Does it disturb you to see parents smiling full-tooth smiles, putting their hands over their hearts, at the White Man's House "War Memorial" Celebration, with the Commander in Chief coming out and putting one of those very expensive wreaths all presidents have dragged out onto the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in great honor to our sacred war dead--a number that seems to always grow no matter the bravery and sacrifices made for this precious "freedom" what seems like now ever 10 years? I mean and then they interviewed this little kid whose father got blown to bits in Iraq just that week and they handed the little trooper the flag and the little trooper saluted back--what a shame--a poor little dumbass kid child being traipsed out in order to promote this horrid and now totally foul War on Terrorism a war being made by a very dull-looking but I've decided now he's dull like a dull knife and a dull knife can still kill your ass especially when wielded by a spoiled-brat rich daddy's son seeking revenge on the American people--listen to me NOW, I'm'a breathin' heavy like a renegade Holy Roller flim-flammer spelling out the nature of his financial needs--and'a that--er-ah, means YOU and ME, folks...YA HEAR ME? And this dull knife's revenge is gonna cut deep and the wound is gonna be corrupted by the dullness and then the infestation sets in, the wound pusses up, and soon the maggots will busily eating away the rest of the FLESH of this country as we are all being offered up as sacrificial lambs to this little son of a bitch's God, whoever the hell he is; you know, the Bigger than Pappy Bush Big Daddy Up in the Sky that Bush says speaks to him and tells him how righteous he is. Holy shit, I'm scarin' myself.
There are still a hundred thou or so WWII vets still kicking--most of them though are just fading from the scene the way old asshole General McArthur said, "Old soldiers never die...they just fade away." Plus we have tons of veterans to replace the old WWII dudes, you know, vets from the Korean Police Action, the VietNam debacle (a war we lost and as losers we treated the VietNam vets even more shoddily than the Bush Babies are now treating these poor volunteer suckers having to do their "sacrificing" in Iraq and Afghanistan), the War on Grenada by Commander and Chief Ronnie "Where Am I, Mommy?" Raygun, the Pappy Bush's War on Panama to save his drug-dealing buddy Noriega (remember him?) and then the big moment in Little Georgie's life when his wimpy father led this country's forces to that great victory he called the Gulf War (whatever happened to Gulf War Syndrone?--I'll answer this one easy, the same thing that happened to talk about Agent Orange in VietNam--a brother of a friend of mine is just now collecting on the lawsuit these guys won and that coming just in time as he was diagnosed with the cancer Agent Orange causes)--the Persian Gulf War--Pappy's big moment on the white horse. A stupid war--except Pappy charged his war to the Japanese and to the Euro-Union--he made them pay--and he probably took a little Saudi money in the deal--I mean the Saudi Royal Family let him use the holiest of Islamic land as a gathering base for a full attack against an Islamic nation--an abomination according to the interpretation of the Koran that one Brother Osama Bin Laden had at that time--a time when he turned on the Saudi Royal Family and they promptly kicked him out of the country, though they allowed him to keep his own family fortune income--you bet Osama still gets a big fat check from the Saudis every four months. Oh, but Georgie Porgie Bush's God doesn't see it all this way. Remember, even though Pappy trumpeted how he'd made up for our losing in VietNam by winning this big victory over his old pal Saddam Hussein--oh yeah, he and Pappy and Rummy Rumsfeld and Big Dick Chain-gangy were very well acquainted (remember Rummy shaking hands proudly with Saddam back in those good ole days). [Didn't the Iranians claim they got Ronnie Raygun elected in 1980 after secret deals were made--if they'd release the hostages and Ronnie Raygun got credit for it, he win the presidency and then we'd give Iran a military force and some American generals to train the Iranian Army--or some such Iran-Contra-like deals being made--always in secret--always without the dumbass We the People knowing until we read it in the headlines the next day. You cannot win with a "World Ends Tomorrow" campaign--like Al Gore's attempting to do with his environment dog and pony show [why didn't he do something about the environment when he was vice-president? because unlike Little Georgie Porgie has his Unka Dick's hand up his ass pulling the strings, Slick Willie and Miss Hillary told Al to take his dumb ass to the back of the podium and sit there quietly--even pass out for all they cared, and by God that's just what Al did. Of course, Al's star-crazy wife tried to impose her morals on the record industry--but that petered out, too. Poor filthy rich; they find life so boring. Can you tell how bored Georgie Porgie Bush looks these days. Shit, he wishes it were over so he could be playing golf with Prince Bandar down on his Crawford golf course, but nope, Unka Dick and the Saudis have given him a mission and, by God, just like he accomplished his first "Mission Accomplished" he's gonna soon announce his second "Mission Accomplished" this time from the deck of a carrier in the Gulf of Iran and then announce how God's given him another mission to accomplish, the destruction of Iran as we now know it.
"Next stop...Eye-ran!!!" Country Joe, get out your guitar it's time for "Gimme an F...gimme a U...gimme a C...gimme a K."
Wow. It was a solemn day for War and the memories the hundreds of thousands of old US war vets told over and over again all day with tears in their eyes and all kinds of memories of the guys who didn't make it back. One of WWII pilot on the aircraft carrier Lexington had to bail into the drink of the South Pacific six times, each time he was luckily rescued. God how he loved talking about that.
Then there was this goofus-like kid whose brother was just blown to bits in Iraq and he was rushing down to sign up so he could go take his brother's place. That was sad to me.
