Saturday, July 03, 2004
Big Time Rant
Imagine you are a 20 year old American soldier in Iraq. You have been told that your mission is to stop a madman, the worst since Hitler, possessor and willing user of weapons of mass destruction, even against his own people. He is a man capable of ruthless acts and, should America blink, within 45 minutes he could unleash a living hell on your loved ones back home that would make 9/11 look like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Your family, your town, your country is counting on you to save them. Then you watch a film with a title such as; "People in the Final Stages of Death by Small Pox". You take your small pox vaccine shots that have not been thoroughly tested, receive training in donning your chemical weapons protective gear and head for Iraq.
You have been told that Saddam and Usama Bin Laden are indistinguishable. You see the pictures of September 11 playing over and over in your head. You are scared but you are proud of being given the chance to save the lives of possibly hundreds of thousands of people. September 11, or much worse wasn't going to happen again if you had anything to do with it.
Then you get to Iraq. A nation "the size of California" but in much, much worse shape. You ask yourself, "these people, this army, was a threat to my country?" You meet with very little resistance. Then you hear that it does not really matter if we actually find weapons of mass destruction, only that they had plans to develop programs for the reconstitution of their WMD programs.
Then you are told that your president never really said that he was certain that Saddam and Usama got along well, in fact there is no evidence that they actually cooperated in any way. If you got that impression, it didn't come from the president or Big Dick Cheney. Then you are reminded how much of a monster Saddam Hussein was and that you have saved the world from what would eventually become a Hitler who would slaughter millions and then force feed a few of his top officials into a wood chipper just to prove his sadism. You are reminded of the mass graves which would have been even more massive if it hadn't been for you. Then you find out that the mass graves were Shiites who rose up to overthrow Saddam ten years ago thinking we had their back.
Now you're told that your mission was actually a humanitarian one. Your country was not in eminent danger but it was considered a winning strategy to scare the bejesus out of the folks back home to justify the invasion rather than tell them that you were being sent to fight to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqis. Your country loves these poor abused people so much that we along with the rest of the civilized world starved them to death for a decade to make them ornery enough to liberate themselves from the brutal Saddam. It didn't work. We didn't count on so many of them dying from diarrhea when we intentionally destroyed their sewage treatment plants and electrical utilities during the first gulf war. Who knew how difficult it was to mount a coup while overcome with lower gastrointestinal diseases, such as cholera, previously eradicated in much of the developed world including Iraq?
Then you are told to help torture some guys who were picked up for committing a crime that may have varied in significance from exploding an improvised bomb which killed two of our guys to looting a shop. Don't worry, your government will back you up, and if you don't do it we won't find Saddam's spider hole and eventually he will crawl out of it like a grotesque 17 year cicada just when we forget about him and he'll devour the world! Wait. The president doesn't have your back. He is saying that a few bad apples such as Lindy England were at fault. That sick backwoods slut has made us look bad and the president is saying that he never authorized mistreating prisoners. You turn on Armed Forces Radio to see what is going on back home and hear Rush Limbaugh saying that the torture at Abu Ghraib was "a brilliant idea" and was no worse then a fraternity prank.
We've always been for regime change in Iraq. You must now help make sure that the bad men never come back to run their country. Your country will teach them to be a democracy and will insure this by selling off all of the country's publicly owned enterprises. Lots of independent contractors are brought in and paid 4 times your monthly salary to provide security. When a couple of them are killed it is your job to shell a city packed with civilians for several weeks to pay them back for their lack of gratitude. Then the death toll really starts to rise on our side but you are told not to worry, we'll hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqi's in two months no matter what. Power will not be handed to Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite and the source for much of the pre-war evidence of Iraqi possession of WMD, since he was working as a spy for the Iranians.
