[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Aware post from kirstena

[Morton K. Brussel]

Support the troops? Here's the argument against (which, with some  
reservations, I tend to support. FYI. --mkb

Begin forwarded message:

>
> From: kirstena at resist.ca
> Date: August 7, 2005 2:56:12 PM CDT
> To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
>
> Supporting U.S. Soldiers is Not About Personal Respect
> By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)
>
> I refuse to mindlessly give support to anyone who joins, or works  
> for, the
> U.S. Military and their local subsidiaries, the police. I also  
> refuse to
> support *any* child molesters. No compromise on either of those  
> stands, no
> matter *what* the circumstances. I have been banned from forums,  
> sent hate
> mail, and have lost “friends” over this stand. People make the most
> bizarre excuses for supporting people joining the U.S. Military. On
> today’s ABC News, I actually saw parents who called themselves anti- 
> war
> activists, trying to justify their own son’s joining the military (and
> dying in the military now) as his own “free choice” that had to be
> “respected.” Well, now they know how the parents of suicide bombers
> working for the Taliban feel. M.L.King, Jr., among others, have  
> said that
> at a certain point, silence is criminal, and that silence is an active
> lie. We are at that point right now in world history.
>
> So if these anti-war protester parents’ son had made the “free  
> choice” to
> be a paid murderer in any other situation, would they also support  
> that?
> If he made the “free choice as an adult” to go rape children, would  
> they
> just blindly support it as his adult right? If he made the “free  
> choice”
> to join the Taliban, as did the privileged white male who escaped  
> the fate
> other captured Taliban suffered early on in the war, since he was  
> from a
> rich family in Santa Barbara, would they support that? Do they have  
> *any*
> standards about what they support or not, regarding their son’s  
> behavior?
> This is not about letting adults make free choices and respecting  
> that. We
> do NOT allow adults to make “free choices” about random killings,  
> rape and
> child molestation in America (unless they work for the government,
> corporations, or Catholic Church), and I do not understand why we  
> should
> support, or even allow, such “free choices” from people who want to  
> join
> and fight for the U.S. Military.
>
> I got kicked off of the herbalist/pagan/feminist SusunWeed.com  
> forums over
> this topic. Some woman wrote in saying her nephew just joined the  
> military
> and was going to Iraq and she was against the war but wanted to  
> “support”
> him. I told her she needed to STOP HIM from going to Iraq by any means
> necessary. I said she needed to immediately contact objector.org  
> and get
> him into counseling. I told her he could get federal financial aid for
> college from the Pell Grant system, he did not need to kill others for
> college. These hippie women jumped all over me saying I was not
> “respecting” the man’s free choice or the woman who wanted to  
> “support”
> him. I am sorry, but I am “respecting” all of the homeless vets on
> America’s streets who cannot get proper support when they get back  
> from
> war, I am supporting all the children whose fathers we kill as we drop
> food on them, I am supporting the belief that murder is murder, and  
> that
> the U.S. Military are paid murderers. Yes, that means I am NOT  
> supporting
> U.S. military personnel, because they are in an illegal occupation in
> Iraq, they are committing identical crimes to that false regime  
> they set
> up with Diem in South Vietnam, and their commander in chief is a  
> complete
> political idiot, and this actually *is* a race and religious war  
> against
> non-white, non-Christian people by an insane fundamentalist Christian
> president whose daddy was the head of the CIA and got into office  
> on the
> tail of Reagan’s “October Surprise.”
>
> THIS IS ABOUT RESPECTING LIFE and THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE EAST, not
> protecting Americans’ rights to make murder their career.
>
> I received the following email a few months back: “Ms. Anderberg: I  
> read
> your article Mothers and Children Run and Hide. I guess you've  
> forgotten
> that there are guerillas hiding in Fallujah. Guerillas who've killed,
> kidnapped and beheaded Americans. Guerillas who are associated with
> terrorists who killed at the World Trade Towers in New York City.  
> These
> terrorists hide among innocents. At least American soldiers try to  
> get the
> innocents out of the way before combat. Of course war is hard on  
> mothers
> and children. It always has been. It is also hard on American  
> mothers who
> receive their sons and daughters back in body bags. If you don't  
> like the
> war, write Congress and the President. Stop making the American  
> solider
> fighting in Iraq out to be the bad guy. They are only doing their job.
> Sincerely, Patty Jerving, Milwaukee, WI”
>
> She speaks for many, but I have several problems with her line of
> reasoning. First of all, to argue the American soldiers occupying  
> another
> country illegally are “just doing their job” is no more powerful than
> someone saying the Taliban are “just doing their job.” That would  
> give the
> Taliban more power, as they are defending their own soil, while doing
> their job, while no one can figure out WHAT American soldiers are
> supposedly defending there! The Taliban is not just made of elite
> professional administrators. They have pawns for the front line,  
> just like
> the U.S. Military. Many of the men who join the Taliban to fight,  
> join for
> the EXACT same reasons poor people in America join the military. As  
