Do you have feelings one way or another about your friends in the media business? It’s easy, I realize, if you’re not particularly activated about the war, to have no opinion about what the media is or is not telling you. It’s easy to remain apolitical if the news you hear doesn’t resonate with any alarm. You ask: “Everyone is against the war, why belabor the point?”
Let me put it to you this way. Let’s say that over the hill, on the other side of the world, 700,000 Iraqi children were being murdered. You may or may not know that, I excuse you for not knowing, 700,000 is a rough estimate extrapolated from the Johns Hopkins calculation that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed since the US invasion. We know that over half of the population are children. I can forgive you not knowing, but I have a harder time forgiving those who do know, and don’t want to tell you.
You’d think the death of 700,000 children would be cause for alarm.
Do you think if you knew about 700,000 children being killed, and that your fellow citizens knew, that you might be able to raise an objection, collectively, and prevail against your elected representatives to have the killing stopped? Perhaps we disagree on whether you could make a difference or not, or would be moved to make that difference. But I’m pretty damned sure that seeing 700,000 kids burned, strafed, sniped, exploded, starved, poisoned or run over, would prompt a universal humanitarian outcry, your voice included, and eventually the perpetrators would have to relent. That’s a likely reason, I believe, why you and others are not being shown the killing.
They watch 700,000 Iraqi kids die so you don’t have to.
Now what do you think of the people in the position to know, atop the hill, with an overview and the best analysts to deduce the horror being masked by military spokesmen? What do you think about those news people deciding not to tell you about it? The only people with the power to spread the word, with the power to save the children by alerting the rest of the world to the continuing slaughter; what is your opinion of those people?
Now it’s true, they have bosses who are beholden to the corporations that earn a ton from selling the weapons used to kill the kids. There’s oil afoot, and huge contracts, and all sort of profit to reap, and hell, an anti-capitalism spiritual belief system to tamp down. The corporate media have their reasons, and the newscasters are but people like you and me trying to hang on to their jobs. But 700,000 children. Should you begrudge the bastards 700,000 Iraqi children?
I’ve called them bastards, those with the means to cry out the alarm for the next 700,000 children who’ll die by the hands of our soldiers, our administrators, or our neglect. They won’t tell you about it, and you’ll profess your ignorance and meanwhile resent all attempts at intercession. I say those newsmen are bastards who would cover up for the crime of 700,000 murdered children. In what kind of regard do you hold them?
Eric,
Not sure where you get the idea that our military heros go around killing 700,000 children. Seems to me the UN had part in this. Oh guess you feel we order the UN around too. Nor did any iran nuts blow up any children either. All the USA is to blame, huh? Have you ever been to Iraq, Eric? No, why is that not a surprise to me. Never been a military person, never been to Iraq. Dont understand their talk, yet you are an expert to whom kill children. Sad vibes, man. Chill out. Go off and relax and look at the whole picture. Sure, it is very sad children die or are hurt. Sure, it is very sad anyone die or hurt in war but that is the price of freedom. Be it from a Satdat or comminist part. It is necessary so that in the long run people are free, don’t you think? Till we all understand that there is ONLY one race – the HUMAN race, that put others before yourself, live with in reason (not have a 70000 house or 10 cars etc) and love each person as your self, then & only then, Eric will there really be peace. Lets hope peace will win out, huh?
George
your favoright neocon, retired military combat vet & Texican
The United Nations refrained from sending troops to Iraq, that’s why there was a Koalition of the Killing.
Major, if your best answer to charges of mass murder is to belittle the people who level the charges, perhaps YOU could use a little “Chill time”.
Your other answer that amounts to an All Gwowed-up version of “But Ma, Billy Johnson’s mom lets him stay up all night watching horror movies even on a school night”, is really childish.
Other nations have gone to war, other nations have sought to establish empires. Yes, we know that.
They, however, are not under OUR constitutional mandate.
I know that “Liberty and justice for all” is just the blow-off line of an idolatrous salute and oath to a woven idol, written by a Socialist named Francis Bellamy.
And that line about “Government of the people By the people, and For the people” was part of a re-election speech delivered over the fresh graves of (by a conservative estimate) 40,000 young Americans who were all killed by other young Americans.