You cannot ignore the thousands of innocent Iraqi's that you know have been killed or seriously injured since your mission to save the world started. You notice that they never welcomed you like the lovely French girls in Paris did for your grandfather. "I was sent here for them and they hate me?" you say. There are over 800 dead and thousands injured very seriously on our side and 15,000 or more dead and injured Iraqis. There are nearly 5 September 11ths worth of dead "non-combatants" and over $200 billion of deficit spending used to fight this war alone with most of our traditional allies condemning our actions and Iraq seems as far from being a functioning democracy as it ever was.
Then you are reminded that the "Greatest Generation" lost 400,000 and ended in a mushroom cloud that finally tamed the world in the "good war". Your grandfather got to see millions killed and you're whining about a few lousy corpses, what are you, a pussy! This war on Terror may last the rest of our lives you are told. Never mind that it was supposed to be a walk in the park and pretty much over by last May.
They finally complete grandpa's memorial in Washington and they use his sacrifice to justify yours but you notice that they don't have anything to do with each other. Grandpa fought two war machines that had spread from their borders across continents and oceans. You were sent to fight an army that your country outspent 281 to 1 on defense and who had much of its infrastructure and all of its heavy manufacturing capacity reduced to rubble a decade before you got there. You got to Baghdad in the blink of an eye and grandpa served for two years before he made Berlin. These people were no threat to Topeka, KS and you knew it, but they are a big threat to you now as you drive through their neighborhoods wondering when something will explode underneath your vehicle. Your boots are on the ground and you cannot find any ground to fight over, the country is a mess, nothing can be made to work and most of the people, 9 out of 10, consider you an occupier not a liberator. You no longer have any idea what this war was about, you only hope to stay alive long enough to be sent home in one piece since your president has chosen to cut funding for veterans assistance so he could reduce the future tax burden of Paris Hilton. Your job is to provide security so schools can be built while your kids' schools back home close 14 days early because they are broke.
It must be something invisible or underground that you are fighting for if you don't see it on the surface. If it wasn't about WMD or 9/11 or human rights what was it about? Could it be the oil? Could those damn goofy protesters with their crazy piercings who hate America be right?
Shit.
Imagine you are a 20 year old American soldier in Iraq. You have been told that your mission is to stop a madman, the worst since Hitler, possessor and willing user of weapons of mass destruction, even against his own people. He is a man capable of ruthless acts and, should America blink, within 45 minutes he could unleash a living hell on your loved ones back home that would make 9/11 look like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Your family, your town, your country is counting on you to save them. Then you watch a film with a title such as; "People in the Final Stages of Death by Small Pox". You take your small pox vaccine shots that have not been thoroughly tested, receive training in donning your chemical weapons protective gear and head for Iraq.
You have been told that Saddam and Usama Bin Laden are indistinguishable. You see the pictures of September 11 playing over and over in your head. You are scared but you are proud of being given the chance to save the lives of possibly hundreds of thousands of people. September 11, or much worse wasn't going to happen again if you had anything to do with it.
Then you get to Iraq. A nation "the size of California" but in much, much worse shape. You ask yourself, "these people, this army, was a threat to my country?" You meet with very little resistance. Then you hear that it does not really matter if we actually find weapons of mass destruction, only that they had plans to develop programs for the reconstitution of their WMD programs.
Then you are told that your president never really said that he was certain that Saddam and Usama got along well, in fact there is no evidence that they actually cooperated in any way. If you got that impression, it didn't come from the president or Big Dick Cheney. Then you are reminded how much of a monster Saddam Hussein was and that you have saved the world from what would eventually become a Hitler who would slaughter millions and then force feed a few of his top officials into a wood chipper just to prove his sadism. You are reminded of the mass graves which would have been even more massive if it hadn't been for you. Then you find out that the mass graves were Shiites who rose up to overthrow Saddam ten years ago thinking we had their back.
