I know enough to know that many-- hell, MOST of you-- will violently disagree with this, and given the prevailing national state of ignorance of the facts of global politics, it is only natural for you to do so. As a REAL American, I strongly support and respect your right to disagree.
Now, on to my point:
At a holiday gathering this weekend, I was with friends watching a hilarious montage of sports bloopers-- you know the ones: skateboard accidents, bobsledding nightmares, rodeos where the bull manages to inflict some kind of hilarious injury to the nether parts of the contestant...
As we laughed, I admitted to my friends that I always secretly root for the bull in these events-- it's an innocent animal being exploited for the amusement of a crowd of inbred idiots who SHOULD be at home teaching their kids to read-- so I feel that the bull is eminently more deserving of my sympathies than the redneck who wasn't smart enough to find a more enlightening hobby than risking his own life in the noble pursuit of tormenting more-or-less defenseless animals.
Ditto the kid who decides that it's a nifty idea to ride his skateboard down a fifty-foot handrail, only to perform a spectacular face-plant on the concrete below-- I can't bring myself to feel sorry for a guy who put himself in that position. Read a book, for %$&@'s sake! Enrich yourself a little! Watch the news and be informed! Take up chess, or golf, or join a softball league! Why knowingly engage in an activity for which human beings were not engineered by whatever Creator in whom you choose to believe? I support your right to DO it, but I'm not going to feel terribly sorry for you.
This got me started thinking about the 3,000-plus American kids-- and let's admit it, they're KIDS-- who have now been killed while occupying a foriegn country whose main offense against the United States seems to be an assassination attempt on Bush the Elder, which is of course a dubious claim for which I've never seen a scintilla of evidence.
I was shocked and appalled at the trend over the last few years of people PROTESTING at the funerals of dead American soldiers. It went against every tenet of my personal system of ethics. But you know what? The more I think about it (and that's been a LOT lately), while I still find the protests at funerals to be uncivilized and indecent, I think I now understand it.
Why?
Because I not only don't support the Occupation of Iraq-- I don't support the troops, either.
Most of you will stop reading at this point to rattle off vicious replies that showcase your lack of information, but for those of you who are intrigued enough to continue reading, here's my justification for NOT signing on with the typical anti-war statement that I "oppose the war, but support the troops".
These kids weren't drafted. Vietnam taught us that any future attempt at a draft would be disastrous and lead to another 1960's-style countercultural revolution, and the fat bastards in Washington far prefer our current sedated, ignorant state of patriotic bliss.
Thus, these kids went and SIGNED UP to go occupy (illegally, as far as I can tell) a foriegn nation, knowing full well that they were placing themselves in great bodily harm and potentially wrecking their loving families who might have to stand over their freshly-dug graves crying the way their child "sacrificed" his life for his country.
I call "BS" on this one. Iraq wasn't going to hurt us in a million years-- they wouldn't have been capable of hurting ANYONE without all the poison gas and other assorted death toys that Don Rumsfeld and other American dip***** passed out like lollipops back in the 70's and 80's.
If these soldiers weren't well-informed enough to take think better of taking a highly dangerous job that pays so little that they would qualify for food stamps, than I think perhaps that every time one of them dies from "insurgent" sniper fire or an IED, that's Darwin at work. Weeding out those who aren't savvy, hip, or educated enough to understand the news (maybe they were watching Fox News, but that's only further proves my point-- Fox News has been indisputably proven to be a woefully pathetic source of "news" and is really just a propaganda tool of the Republicans).
It's sad that these dead occupiers leave behind young widows and fatherless children, but in truth, perhaps those children will have a chance at a better life if their moms marry a guy who has the good sense to know the difference between "national duty" and "participating in a calculated effort to destabilize the Middle East, steal a bunch of oil, and avenge the humiliation of Bush the Elder by removing Saddam". Such a stepfather would likely do a far better job at raising the child of a dead American soldier than said soldier would have done had he survived the occupation.
It's nobody's obligation to "serve" America by participating in this war. Iraq was NOT involved in 9/11, but 9/11 WAS the driving emotional force behind MANY of the enlistments. Occupying Iraq is NOT a "service to America" or a "fight for justice"-- it's jackbooted thuggery in which we are stealing natural resources from a nation with a soverign who, while a terrible, brutal bastard, was really as much a legitimate soverign as George W. Bush, and probably his intellectual superior.
Oh, and what about the rapes, murders, and wholesale pillage of the innocent Iraqis who have now been dragged into a vicious civil war? Am I really supposed to go around supporting a gang of murderous, oil-thieving "soldiers" who have already killed FAR more INNOCENT Iraqis than Saddam managed to harm in twenty-odd years of absolutist rule?
So what we've got here is a bunch of kids who either:
1) took a foolish risk to seek adventure, and paid the price, just like the guy who gets his chest caved in by a rodeo bull, or;
2) were so misinformed and misled that they thought they were fighting for "justice" and "freedom", and paid the price for that stupidity and gullibility, or;
3) people who thought it would be neat to tote a machine gun and "avenge" the USA for 9/11 by capping a few and , and paid the price for that stupidity, or;
4) people who thought that it would be a good way to pay for a college education, and paid a much higher price than college could ever have cost. For the record, I was hip enough to know that student loans and grants are easily obtained, and I survive to type this message equipped with a master's degree and my brain still in my head instead of splattered on some Baghdad highway alongside the wreckage of a poorly-armored troop transport. If these kids thought risking their lives to sack a country was the best ticket to a college education, I say to their grieving families: Pell Grants. Stafford Loans. Work studies.
My sympathy, therefore, hereafter goes to the innocents of the world who are being victimized daily by various tyrants, genocidal maniacs, and religious fundamentalists. No longer will I feel compelled to recite the liberal talking point about "opposing the war, but supporting the toops". My support has better and more legitimate causes on which to be expended.
My compassion goes out to all the families of anyone injured or killed in Iraq or any of our other farcical military campaigns-- but it's really more PITY-- pity that those people were placed in a state of grief that could have been avoided by teaching thier children to have a better grasp of the reality of global politics and the inherent brutality of war. These soldiers are for the most part innocent pawns in the Bush Plan to turn the Middle East into an America-friendly golf resort/oil distribution hub, and I regret that they fell into the trap.
But I knew enough to save my family such misery, and those who didn't are not getting my "support" any more. From now on, they're just going to get my sense of regret that they weren't a little smarter.
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