An answer to a friend...

I got an email late last week from a friend of mine who was having one of those dark night of the soul, battling with the demons of the world moments on the occasion of his birthday.

Here's the letter... unedited, and therefore bearing a few expletives as the subject warrants:


So, it is late at night, but the mind is working overtime.

The little military fucks who went to Iraq and supported Bush and Co.’s lies are now coming home and protesting vociferously about the lies that said they would be well taken care of when they got back home. What am I missing here?

I have heard, for quite some time now that the troops “had no choice”.

So, for some unknown reason their sense of judgment and morality was put in suspension?

They marched off without question to do the bidding of one of the greatest menaces to mankind?

And now they come back and are pissed off because they are not getting the medical help they need?

What a bunch of brain dead idiots.

I say, on the one hand: fuck them.

On the other, I say: we had a compact with them that we should uphold.


Whoa there saffire!!!!


Pardon me if I seem confused. I have little respect for these same-outfitted little pricks who just wish to get their $212 a week paycheck. Might be better than McDonalds or Wall Mart. Eh?

We jail thugs in the ghettos who follow their gangs. It is all they know they know of security.

When the war in Iraq started, the bastard in the Whore House said “We will not accept from Iraqi captured troops saying that they were “Just following orders””.

Of course, he expects the step-and-fetch-it compliance of his own troops to do just the same.

I have no feeling for the dead troops in Iraq. I DO have pain in my heart for the dead innocents that our fucking military killed.

So, I am sending this to the folks I think have serious thoughts on these matters. I want serious response, thoughtful response. I want to know why my tax dollars are going to this war effort and its profiteers rather than feeding the hungry and curing the ill.

Let me know. I am confused. I am having an anniversary of my birth, and I desperately wish to have someone explain why the world is better now than when I was born.

Good fucking luck.


***********************

With bait like that, I really felt like it was necessary to respond. After I sent him my response, I decided that it bore enough general interest that I should work at iit a little more and post the response here.

So here goes...


On the first point, I started out in agreement with you. One of the problems with an "all volunteer" military is that they did, in fact, VOLUNTEER!

Even the guy who was convicted of desertion last week after he ran away from his unit in Germany before going out on his second tour (he had attempted unsuccessfully to get Conscientious Objector status) stated that he JOINED to get money for college and figured he would never have to fight.... He joined in 2002!!!!! Hello!?!?!?! Was he not watching television? Did he have some hopeful positive thinking perspective like The Secret that made him believe that if he simply imagined himself stationed in Honolulu or Monterey that he would be there? At the same time, I find that it's important to pay attention to what's going on in this country. What drives people like that to join the "all volunteer" military in the first place? Even Andy Rooney had something to say about this on 60 minutes last night. His was a somewhat different focus than mine, but his point was well made.

A fabulous article I read the other day (and can't find at the moment) related the author's experience of sitting on a plane next to a young African American woman Marine. She had joined because she had no other possible options and she was hoping that she would not go to Iraq. Let's face it... she is going to Iraq. On his return trip, the author of the article sat next to a young, wealthy rich white kid in college, on his way to medical school; all the world's possibilities in his hands. When this is the story... when the opportunities for one group lead through Iraq and the opportunities of others lead through Fraternity Row, we don't have a volunteer army; we have a defacto draft of the lower classes. It's wrong - very wrong - and they deserve our support, before, during and after their forced ordeal.

Okay so here we go with what I feel about the rest... There are obviously any number of people in Iraq right now who would seem to be, at the very least, as you say, brain dead idiots. At worst they are voluntarily, and even enthusiastically, participating in some of the greatest evil of our time. BUT... as an on again off again pacifist/revolutionist currently in pacifist mode...

1) I believe that one of the things that we must seek is care, justice, and peace for ALL sides, even the warriors on our side (and the warriors on the other side) as well as the many more innocents and "collateral damage." EVEN the Decider in Chief for that matter. Respect for ALL is important. "Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them."

2) For those on our side, we do indeed have a compact (more on that later) and as tax payers (at least those who ARE tax payers) your money is supposed to be going to those places for the support and care of those people whom the country collectively (through our idiotic elected officials and not just the Resident Shrub) made a contract.

3) Even for those, like the folks I mentioned above, who went into the military on the vain hope that they could cash in on our militaristic culture without having to pay a price are VICTIMS of this militarism; people who for reasons of poverty, or militaristic cultures, or blatant lies, felt like they indeed had no other choice. Again... all of us, as common citizens of this one republic, bare a burden of responsibility for them both before and after they made their unfortunate choice.

We OWE those folks the proper attention of at least fulfilling THAT promise, even if the other promises of this country are stolen from them.

There is another side to this as well... All of the above answers are, to varying levels, altruistic and grounded in my current pacifist belief that peace is only created by seeking peace FOR ALL.

On a more pragmatic side:

4) By maintaining the justice of our contract with our military, we on the left are conveniently given another weapon (oops, not a very pacifist metaphor there) with which to bludgeon (oops again... let's just consider this my shadow side) the Bushies. By pointing out that they not only sent you off to almost certain maiming and possible death and that even when you come home they treat you just like the folks in New Orleans we are given another place to raise the flag of JUSTICE. Ultimately, we can, hopefully, make the educational lesson that this equals that and that if you'll just give it some thought soldier (or senator, or congressperson, or friend), you'll see that not only did they lie to you about THIS, they lied to you about EVERYTHING.

5) We live in the real world and while MY politics are currently of an extreme left perspective (and getting more extreme even as they become more peaceful) it is also necessary to acknowledge that if we are going to live in this society together we are going to have to accept that we don't always get our way. SO... we compromise. The current compromise is supporting those who were sent to battle, while at the same time we continue raising as much hell as possible about the evil of, and the lies in, that sending.

6) Finally... it is facilitative, particularly as advocates for peace, to, as they say in the south, "BE SWEET." It just has a way of moving things along.

As for the state of the world since your birth... I can think of several things (the absence of war not being one of them) that are better. Most particularly I am of late most taken by the obvious change in the way our world attempts to understand people who are different. This is most manifest for me in my world of New Orleans and my African American friends (when I was a kid it was a TOTALLY different reality!!!!) On my speaklo blog I wrote about being moved by Oprah's new school for girls in South Africa... 20 years ago South Africa was still under apartheid and Nelson Mandella was in jail.

And then of course... there's YOU. I didn't know you even... 10 years ago.

Happy Birthday.