Now you're told that your mission was actually a humanitarian one. Your country was not in eminent danger but it was considered a winning strategy to scare the bejesus out of the folks back home to justify the invasion rather than tell them that you were being sent to fight to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqis. Your country loves these poor abused people so much that we along with the rest of the civilized world starved them to death for a decade to make them ornery enough to liberate themselves from the brutal Saddam. It didn't work. We didn't count on so many of them dying from diarrhea when we intentionally destroyed their sewage treatment plants and electrical utilities during the first gulf war. Who knew how difficult it was to mount a coup while overcome with lower gastrointestinal diseases, such as cholera, previously eradicated in much of the developed world including Iraq?
Then you are told to help torture some guys who were picked up for committing a crime that may have varied in significance from exploding an improvised bomb which killed two of our guys to looting a shop. Don't worry, your government will back you up, and if you don't do it we won't find Saddam's spider hole and eventually he will crawl out of it like a grotesque 17 year cicada just when we forget about him and he'll devour the world! Wait. The president doesn't have your back. He is saying that a few bad apples such as Lindy England were at fault. That sick backwoods slut has made us look bad and the president is saying that he never authorized mistreating prisoners. You turn on Armed Forces Radio to see what is going on back home and hear Rush Limbaugh saying that the torture at Abu Ghraib was "a brilliant idea" and was no worse then a fraternity prank.
We've always been for regime change in Iraq. You must now help make sure that the bad men never come back to run their country. Your country will teach them to be a democracy and will insure this by selling off all of the country's publicly owned enterprises. Lots of independent contractors are brought in and paid 4 times your monthly salary to provide security. When a couple of them are killed it is your job to shell a city packed with civilians for several weeks to pay them back for their lack of gratitude. Then the death toll really starts to rise on our side but you are told not to worry, we'll hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqi's in two months no matter what. Power will not be handed to Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite and the source for much of the pre-war evidence of Iraqi possession of WMD, since he was working as a spy for the Iranians.
You cannot ignore the thousands of innocent Iraqi's that you know have been killed or seriously injured since your mission to save the world started. You notice that they never welcomed you like the lovely French girls in Paris did for your grandfather. "I was sent here for them and they hate me?" you say. There are over 800 dead and thousands injured very seriously on our side and 15,000 or more dead and injured Iraqis. There are nearly 5 September 11ths worth of dead "non-combatants" and over $200 billion of deficit spending used to fight this war alone with most of our traditional allies condemning our actions and Iraq seems as far from being a functioning democracy as it ever was.
Then you are reminded that the "Greatest Generation" lost 400,000 and ended in a mushroom cloud that finally tamed the world in the "good war". Your grandfather got to see millions killed and you're whining about a few lousy corpses, what are you, a pussy! This war on Terror may last the rest of our lives you are told. Never mind that it was supposed to be a walk in the park and pretty much over by last May.
They finally complete grandpa's memorial in Washington and they use his sacrifice to justify yours but you notice that they don't have anything to do with each other. Grandpa fought two war machines that had spread from their borders across continents and oceans. You were sent to fight an army that your country outspent 281 to 1 on defense and who had much of its infrastructure and all of its heavy manufacturing capacity reduced to rubble a decade before you got there. You got to Baghdad in the blink of an eye and grandpa served for two years before he made Berlin. These people were no threat to Topeka, KS and you knew it, but they are a big threat to you now as you drive through their neighborhoods wondering when something will explode underneath your vehicle. Your boots are on the ground and you cannot find any ground to fight over, the country is a mess, nothing can be made to work and most of the people, 9 out of 10, consider you an occupier not a liberator. You no longer have any idea what this war was about, you only hope to stay alive long enough to be sent home in one piece since your president has chosen to cut funding for veterans assistance so he could reduce the future tax burden of Paris Hilton. Your job is to provide security so schools can be built while your kids' schools back home close 14 days early because they are broke.
It must be something invisible or underground that you are fighting for if you don't see it on the surface. If it wasn't about WMD or 9/11 or human rights what was it about? Could it be the oil? Could those damn goofy protesters with their crazy piercings who hate America be right?
Shit.
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