But while it alone does not have the Force of Law, it is a mere re-hashing of something that DOES.
The Constitution states that the United States and all its states and territories “Shall have a republican form of government”.
That doesn’t mean the Republican Party. Which didn’t even exist at the time.
A republic is a nation governed by the PEOPLE.
We, the PEOPLE have the duty to oppose murders committed in OUR name.
To oppose Torture committed in OUR name. That includes civilians AND the military.
It is not the duty of either civilians or Military personnel to minimalize the crimes by sneers or by simply stating that “So what? All the Other Dictators get to go out and kill people, why can’t we?”
You have said that it is the duty of a soldier to refuse an ILLEGAL order, but how is he to know if that order is illegal, if he is not permitted to question his “superiors”.
Yo BJ,
If you have to ask how do you know it is an illegal order if you are not permitted to question your supriors? That is sad, BJ. Use your head, BJ. Military folks are trained from basic on “illegal orders”. I think you said your were in the military so you surely know what I am talking about. True, sometimes civilians do get in the war fire zone. But again, freedom is not nor never will be free. A price, very high price, will be paid. The days of soldier to soldier war is gone (if it ever really was). Civilians are now targets, as they should be. The farmer growing food for the troops to the lady making equipment for the troops etc etc so that it is no longer just a soldier thing. War is not pretty, BJ. Should be – must be – the last act of a nation. Try to discuss – reason with – meet with – a nation to a point. Depends on what is going on. Sometimes action – military type – is required even before talk. People being raped & murdered requires action – NOW – not oh gee lets discuss this. Warrows understand the price paid for war. Death. Again, soldiers know what a legal order is. If not that person should not be – and is not – a real soldier. As you can see from our PTMS stuff far too many should not have been soldiers with out more training. That is another problem. Our boys are not being raised to be men but rather “yes dear” lets play with dolls & not guns. But that is another subject, BJ. Oh, by the way a Republic is NOT governed by the people, only a certain part of the people are allowed to do this.
George
your favoright neocon, retired Army combat vet & Texican
‘Military folks are trained from basic on “illegal orders”.’
To these further pearls of wisdom from the Turkey loving Major, I can only reply…. Oh Brother.
Freedom isn’t free… except, the last time American freedom was actually an issue in a war was during our Civil War.
If you can accept the concept of Total War, against civilians as well as combatants, you have decided that rule of law does not now, nor has it ever, been anything more than words the professional killers mouth when they want to justify invading another country and killing any who do not bow down to them.
That, Major, is NOT freedom. A certain unnamed rudy giuliani anonymous rudy Right wing rudy candidate rudy who shall not be mentioned by rudy name, you might have heard of him, he says he’s a Security Expert and Anti-Terrorism expert even though he was never in the Service, (seems to be a big issue with some people, Major, perhaps you know some of them…
Who is most famous for getting skunked by al Qa’eda… twice….
…at the same place…
And promised he would do for America what he did for New York City…
Anyway, this guy says inane shit like Freedom means freedom to conform.
Words that dance around the concept.
Much like “freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength, Big Brother is always right and Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia.”
It’s called Doublespeak, Major, and you seem to have mastered it well.
Did you know, Major, that your insane little dictator has promised (before the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq began) that no American soldier would ever be charged with war crimes.
Would that not, Major, signal to you personally that he would be about to order the soldiers to COMMIT atrocities?
Weasel words don’t cut it, Major.
I DO challenge, more than just question, your governments claim to absolute authority.
Major, You personally have never fought for my freedom. I have.
And I had to fight against those very government forces who claim to be guarding my “freedom”, but their idea of freedom means we’re free to go as far as our chains will allow us, and no farther.
We’re free to worship but only in ways they don’t define as “cultic”.
We’re free to speak, but only in Free Speech Zones, in other words, to speak where nobody can hear.
That, Major, is a sure sign of a Dictatorship.
I am sure you have seen what happens in other countries, when people tell me stupid shit like “You know what they do to people like YOU in Turkey? (true story) I saw them shoot a guy right in front of us, no questions asked”…
My brother-in-law told me that. Why was he there to witness that?
