Freedom Means Servitude
Judith Moriarty
noahshouse@adelphia.net
7-2-4
I heard the usual mind-numbed fools, calling into C-Span this morning, lauding going to war. They felt that everyone should do their DUTY by being drafted into the military. Naturally those croaking such insanities, are doing so between breaths of oxygen-taking their heart medications, putting their Depend diapers on, bunion pads, and elastic waist pants! That, or they're calling in from some off-shore island, or foreign resort, where there's no chance that all of this patriotism and nationalism will be visited on themslurp!
Forced servitude or conscription to serve the interests of corporate hucksters, is no longer FREEDOM-but slavery. Either we are a mindless herd to be driven from battlefield to battlefield or INDIVIDUALS, making our own choices as to the days of our lives. If a person chooses to spend their life sitting on a tree stump in some back marsh spitting tobacco FINE. Forced volunteerism is a oxymoron, whether it be in the schools or called to kill.
Nobody has the right to determine my child's future. Nobody has the right to demand that a child be trained to go off to a foreign land to kill another mother's child, so that oil fields might be confiscated, pipelines protected, and timber and water stolen! This is NOT about invasion or protecting one's country from invading hordes. One man said this morning, "Being drafted made a man out of me!" Really! And what is a man? Is learning to kill-to be conditioned to stack naked bodies, to set snarling dogs on people, to kick down doors, to set villages on fire, the new credentials for manhood? Give me a man who will risk his life to save another not destroy. Give me a man who spends his life making the place where he abides a better place. Better because he was there.
"There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs." (Eisenhower) Man is free or he is a slave to the government and commanded to go and kill others. Today we see that this perversion of our freedoms can call men back to duty who have already served, or keep soldiers extended for as long as desired-or until they end up getting blown to smithereens.
American Foreign Policy was based upon the wisdom of Washington's Farewell Address ( I bet you won't find this in your child's history book-if they have one). The defeat of the Confederacy during the War for the Right to Secede set this nation upon a road to empire. The actions of Roosevelt and Wilson set the stage for the society that we have become. The masters are no longer the people, but the people have been conditioned and programmed to think of themselves as drones-non-persons within their own land.
Are we to believe the voices of today's public relations jingoism- that allegiance or love for one's nation is judged by one's willingness to kill a stranger, who is of no threat to me or mine (outside a full tank of gas!). This perversion sees us no longer protecting our shores but protecting the interests of the Corporate/State. The mindless, soulless, malignant, malevolent, conscienceless Corporate/State is now disguised as Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam. Beneath the red-white and boo and crown of yellow ribbons is a pimp and his whore.
All this brouhaha, of dressing up and marching off to invade foreign lands in pre-emptive strikes, while the lie imploded at our feet! WAKE-UP. Over these many decades trillions have been spent under the guise of a cold war-national defense-intelligence etc., to supposedly defend us from harm. Really! On Sept. 11-2001 this lie was shown as volcanic clouds of ash chased citizens down concrete canyons! Protection! Everyone sat on their asses, went to take a leak, called the wrong office, or stood around like obedient lap dogs that they were and waited for someone to tell them to do their jobs and PROTECT AMERICA! Trillions! And we are led to believe that some grubby cave men, took some lessons on two seated crop dusters, bought some box cutters, and just shocked and surprised everyone! Well by God then everyone needs to have their ass fired.
A joke of a Commission is set up, and we all know what the report will say. Most of us with any literacy skills and a GED could write it now. White -out the word Warren and magic bullet and insert 911 and magic planes and there you have it. Oh, and the findings that these incompetent, inept, lying bastards need billions more in funds so that they can continue on in their labyrinths of nothingness.
Excuse me, but the idea that a citizen has a duty to serve his government (which is hello himself) is a malignant perversion of the proper obligation that a citizen has to his neighbor and society. A archaic idea, and not spoken of in today's" Shock and Awe Theater;" but each individual person is to choose the course of action in his/her own life which will create the greatest good. For all these wars, all these deaths, all these walls and marble memorials, are we any better off? How does a nation protect it's people and it's shores when the land is emptied of it's men? Men off in desert lands protecting pipelines and protecting a puppet government for a puppet people! A people given no voice in their supposed "liberation".
