It has been extremely difficult to write the last few days. The events have been so horrifying, and the reaction so stupifying that even the thought of putting anything down had done little but raise my blood pressure and make me heartsick. I'm going to try to get something down today, to vent some of the frustration and preserve my well-being if nothing else.
Let us start with the idiotic situation at Abu Gharib. If I hear one more time that these fools were only following orders and had no choice I am going to scream. I will be easily heard by canines all the way to Texas. The howl may actually take out Castro's radio jammers.
Whatever happened to the concept of a legal vs. illegal order? Isn't there some provision in the UCMJ regarding an illegal order and the responsibility of all military personnel NOT to follow illegal orders? Aren't there protections and safeguards for individuals who recognize an order as illegal and take appropriate steps?
Where were these people's minds?
Moving right along now, let's look at just how the country reacted to these moronic acts. Let's start with the general public. Overall, the people on the street have looked at this situation and have put it in perspective. They see these photos and hear the stories and they know that a lot of the wailing and gnashing of teeth is contrived and politically motivated. They look at the press reports and know that some of what they are seeing is fake, some of it was overblown, and what portion of it that is true is an abberation. For the largest part, people have enough sense to see beyond the sensational and grasp what is really happening.
Which leads us to the source of all the information they have seen: the Media. What a lot of screaching from the high minded and principled keepers of Truth! I haven't seen such seething, vitriol and agenda promotion since I studied that US history chapter on Yellow Journalism and the Penny Press. Pundits passing for Journalists, editorials for news, conjecture for fact, rhetoric for reporting, propoganda for information, and most of it sickening. Actually, to call it merely "sickening" is to be either too kind, or to be one of the minority of the population who actually agrees with their detrius.
These upholders of free speech, these guardians of the rights of the first ammendment are far from even handed with this however, which brings us to the murder of Nick Berg.
The video of the murder of Nick Berg is the electronic equivelent of a well placed terrorist bomb. But where media outlets scrambled over each other to air the photos from Abu Gharib, none of them to my knowledge has aired this sadistic, unnecessary, and religio-racist motivated murder. Fox hasn't, citing a belief that they didn't feel it was necessary to air it in it's entirety. They did, however, air a portion of the audio which included the final screams of an innocent man. The other outlets? At this point, I have yet to see the complete video shown on television, either on regular broadcast television or on the cable outlets.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to see it. I have no need to see it. I remember the images of September 11, 2001 and do not need any reminder of what terror is. I do not need to see it in the eyes of a young man who must have known that he was about to die at the hands of Islamofacists.
These murderers are sorry shadows of men. They are men who's predecesors, who's fathers aligned themselves with Hitler, who see the murder of Jews, Christians, Animists, Budists, Druids, well face it, everyone but Muslims, as their pre-ordained mission from God. They even murder each other in the name of God if the sect isn't deemed "pure enough" in the eyes of other sects.
Islamists and apologists claim that we, as Christians, have the blood of countless non-Christians on our hands, victims of an out of control Church from five centuries ago. They claim that we are as tainted as these murderers, but with the blood of those who would not convert during the era of Imperialism during the 16th through 18th centuries.
I beg to differ on that point. With relatively few exceptions, interdenominational warfare within the family of Christians has ceased. Christianity grew out of this Heresy-Obsession with the period after the Reformation. No longer do missionaries burst into villages to desecrate and destroy, choosing instead to convert by example, to gently lead people to Christ, not drag them kicking, screaming, or at knife-point.
There is no Christian equivelent to the Madrassahs. Waco was an abberation. What we are seeing now in the Middle East is not. It is rapidly becoming the norm, the accepted mode of behavior, and is the accepted method of warfare.