> a job,
> to feed their families. So why are American paid soldiers who are  
> working
> a job to feed their families allowed a moral carte blanche when the
> Taliban fighters, who joined and fight for the exact same personal
> reasons, are not allowed that same compassion or support?
>
> But this is where we get into the religious/race war part. If we  
> accept
> that the Taliban fighters are only doing their jobs, trying to feed  
> their
> families, then we need to somehow dehumanize these people to kill  
> them, we
> need to reduce them below white Christian Americans, as there is no  
> real
> logic for why American soldiers should be allowed to just “do their  
> jobs”
> with no moral accountability, yet every single action by every single
> Taliban fighter is supposed to be a personal attack on all  
> humankind! Thus
> this moral superiority is now guised as appointed by God, is where  
> we are
> relegated to. Indeed, GWBush has actually said that GOD told him to do
> things relating to Sadaam and Iraq. Now we are arguing which side  
> GOD is
> on, which is insane and ridiculous. And America is arguing GOD is  
> on the
> Christian White American side. And we need to protect and save GOD  
> and the
> world. For some unknown reason, even intelligent people are actually
> arguing that the American war in Iraq is about doing GOD’s work, as if
> American soldiers represent GOD, and that all those America is  
> fighting
> represent SATAN. Indeed, the American president has said exactly  
> that, in
> no uncertain terms, repeatedly. “They” are the “axis of evil,” not the
> world’s most dominating and destructive military power, the U.S. We  
> *need*
> to dehumanize Middle Eastern folks to rationalize our wars and  
> aggressions
> in their world as good and blessed and liberating, for it is our  
> superior
> wisdom and morality that will “save” them from themselves. But  
> maybe it is
> America that needs to be saved from itself, in reality. And I am  
> not above
> that calling.
>
> Additionally, it is so incredibly ignorant to link the 9/11 attacks  
> with
> the war in Iraq. The WTC plotters and planners were mostly from Saudi
> Arabia. This is fact. Something like 95% of the pilots who flew  
> into the
> WTC on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. So why are we bombing Iraq and not
> Saudi Arabia? Because Saudi Arabia is one of the most oil rich  
> countries
> that still kiss America’s ass. The connection between the Bush  
> family and
> Saudi Arabian royalty is well documented. So it is absolutely  
> foolish to
> argue we had to bomb Fallujah to find hiding terrorists based on Saudi
> Arabian terrorists flying into the WTC. There is no logical  
> correlation
> there at all.
>
> Patti Jerving wrote, “At least American soldiers try to get the  
> innocents
> out of the way before combat.” Really? So what was the warning we gave
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki when America killed hundreds of thousands of  
> people
> (FAR more than the WTC attacks)  in two days? Were American Indian
> children “warned” about smallpox on the blankets the U.S. Military  
> gave
> them? No, they weren’t, Patti. Were children cleared from the napalmed
> areas in Vietnam? No, they weren’t, Patti. People have picked glass  
> out of
> children’s scalps in Japan for decades due to our nuclear blasts  
> there.
> And we have pictures of children running, screaming, with American  
> napalm
> burning their flesh, from the Vietnam War. What warning were the  
> people of
> the Bikini Islands tests given and where were they supposed to go  
> since
> they lived on an island? No, Patti, America does NOT clear out  
> innocents
> from their war arenas anymore than the WTC attackers did. And America
> kills exponentially MORE innocents in a week than the WTC attacks  
> produced
> in a day. It would take many many many WTC attacks to equal that one
> Hiroshima bomb America dropped with NO warning to the innocents who  
> were
> burned and incinerated alive in Japan 60 years ago.
>
> If you want to make war standards and etiquette, it must be applied  
> across
> the board. If you justify the military in the U.S. as paid killers  
> who are
> “just doing their jobs” to feed their families, then the same exact  
> thing
> can be said of Taliban fighters. If you say that there is some duty to
> clear the innocents from target areas, then America would need to  
> also be
> held to that standard, which we do not meet at all, not in the past  
> or the
> present. If you want nuclear de-escalation, that means the biggest  
> nuke
> hoarders first
> we cannot expect little countries afraid of us to not
> develop nukes when we, ourselves, would never submit to such  
> standards and
> under lesser threats. If your justification for American aggression  
> and
> murder in Iraq is GOD told us to take the Taliban and Muslim  
> population in
> the Middle East out in deference to white, Christian rule of the  
> Middle
> East, that is called GENOCIDE and IMPERIALISM. I have made a stand  
> that
> child molestation is unacceptable under any circumstances, and I  
> make no
> exceptions. I have the same standards about the U.S. Military. I do  
> not
> support or accept the “free will and adult choices” of child  
> molesters,
> and I do not see paid murder for U.S. genocide and imperialism as a  
> “free
> choice” option I am willing to entertain positively as “respect.”
>
> “You can decide to be apathetic and complacent, and hope for it all to
> collapse, or you can decide to take responsibility and fight to  
> destroy
> this death machine. Either way you will have blood on your hands
> it is
> just a matter of whose.” – Green Anarchy Collective
>
>
>
>
>
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