Editor, Index-Tribune
RIP to the 2,976 Americans killed on 9/11, the 6,833 others killed in Iraq and Afghanistan on missions to avenge them; and to the 1,739,547 people of those countries who’ve paid the ultimate price for a crime they did not commit. Care, too, for millions more in the Mideast for whom our 9/11 has become their 24/7.
These thoughts, from an e-mail I received, came again while listening to the taiko troupe of retired generals, CIA agents and other assorted ‘experts’ frantically pounding the Drums of War.
Like General Zinni’s Sonoma book tour, they are part of a not-so-subtle War Promo Road Show, hawking the snake-oil of fear from the back of that now-familiar circus wagon driven by defense industry CEO’s and Big Oil. To watch a frothing John McCain shill for war proves what five years as a POW can do to a mind, if the head stays on at all.
Once a lowly Pfc. who got very lucky, I grieve for vets who’ve lost lives, limbs or minds since 9/11.They were sent abroad to “defend our freedoms,” which are now routinely subverted by NSA surveillance, crushed by militarized police and sold out to Citizens United. Increasingly, our vets are treated as mere cannon fodder to protect the financial interests of the 1 percenters here and at Davos, which are neatly wrapped in our flag, re-branded and peddled to us as “national security.”
Though we have history’s greatest military-security apparatus, the old war whores want us to be very afraid, not of millions of swarming Russians or Chinese, but of 12,000 (or is it 30,000 now?) desert bogeymen half a world away. Strangely, our so-called allies in the region – who have been arming and financing said bogeymen – don’t seem alarmed.
Perhaps they aren’t because they know we will be: Alarmed that alleged (but curiously unnamed) made-in-America jihadists might use their U.S.-issued passports (with identifying photo) to fly home and commit even more mayhem than stay-at-home NRA gun-nuts routinely commit in our streets, homes, schools and shopping malls. As if we’d notice.
Apparently, our vaunted No-Fly List and global ability to find, torture and drone-strike thousands of enemy combatants - including American citizens abroad – won’t keep us safe. More American blood is needed to draw yet another, even brighter, red line in the desert.
Thankfully, ours is a volunteer military and, unlike my generation, kids can boycott such life-threatening stupidity. Parents of those mentored by the Mentoring Alliance (which Mr. Zinni’s appearance will benefit) could get help, too. Over the din of the drums, wise mentors might shout to their kids, “Don’t listen to those crazy bastards!”
And if that fails, perhaps they could walk them out behind the Vets Hall and there, in the hallowed silence of headstones, simply ask: “When the drummers bury you here, what should I tell your mom?”
Bob Edwards
Sonoma
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