Defense of one's homeland is a legitimate call to arms. A people have a right to self-defense. One does not have the right to be commanded to take another's life for any other reason. All life is sacred. No man-politician or otherwise, has the right to order a nation's youngsters to become killers of mankind. There is no argument here. Those without conscience or a moral compass have no problem in creating a world of killing forever. "Choose you this day whom you will serve".
The carnage and chaos of war creates monsters. Monsters of insatiable greed, and corrupted power, who in their delusional state of mind see themselves as gods. Men, hollow soulless men, in plush board rooms, and war rooms, moving the people of the world around as if they were mere pieces on a global board game. Monopoly gone mad! Monopoly, with its "enemy combatants" disappeared ones, with no rights and no voice. The innocent caught up with the truly guilty (whoever that might be) too bad, tough luck. Is this the "freedom" that men/women are ordered to die for?
On 9/11/2001 we the people (we) became the enemy. The victims in this mad board game are now searched, scanned, fingerprinted, stopped at road blocks, or beaten down by men with clubs, stun guns, tear gas, and jaw shattering plastic bullets. Is this what global freedom means? Dissent and freedom of speech are now marked as the enemy. Is this what our children and children's children should die for? Why should our nation's children die for a foreign land to be liberated while it's own is being enslaved? What's wrong with this picture?
War turns men into monsters. Abusing, torturing, assaulting, and sexually humiliating citizens, caught up in village sweeps. Citizens from small farms and villages labeled "camel jockeys-towel heads-rag heads-sand niggers". One dehumanizes others in war so that it is more acceptable to kill and torture. Men become depraved monsters shooting down (in their fear) any and all who threaten. Some in this madness kill for the sheer joy of it. I saw a young man/boy of perhaps twenty on the news. He was in a snit because he'd been assigned guard duty. With a sullen snarl, when interviewed he said, "I was trained to kick down doors and shoot people, not to stand around doing nothing". This snot nosed kid- who just a few months back was probably hanging out at the mall or on a local street corner in Any Town USA, is now waiting for the thrill to kill.
Those returned from war end up in shelters, under bridges, or abandoned cars. Some never acclimate back to small town- work a day living. From a warrior, with the power to kill, now back in rust town USA, is quite a downer. No more gun-no more legal authority to kill. Now he's just another citizen watching out for the local cop to stop him for a speeding or traffic violation. Others are crippled for life; absent sight, limbs or their minds. They are now just mere cannon fodder. Much like litter they end up kicked to the curb.
Vice President Cheney who received numerous deferments has no problem with sending future generations off to fight Forever Wars (our new economy). He said, "The war on terrorism will not be over in our lifetime. It is different than the cold war in the sense that it may NEVER END, at least not in our lifetime. The way I think of it -it's a new normalcy" (Oct 21-2001).
Think on these words of his. This new "normalcy" is continuing war. Children marked to die in this perverse "new normalcy". Is the world we want-this madness that sees war, continual never ending war as a "new normalcy". Not for him-deferred again. Why give birth, if you know you're merely incubating a commodity until the state is ready to assign him/her to a killing field? And so we are spending approximately five billion plus per month on war and the invention of bigger and better annihilating weaponry. Not on schools, hospitals, affordable housing, a real energy policy (minus dependence on oil), education (minus change agents with their testing), our decaying infra-structure or medical care minus the corporate vampires of the pharmaceutical-insurance-and HMOs, who decide who will live and who will not in some distant sterile cubicle. Rest assured this injustice is not visited on our politicians or retired Presidents. They have made sure that they have the best of insurance (we pay 72% of costs) and pensions that are obscene. Meanwhile they allow ours to be stolen. How long can a nation working at Wal-Marts-Prisons-Convenience Stores-Home Depots-as black-jack dealers-ski lift operators or maids support forever and ever war? Just wondering?
