Sunday, September 27, 2009

Feeling Sorry for the Foolish

A few years ago got this email:

You are a coward. If you have a problem with this call me at ..." then he listed his name, his position (supposedly) in the Special Forces, and his phone number.

His email was in response to my article, A Rush to War

Of course, I didn't call him. He's not going to change my mind, because I'm right. And I'm not going to change his, because he doesn't know he's wrong.

The only feeling I have when I get emails like his is sorrow. I feel sorry for the guy, because he is foolish. I suspect he is about 23 years old, and I know what he thinks before he tells me, even before he knows what he thinks.

The first thing he would want to know is if I was in the military. If I say it's none of his business, he'll assume I wasn't. If I say I was, he assume I didn't learn anything in it. He'll claim I'm a leftist, because he doesn't know the difference between left and right.

He's the kind of guy who really believes Saddam Hussein was going to attack the US, even though Iraq had an economy about the size of South Carolina, and we could have nuked the place so that it glowed for the next thousand years. He probably believes Hussein was behind 9/11, and was also involved in the Oklahoma City blast.

He believes we had the right to blockade Iraq for ten years, even though hundreds of thousands of people died, many of them babies and the elderly. He thinks we were attacked on 9/11 because we are Good, and those who attacked us are Evil, not because of our support of Israel no matter what it did to the Palestinians, or the genocidal blockade of Iraq, or because we had troops in Saudi Arabia, or because we for 50 years meddled in the Middle East and supported every dictator there no matter what horrible things they did to their citizens.

He's the kind of guy who believes the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to get the Japanese to surrender, because he doesn't know Japan had been trying to surrender for months, but their overtures were rejected. He's also for the fire-bombing of Dresden, even though he doesn't know why it was bombed.

This is the kind of guy who joined the military because he believes he is a patriot, and because he wants to defend his country. That's fine; I don't have any problems with that. But he does not know the US has some 750 military bases in three-quarters of the world, making us an empire. And all empires, without exception, have fallen. But he does not know that, and if he did, believes America will be the exception. It won't.

He's also the kind of guy who believes that America is the greatest force for good in the world today. And it is sad that he believes that, because it is not true. I wish it was, but it's not.

He was no idea that in the 20th century the US attacked and bombed:

China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999

I'm not including the 200,000 Filipinos and Filipinas whom the US murdered in the late 1800s when we invaded the Philippines.

How many of those countries attacked the US?

He does not know that Saddam Hussein was originally placed in power by the US, and was our ally, which is why we armed him in his war with Iran. The US did not give a damn how many Iraqis or Iranians were killed. In fact, the administration encouraged the deaths of both. The booger-eating Henry Kissinger commented, "Too bad they both can't lose."

World War I? He does not know that the US administration purposely got us into it by loading the passenger liner Lusitania with munitions. That's why it went down so fast when the Germans torpedoed it. He also does not know the German government ran full-page ads in the Eastern newspapers telling people to stay off of passenger ships. There was no reason whatsoever for the US to get involved in WWI.

World War II? WWII was a direct result of WWI. World War II would never have happened if the US hadn't gone along with the crushing reparations against Germany, allowing Hitler to rise to power. And the Great Depression - caused by State interference in the economy, not "capitalism" - also helped Hitler's rise. The Japanese wouldn't have attacked Pearl Harbor if the US hadn't cut off their oil and other imports, and sent the Flying Tigers against them in China, egging them into a pre-emptive strike against us. And the evidence is overwhelming that the Communist FDR--who called Stalin "Uncle Joe"--knew the Japanese were going to attack, and let it happen so Russia wouldn't have to fight a two-front war against the Germans and Japanese.

Korea? I don't remember Korea attacking us. I don't remember North Vietnam attacking us, either. And I certainly don't remember Panama attacking us.

Of course, he does not know any of these facts. Instead, he believes those attacks by the United States were for the Good of the World. They weren't.

The only thing that can change the mind of a man like this is what is called the School of Hard Knocks. It's what happened to so many soldiers in Vietnam, who went over there to Free the Oppressed and Impose Democracy, then later came back and realized the whole war was a scam, and all of those 58,000 Americans and 2.5 million to three million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians died for nothing.

Maybe when he grows up he might change his mind. But right now--no, not a chance.

3 comments:

Dra90nR1d3r said...

You forgot Lebanon....

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

This is your best one yet, Bob!

LosAngelesKing said...

Dresden was a wanton act of terror and it was done by Churchill to demonstrate to "Uncle Joe" his hatred for Germans. And if the leftists that started that war had won, then the British would have been tried as war criminals. One of the pilots who flew the terror raids over Dresden admitted this too.