to news that a number between one and ten is the latest daily casualty total of U.S. troops in Iraq. Those ones through tens have added up to a number around six-hundred military personal dead while serving in a war that is said will bring freedom to the Iraqi people.
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While an undergrad studying Political Science, I was indoctrinated by so-called experts who would use Balance of Power, Game Theory, and other political theory techniques to explain why nations went to war. I am able to recall that such explanations seemed at the time to be clean, too precise, and emotionally detached when it comes to human beings killing each other in the name of some cause. I still agree with what I thought then.
We recently viewed, or not, pictures of charred U.S. citizens gruesomely hanging from a bridge. Without any question, the images were deeply disturbing.
What miffs me is that for those of us that saw the images, many reacted with disbelief, anger, and/or shock, among other ways we may react when we acknowledge human kind’s inhumanity to ourselves. I use the word “miffs” because I am unable to hone in on what my fellow citizens had imagined war to be.
You do not have to serve in a war to know that it is horrible, grotesque, violent, bloody, and evil. We, as human beings, are able to empathize without experiencing.
It is this exact human quality–empathy–that requires us to be most respectful to those who have served in war, anywhere. While we may not agree with the politics behind the war, we cannot place responsibility for the decisions of an elite ruling class on the vast majority of lower and middle class-background soldiers that comprise our armed forces. Further, empathy demands us to care for our brothers and sisters when they return. It is a national shame that one of the highest rates of homeless and suicidal groups of people living on our streets today are Vietnam veterans. We cannot allow for this to occur post-”terrorism” war, whenever, if ever, that arrives.
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Those considered to be of educated backgrounds have posited the notion that only six-hundred dead is not that many when considering the length of time we’ve been in Iraq, or when compared to other wars in our nation’s history.
Again, harking back to my days in academia, I recall learning something about the body count technique and how more dead bodies surely must mean that one side is winning the war over the other. Or, that maybe using the body count technique is not really a useful measure of success (think Vietnam). Both arguments were provided and neither sounding more plausible than the other, leaving me with the lesson that not only were they not useful in determing war’s success, they also were more than just dead bodies as political instruments.
Dead bodies are lives. Dead bodies are loved ones. Dead bodies are living, breathing, endless possibilities given a cruel exit from a world equally cruel, the cruelty used to described the exit and the world resulting from exactly the same source: the lack of understanding due to the lack of love.
Tomorrow we will wake and, more than likely, we will hear of more dead U.S. troops. We will likely here more the next day, next week, and so on. Keeping this in mind, and checking in with your emotions, whatever they may be, ask yourself if those emotions could be similar to those felt by the people of Iraq, Chechnya, Colombia, or Sudan when they learn of their dead ones.
Ask yourself, what exactly is it that we are fighting for anyway?
(18 April 2004)