Answer, because he was over there propping up their terroristic dictatorship, along with every other American soldier or sailor or Airman who was there.
Those guards at the Air Base, if they’re Blackwater, then they’re the same Murderers who have an unfettered license to commit any crimes they wish in Iraq.
They also had the SAME license in New Orleans. License to commit Murder and any other crime they felt it good to commit, against AMERICANS in AMERICA.
It is NOT our duty to obey them, it is NOT our duty nor that of ANY person, American or foreign, civilian OR SOLDIER, to kill or die for scum like that.
It IS the duty of the Government to bow to the will of the PEOPLE, not the other way around.
Your army did, at one point, do one thing which ushered in nearly 200 years when the government at least pretended to obey Constitutional Law.
They Surrendered.
That’s right, Major, they were ordered to fire on Americans, again, to put down another rebellion, but this time they refused.
I learned another thing, Major, while yet a youth. Indeed, while you were over in VietNam fighting for the South VietNamese GOVERNMENT, I learned this, at the American Legion and the VFW.
About a time when American active duty soldiers killed American veterans encamped at Washington, D.C.
This because my grandfather, one of those Enlisted Men who you seem to despise (although that might just have been your Brainwashing errr.. training and experience talking) was a life member of both the Legion and the VFW, and I was a member of the Sons of the (both)
Still am, because it’s a Life Membership. And one of the things we learned was the Why and Wherefor of the Legion and the VFW.
That being, the massacre. The abandonment of American veterans to whatever fate awaits them after they’ve performed their “duty”.
You were right on one count, Major, there are Veterans who don’t suffer from PTSD.
Just as there are veterans whose names aren’t on The Wall, yet. And there are veterans who don’t occupy a wheelchair or a paralysis ward bed at Walter Reed or some other Government Warehouse for Humans.
But, Major, that would not excuse your dismissal of their very real injuries any more than Donald Rumsfeld trying to swiftboat Max Cleland, by saying he had been drinking before being ordered to handle high explosive ammunition, therefore it must have been “entirely his OWN fault” could be dismissed.
If you walked away from it entirely unscathed, Major, then praise God for that, I mean get down on your Boney Knees every day and thank God Almighty that you walked home. And not been carried home.
The Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions forbid abusing the wounded, and, Major, if you feel that only legally applies to Enemy wounded, then perhaps you can go beyond your perverse view of the law and refrain from abusing your former comrades, just from a sense of personal morality.
If you feel that any person in “enemy territory” is morally and legally right to kill, then you have made a statement that mirrors what Abu Nidal said.
And that statement was condemned by all your “superiors” in the government as Terrorism. A terroristic Act of War just for making the statement.
So what does that make you, and each of your Comrades?
Incidentally, if you had “superior” officers, does that make YOU an “inferior”?
You should practice enough personal dignity to pull yourself out of that subservient attitude.
When I left the Air Force, Major, I left behind any vestige of obligation to obey commanders or leaders, or to support their positions.
Fealty is an anachronism that should have died on April 19th at Lexington Commons.
Yet some cling to it, perhaps finding comfort in no longer having to think for themselves and in being shielded from any personal responsibility for whatever they do, as long as it’s done in the name of “Just following orders”.
That’s why General Jodl was hanged, Major.
Yo BJ,
Did you read my last reply to your comments just before Tonys comment? Please do read it again. It answers what you questioned me in your reply just above this one/ Maybe I an not clear in my answers. Much of what you question I do agree with but with a real life spin on it in truth. Who ever told you that they just shoot you for saying the wrong thing is a LIE. There is due process there just as it is here.
Go look up the term “republic”. It is rule by a certain type of people. That is not what we have today. Every boob can vote now. Yep, you guessed it. i would restrict the vote to only certain folk. Those that are educated in what is best for our people, not corp folks.
Like it or not, I did fight for your freedom. True when you were in the AF, you did too.
SOFA is what is used for American military folks when they are overseas.. Can be tried only by American laws not by the nation they are in. Within reason of course because American military can be tried by the law of the land they are in too.
As for this Rudy person. If he was the NY guy then I would agree with you – he has no honor & should not run.