Let me ask you a simple math question. When was Nick Berg taken hostage by these sons of monkeys? Why, Regis, that would be April 9th. Good, good. Now, when were the photos of prisoner abuse released by CBS and flashed all over the internet? Uh, was it before April 9th? Nope. It was after. Not one week, not even two weeks. Nick Berg was taken hostage, presumably for the reason of execution, by members of an Islamofascist group a full three weeks prior to any release of photos or allegations regarding that group of morons in Cellblock 1A and Cellblock 1B.
It is time. It is time to winnow the grain from the chaf.
Update: Please avail yourself of Misha's thoughts today. Also, please follow the trackback below and go to Sneakeasy's for his Link-O-Rama on a great many thoughts regarding the events of recent days. A humble "Thank you" to Kiril for inclusion in his post.
Posted by Mamamontezz at May 12, 2004 06:55 PMWhat we did was wrong but not that bad comparred to the cowardly act. It really makes what we did kind of humorus, but still wrong and wont help us in the long run. We will be in this for a while but almopst the whole middleast region isn't happy with us so we might as well do something about it now before the hatered for the USA gets worse, plus VOTE BUSH our countries protection is way more important than most other political issues(environment) but what the hell do i know.
Posted by: Luke Silver at May 12, 2004 11:43 PMHumorous, wrong, kind of wrong, ...you people live in another world. No wonder the neocons showed all their BS down our throats with such little effort.
This stuff is all the fruits of a poisoned tree! Why do we even have to be there. After the main reasons given to us by the administration to invade another country turned out to be plain lies and fabrications, they resort to the after logics like "well, he was a bad guy and tortured his people"...and by the way, we're doing the same thing over there!
This whole mess didn't have to happen and it was totally unnecessary to put our young soldiers in a position that generated the pictures now we're seeing.
The same nation who impeached a president for lying about getting a lousy b.j. is covering ears and eyes and giving a pass on blatant lies. Except these lies are costing thousands of deaths, injuries, and torture as we now find out.
Democracy is so wasted on Americans like you if you can't see how much you've been lied to.
In response to F.R. on May 13 - Let me guess - 19 or 20? Because you obviously haven't lived long enough to understand the difference between youth's "idealism" of the world and adults "realism" of how the world really works. Democracy is wasted on the youth who cannot wait to change what they do not understand and who also have a lack of understanding of the natural progression of the future.
Posted by: Wendy at May 23, 2004 11:15 AM Well here it is. the simple truth. All of these horrible wars and atrocities are simply scenery in an overall play. An opera. And how does it end? Here is how.
Soon (give it 4 centuries maybe 15) death and hatred will be so overwhelming that man must evolve out of superstitions and religion. Evolve out of the idea that god is a superimposed phenomanon that is arrogantly personified as if he were a man or a He, "out there". When they face their own insignificance in the scheme of things. The idea of God will evolve to an individual concept of experience each man has with his own existence and life. All western thought will return to the nature that has been castrated by religious scriptural propaganda put forth by power systems, who know the cocept of perceptual transfer of godheads to presidents in the infant minds.Eastern religion will evolve to destoy it's layers of caste, brought on by centuries of misuse of the gifts of Sanskrit.All religion will be looked upon as ancient myth, once mixed with warped supersition and politics. They will all be honored as metaphor and symbol. We will look back on peoples who took literal interpretion to scripture, like we look at cavemen who were living before the invention of fire. All practiced religions will vanish.
The swiftest end to these means is the mutual annihalation which we are now witnessing. There are no good and bad guys. Just the usual suspects: denial of reality. When You Die. You Die. But it is life that will go on. The life that YOU are is more precious than the you you THINK you are that will perish forever once you phsically (and mentally) die. there is nothing to worry about. all of us must die so that new life will prevail. Political-religious thought will die so that original thought will prevail. We will return to the garden with or without our "Gods". War isn't the answer. It's the question. The answer is what follows the wars. This is what will be and what has always been.
Opinion will become a thing of the past. It's an ugly beautiful thing. And it hurts. But Life will go on long after all us Gods are dead. Perhaps that is what heavon will be.