Then the story on teevee about the Iraq War female returnee who lost one of her arms in combat and she was talking about how she was proud of her service in Iraq and losing the arm was simply a chance result of that service and the missing arm made her even prouder of the service she'd done. And this was a pretty young woman, too, except she had only one arm, which made her look as freaky as Sir Paul of the Beatles's last wife when she took her prosthesis off.
How sad. That's all I could feel for these old soldiers and these new soldiers, now including women. Over 100,000 of our troops have lost limbs in these Iraq and Afghanistan messes of destruction and death we have caused as revenge for a handful of mostly Saudi religious nutjobs knocking down the World Trade Center's buildings and killing almost 3,000 mostly Americans, yes, but with some Arabs and Irish and English and other foreigners in there. Revenge.
And there these patriotic fools were crying their patriotic eyes out while this election-stealing, treasury-raiding, war-mongering "president" is mourning the poor kids he's sent to their doom with his normal insincere smirking lyin' out the side of his mouth shit. Surely some of these vets are pissed that this little snobass richboy born into the "privileges" was able to use one of those privileges to actually go AWOL from his military obligation in the Texas Air National Guard. These richman's privileges are the real "freedoms" these underprivileged mostly men and women are fighting for in any war they're fighting--yep, like Smedley Butler said, the US Army fights under contract to the US Corporations and goes where these corporations need them to defend their properties--same as Blackwater, except Blackwater is a corporation itself.
At the same time Bush was ballyhooing and boohooing--praying to this God of his--the news was announcing we were finally having diplomatic talks with Iran.
So sad. So cartoonish about so serious a subject. A mankind-ending subject at one end of the human race continuum.
And yes, folks, the Yankees lost again today. They've now lost 8 of their last 11 games.
That too is sad.
Joe Torre will be fired as Yankee manager any day now.
It's all too sad for me.
thegrowlingsadwolf
for The Daily Growler
A MUST READ: Article By Michigan Sociologist From Kalamazoo Newspaper
U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq creates training zone for terrorism
President Bush, U.S. Sen. John McCain and other supporters of the war on Iraq continue to deceive the American people by mischaracterizing the situation there. War supporters argue that the war in Iraq is the central front in a war against ``terrorism'' and that if we don't fight the terrorists there we will have to fight them here later. This is a ludicrous assertion.
This falsehood goes back to the lies advanced by the Bush administration in the propaganda campaign to market the war that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and had operational ties to al-Qaida. There was no evidence of such ties or involvement.
We must understand the violence in Iraq is not caused by ``terrorists'' but by the American military occupation. Our presence there does not prevent violence -- it causes it. The ``enemy'' we are fighting in Iraq is the Iraqi people who are resisting the belligerent occupation of their country, as many of us would do. The ``insurgents'' are various Sunni and some Shiite militias who are resisting the American occupation and the puppet government that the United States is attempting to impose.
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There are a small number of foreign jihadists, including some members of al-Qaida, who have come into Iraq since the U.S. invasion. But they are a very small presence, only 1,000 to 2,000 strong according to the Iraq Study Group. A February report of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency noted that ``attacks by terrorist groups account for only a fraction of insurgent violence.''
According to most experts on the Middle East, this small group of foreign terrorists has no ability to come to the U.S., no ability to take over the Iraqi government and will be driven from Iraq as soon as the U.S. leaves. As University of Michigan Middle Eastern history professor Juan Cole points out, ``Turkey, Jordan and Iran are not going to put up with an al-Qaida stronghold on their borders; nor would Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis.''
Rather than fighting terrorism, the invasion of Iraq has caused more terrorism. In a recent report, the Oxford Research Group noted that ``treating Iraq as part of the war on terror only spawned new terror in the region and created a combat training zone for jihadists.'' Thus, continuing this war makes us less safe from future terrorism, not more.
Again, it is critical to understand that the central source of the violence in Iraq is the illegal United States invasion and occupation. The invasion and occupation has caused the deaths of an estimated 650,000 Iraqis according to the best scientific study published in The Lancet. It has resulted in more than 3,000 American deaths.
Sunni insurgents resisting the brutal actions of the occupation and its administration attack U.S. forces and Shiite collaborators. Shiite militias take revenge on Sunnis. Many of these Shiite militias are a significant part of the Iraqi army and police force. In fact, as Tom Hayden points out, the new de facto U.S. policy in Iraq is ``to support, fund, arm and train a sectarian Shi'a-Kurdish state, one engaged in ethnic cleansing, mass detention and murder of Sunni Arabs.'' U.S. support of this Shi'a-Kurdish state allows the current Iraqi government to avoid compromise.
The violence will continue until the American occupation ends. As Cole argues, ``The key to preventing an intensified civil war is U.S. withdrawal from the equation so as to force the parties to an accommodation. Therefore, the United States should announce its intention to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, which will bring Sunnis to the negotiating table and put pressure on Kurds and Shiites to seek a compromise with them.''
Furthermore, as it withdraws its military forces, the U.S. should work cooperatively with the United Nations to convene a regional conference, that must include Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, for the purpose of developing a security, stabilization and reconstruction plan for Iraq along the lines suggested by George McGovern and William Polk in their book, ``Out of Iraq.''
Some commentators think nothing can be done to salvage Iraq at this point. That may be true, but ending the occupation offers the best chance to stop the violence and give Iraqis a chance to determine their own fate.
Ron Kramer, of Kalamazoo, is a professor of sociology at Western Michigan University and is a founding member of Kalamazoo Nonviolent Opponents of War (KNOW).
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