BJ, morals are very important to me. Honor, truth, duty are not just words. Nope, double talk here – look them up.
Dictator? Far from the truth, just because some do not get their way does not mean we live under a Dictator. I did not like some pres we have had but respect our system & try to change it election time. We did, the American people, when we elected Mr Bush. He is not your cup of tea…. well…. you have a vote coming soon – use it.
Accept it or not = total war includes civilians not in uniform as well. Total means just that, farmer, fact worker etc as well as the one in uniform. Life & war has “progressed” now. These Geneva Conventions & Hague Conventions rule are really out of date. The comminuist never did follow them nor do many other nations as well. Again this is just parsite civilians who want the war, gain from it but do not fight it so they do not mind tieing our military hands. It will change, I hope, to what war really is. Kill or be killed and win, never lose attitude. That of course is my simple view not the current military. But having been there, see that, for me it is more real way of how war should be. Then mayby civilians, seeing they could be hurt, would not be so fast to push the military into combat. Of course I feel everyone should serve 3 full years of military service or not be able to vote. Oh that is women & men for military service. ’nuff said! Should give you someting to say. Again, BJ Do please read my above comments. Good to discuss things with you.
George
Then you should stand completely against any war. Period.
In uniform or not.
Accepting orders that go against conscience at any time in any circumstances is a slave mentality.
Perhaps you didn’t express yourself clearly. You have used what are referred to as Talking Points.
I have to run (actually hobble, kinda disabled) to fetch some groceries.)
No, neither of us, nor anybody, owes military service to gain “rights”
Rights are not privileges which can be granted nor taken away, nor do they have to be earned.
Major, you speak of “due process” as though it were an actual fact.
I can assure you that it is NOT. I’ve been through the system enough times.
The Turks have no more “due process” protecting them than I did while being held on false charges, and tortured while in custody.
The man my brother-in-law witnessed being Murdered by the Turkish cops was a Real Live Human Being who is now a dead person.
The Kurdish shepherd (at least one, the pilot himself admitted he couldn’t tell the difference between sheep and people) he and my sister (both of them Sergeants in the Air Force) gloated over their pilot having Murdered, got no due process.
The man who was Murdered by the New York Police just last year on the very early morning of what was to be his Wedding day, got no due process.
In all these cases, the Pigs, all of them supported and backed by your Army, supposedly fighting for “freedom”, were acquitted.
The Slidell Parish sheriff deputies who fired on, Murdered, people trying to escape the floodwaters from Katrina, got away with that Murder.
4 years prior to that, police in Shreveport Murdered a man, shot him 8 times IN THE BACK (that’s their level of courage) and said they thought his cell phone was a gun…
…even though they had just a minute before told each other on the radio that he was using a Cell Phone.
Those Coward Pigs also got away with Murder, Major.
The people in Baghdad and Basra and Sadr City who are Murdered, daily, get No Due Process.
The ones the Blackwater death-squad goons Murdered in a road rage incident, just last year, got No Due Process.
The mercenary Thugs who murdered them were not even arrested.
Nor were their Mercenary Death Squad Thug Comrades who murdered people in New Orleans.
As for earning the right to vote through military service, Major…
Why is committing an act of Gross Stupidity (enlisting) the measure of somebody being any kind of intelligent, far less the only ones allowed to decide on any political issue?
Major, I am not proud of having enlisted, it was the stupidest action I ever took.
I am proud to have gotten out, proud that I never killed anybody.
Proud that I left that behind me, and that I let go of the Military Attitude as well.
“Missing in Action” was only a movie, so was “Rambo”. They were designed to exploit the attitude you expressed.
Major, there were no POWs alive when your army left. You left behind only the dead.
The DRVN could not possibly have kept American prisoners for that long.
They did not have the money or other resources necessary to maintain a Prison Economy.
Any prisoner they held while the (non)war was still on, they paraded, they exploited for whatever value they could get from them.
It’s not that they were Morally against, or above, keeping Americans as hostages for decades afterward, but those prisoners would have been exactly that… hostages, lined up weekly for propaganda broadcasts. You did NOT leave any live comrades behind.
The only one you can bring home, is YOU.
