My response to a heart-string tugging (and Afghan war enabling) viral email from a reich-wing cousin

Fly by night

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Sat Dec-05-09 09:15 AM
Original message

My response to a heart-string tugging (and Afghan war enabling) viral email from a reich-wing cousin

Edited on Sat Dec-05-09 09:18 AM by Fly by night

Preface: This morning, I got an email from a beloved female cousin that looked like something being manufactured to maintain support for our wars. It purports to show an American Master Sergeant holding a maimed Afghan orphan whose condition was reported to be at the hands of the "insurgents" (of course.) It is a very heart-warming picture, a very sad one. And like most of what passes for psych-ops these days, it may very well be total bull-shit.

All it did, at 5:00 am this morning, was piss me off.

I have never before responded to similar emails from this cousin, because she is one of my favorites out of 40+ cousins on my Dad's side. But for some reason, I could not let this one pass. Here is my response, cc'ed to every member of my family who received her original heart-strings-tugging message. One thing's for sure -- my mailbox is likely not to be burdened by an excess of Xmas cards this year. But enough is enough. Silence is consent, and I've never been known to be silent. No reason to start now.

The title of her viral email was "STUFF NOT IN THE NEWS". My response follows:
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Other stuff not in the news

My dear cousin,

Here is something else not in the news:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zg2A9M6QqY

(Be forewarned: this film is graphic and the comments that follow are blood-curdling.)

The short film shows "our" forces using a Predator drone to kill entire Afghan families because one of them was a suspected Taliban member. That would be like our "War on (Some) Drugs" in this country using the same armaments to wipe out the next FBN family reunion because one of us (me) is a convicted (and freely acknowledged) marijuana grower.

And just how do we learn who is a "suspected" Taliban these days? There is abundant evidence (reported in the New York Times and other media outlets in the reality-based world) that rival drug lords in Afghanistan are routinely reporting to US forces that their rivals in the heroin trade are "suspected" Taliban so that we will use our indiscriminate (and undiscerning) munitions to reduce their business competition. The brother of the newly-re(s)elected President of Afghanistan (who was re-(s)elected much like our own last White House (p)Resident) is a major player in the Afghan heroin trade and an enabler of Taliban forces profiting from that trade. Perhaps we should use Predator drones to obliterate the Afghan White House the next time the "First Brother" comes to visit.

My dear cousin, I love you like a sister. But I live near Ft. Campbell, KY, where the suicide rate among soldiers being forced to return for their third or fourth deployment to our "pre-emptive" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is sky-rocketing. As are the incidents of homicide and domestic violence on and off the base. And for what? To make the world safe for opium poppies and transnational oil pipelines?

You betcha!!

Don't get me wrong. I am not a pacifist and never have been. (Just ask my dorm-mates in the Federal Bureau of Prisons facility where I lived for 18 months.) If someone killed a member of my family, I would not stop until the murderer was dead. In that sense, I am like most Iraqi and Afghan peasants whose families are being obliterated right now by all sides in these wars. But unlike those sides, to avenge my family member's death, I would kill the murderer alone -- not his entire family.

If we didn't like Saddam Hussein, why didn't we just assassinate him, despite our legal prohibitions against doing so? (Hell, the rule of law, like counting votes as they were cast, is so 20th century.) Instead, we have been responsible for the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis (so far), 999,000+ of whom hated Hussein more than we did. If we didn't like Bin Ladin, why in the pluperfect hell did we pull our troops back when we had him and his handful of dead-ender followers cornered -- eight years ago?

All good questions, with the same ole, same ole answer -- follow the money. And the arrogance of unbridled power.

Support our troops -- bring them home. Maybe then they can hold their own children at night, instead of having to hold maimed and orphaned Afghan infants (whose status is as likely to have been by our hands as by the Taliban's). Let our troops recover from the sights and sounds (the smell, the feel) of our wars of convenience and conquest, a recovery that may never come (as it never came for my Dad, though he lived 50 years after his WWII deployment) but that is more likely to happen if our troops are here --- and not there.

One final suggestion: Rent "In the Valley of Elah" or go see the newly-released "Brothers". Then you'll have a little taste of what life is like in and around Ft. Campbell (and all other US Armed Services bases) these days. It is not a pretty sight. Who-ah!!

My love to you, to all of you. Now it's time for me to cut some firewood. There's a lot to be thankful for, not the least of which is that Predator drones no longer fly overhead here, as they did in the months leading up to the 2002 "drug worrier" raid on my farm. (Just in case you're wondering, that use of military armaments to spy on civilians was also illegal, way back in the 20th century.)

Fly by night