You’re already there, you just have to turn around, hopefully soon, and realize it.
Yo BJ,
Not sure how to respond People who have bad feelings about their military service is normally due to something they did or did not do. You should feel very proud of your AF service & it is not necessary you have to kill someone or not, just doing your duty is good. It is well known that the red chinese & red russians retain US servicemen & never let them go. As for the VC, who can trust a killer & murder? Their word is nothing nor are they.
Again, thank you for enlisting & serving. Care to tell me how long & where you went? Just for my own information – help me to understand you more. I served with some AF folk in Turkey.
Again do reread my comment 2 steps above. There are & have always been just wars. Most likely will be so till people grow up. Proud of my service time as you should be of yours. Normally only the best serve -enlisted or officer – exception to the rule of course. As most police officer are decent, caring folks but there are execptions to all rules. As for the Turkish deal, would have to know the whole story first. I do know Turkey is a fine example of a nation in the middle east – been there – done that 8 years worth.
George
I got extremely lucky.
Got an article 15 for smoking pot and they took me out of my training. BUT, I was at the top of my class. That was my key to the door OUT.
By the way I haven’t smoked pot in well over 20 years now. Not that it matters to some.
I was training to be a Medic. And, I was and am damned good at it.
That’s where I started really learning about hands-on medicine (and, yes, to repeat myself yet again which is redundant in a cyclic kind of way, PTSD is a Medical condition)
Do you know, Major, that there is no such thing as a non-combatant job in the military?
Even the chaplains are there to convince the soldiers that God is indeed on “our” side.
Like the back and forth stupidity of World War One, when the Germans and French and Russians and British were using Napoleonic mass charges against belt-fed water-cooled machines. The British soldiers would run towards the “Grim Reaper” screaming “God and King!” and the Germans would do the same, in their turn, screaming “Gott Mitt Uns!” which means God is on OUR side…
And it has never changed.
The only thing that will change it, is a massive refusal to obey orders.
A total “head pulling out ceremony” where people realize that obeying kings or presidents or officers is stupid.
By the way, I actually got an Honorable Discharge. Because I WAS good at my job.
Finest kind, and yeah, that’s a prideful thing.
And bringing at back around, Due Process merely means they have the paperwork in order when they (Our side, their side, makes no difference) Do The Dirty to whoever the victim is.
There’s something Martin King said, you might have heard it… “The Germans didn’t break any actual laws”.
Sure, they obeyed the law to the letter, but it was laws written by Hitler.
Jane Fonda broke no laws when she went to Hanoi. Know why? Because the DRVN never declared war against us, and we never declared war against them.
Weasel words like “combat zone” or “insurgency” or “police action” or “advisor”.
Major, what exactly happened, if you would care to recall it, to the VC prisoners when they were captured by either the Aussies, or the ARVNs, or the Americans?
They weren’t treated as POWs. Not by us, not by the ARVNs. The Saigon government allowed torture and summary executions, the “due process” involved being read their rights before they were executed.
The POWs held in Hanoi and it’s environs were people, like John McCain, who illegally bombed a country against whom America had never declared war.
Much like 9/11 when our turn came around.
The NVA and their legal system could just as easily, and in perfect accordance with their local laws and International Law, just condemned them to death.
Exactly the fate given out to VC prisoners.
If the North gave them the semi-status of prisoners of war, it was probably, as you said, because they had ulterior motives.
All the governments or kingdoms of the world belong to Satan, just like he told Jesus during the Temptation “and the Devil, yet tempting Him, taketh Him to an high mountain apart, and in a moment of time sheweth Him ALL (without exception) the kingdoms of the earth, and sayeth unto Him, “all these will I give Thee, and the glory thereof, for mine they are, and to whom I will I give them”
If Satan had been lying, Jesus would have told him so.
For the record, I don’t hold any government to be above any other.
All the same, actually, and based on the same logic as any other form of slavery.
Our current Kingdom came about as a rebellion against another Kingdom. It had a noble start. But there is still that one key problem, it’s the notion that one man or group of men have the right to rule another, merely because the one or the group have the power to do it.
“might makes right” eh?
There’s a terrorist term we’re all familiar with.
“our” government has a foreign policy modeled exactly on that of Rome, it’s called “Pax Americana”. They even quote a Roman Emperor, saying “Let them Hate, so long as they Fear”…
Did they teach you much history at the academy, Major? That was a quotation from LittleBoots… Caligula.
Shock and Awe is another word for Fear, “we” seek to make the Arab nations obey “our” ever so superior culture out of Fear. That’s the strict definition of Terrorism, using Fear as a weapon in order to promote political or religious ideology.
The Boy Emperor is in fact an International Terrorist, of the worst sort.
Turkey participates, still, in genocide against the Kurds, and against the Baha’i sect of Islam as well.
And some of their partners are the Russians, the Iraqis, the Iranians, and … the United States.
The United States Army has provided Logistical, Tactical and Materiel support for this terror campaign since the end of World War One.
The nerve gas and the bullets and bombs used by Saddam against the Kurds (“his own people” yeah, sure, my left ass cheek!) were provided courtesy of the and with the full complicity of the United States Government. And similar aid is given to the Turks.
That’s the reality of it.
The Germans gave “Due Process” to the people they conquered the same way American troops are giving “Due Process” to their “detainees”…
The same “due process” given to the VC prisoners, with the assistance of American soldiers, and the Same “Due Process” as was given to John McCain and his fellow POWs by the DRVN.
We cannot change garbage by wrapping it in the Flag. All that accomplishes is to make the Flag stink.
Nor can we change Evil into Good by calling Evil our “Duty”.
There is NO honor in that, Major.
Yo BJ,
Much to respond to. Sounds like the AF lost a good medic. That person is the heart of the unit. Glad you do not do drugs, that was wise of you.
Make sure you understand me. PTSD is a real medical problem but I feel that far too many folks are faking that just for the VA money. My view, no one else. Those that do have the PTSD, all the medical help possible should be given to them, The fakers – jail time, again only my view.
Agree to your “no non-combatant” view. No one in a military unit should be non combatant, everyone is a rifleman as in the MC.
BJ, what sort of government you want? what sort of military do you want? How do you want your military to fight? Soldiers obey Officers & NCO’S or ????? You got a H D because you were luck, not good. You never put your training into the field so good or ? we will not know? Hopefully with your training and being #1 in your class (did not finish, right) would have proved you right.
Advisor? A weasel word? No sure what you mean there. I trained Turkish & Greek military folks, in the field & fixed station. Lived with them, ate with them etc, that is why I know a little bit about Turkish troops & their system. Kurds are expected to becom Turkish citizens just as American Indians & others are in the USA.
Not sure what good book you read but satan is given authority up to a point over human kind. Jesus knew that & was not really tempted. Jesus know his role.
History has always had human kind fighting one another for all sorts of good and bad reasons. Part of the animal still in each of us. Might makes right is not true. Right is right period. Might can help if it is right in the first place. Example WWII – with the germans & japs. At a point they had might but was still not right. At first the USA with out might but was always right. Know what i mean. Ask a Jewish person in a german camp who was right. That is why it is sad good people, like you, did not or do not serve in the military & then on to government. To be sure not just evil is in the military. Again, history repeats itself or is it we humans repeat.
I went to OCS after 20 years as an enlistedman, BJ. Was E1 to E7 & O2 & finished as O4 with my military service. Skipped 2LT as I was #2 in my class. Was a NCO most of my service so I know about &*&%$# Officers too, BJ.
Yes, you are correct. You can call evil good and good evil but you know the truth. So do most folks, just some are so into denial that they will not see the truth. Again each of us has just so much time. Use it wisely or selfishly – depends on the person. For me, I have done both but am never ashamed of my military tours. Did not ever follow an unlawful order at my level or above as far as I know. Duty and Honor are not just words to me as they are to Tony & Eric. I fully do understand them, put away my childhood toys and did adult man way. As I do truly hope Tony, Eric & you do one day. The hurt/hate/bitterness in each of you comes out. Hopefully one day it will be gone & you can be productive citizens again. Till then hopefully we all can discuss things with respect and be civil, huh?
Your favoright neocon, retired army combat officer & Texican.
George