Print this post.Timeo Americanos Et Dona Ferentes!
I fear the Americans even if they bring gifts
“I fear the Greeks even if they bring gifts”
Aeneis ~~~ Virgil
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When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
The Young British Soldier ~~~ Rudyard Kipling
To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes. ~~~ H. R. 5741
GUEST COLUMN
ERNEST STEWART (UNCLE ERNIE) [print_link] Dateline: 7.30.10
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I see that Wikileaks has let the cat out of the bag! So much for that “Nation Building” nonsense, huh? This, of course, has set the White House and the Pentagoons into a flurry of denials and caused a classified information tizzy that is likely to go on for weeks. Here’s a modest example:
“We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact the US government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who co-operate with us.”
Of course, as far as I can tell there isn’t a lot of new information in this release. However, all of that information is in one place, making it easier to understand. Foggy Bottom is howling that it will put our soldiers lives in jeopardy as if the folks who all these war crimes were committed against weren’t hip to them or who was committing them. Hardly! They knew from day one! The only ones who weren’t hip to them were the American Sheeple, which are the folks the politicians are afraid of. It’s their own worthless lives they’re afraid of losing, not the troops!
Also I’m sure that by now Barry has put out a hit on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, much like the hits Julian exposed by “a secret ‘black’ unit of special forces hunting down Taliban leaders for ‘kill or capture’ without trial,” in his daring expose! The Wikileaks leaker, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, is currently undergoing a “debriefing” in a torture cell in Kuwait where he has been since June. He was originally picked up for leaking the gunship video of the two bored Army pilots murdering a bunch of folks including reporters in Iraq.
Wikileaks lays bare some 92,000 examples of our own and our allies’ war crimes. From Britain to France to Poland, mass murders…er…”collateral damage errors.” From our own “death from above” drone attacks on civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to Polish troops mortaring a village of innocents in a revenge attack, killing a wedding party that included a pregnant woman. The French machine gunning of a school bus full of children, wounding eight, and our attacks on buses in general, in one incident killing 15 innocents. Many examples of our troops machine gunning people on bikes, motorcycles and in cars because those soldiers were afraid the civilians might be terrorist, even though those folks hadn’t done anything to make our children think that. “Shoot first and make excuses later” seems to be the official policy! As the former commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal, said, “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat!”
I found interesting that the Taliban now has surface to air missiles that they’ve been using to knock down our helicopters and such, which may explain why their IED’s are starting to kill a lot more of our troops and civilians as well. If you can’t fly troops in because you’ll liable to get knocked down, you have to drive them in. Surface-to-air missiles just like the ones that we gave to the Mujahideen and Osama when the USSR was losing it’s empire in Afghanistan. You don’t suppose Putin is returning the favor, do you?
In their defense the White House said the chaotic picture painted by the logs was the result of “under-resourcing” under Dubya, commenting: “It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009.” Ergo, it only covered a single year of Obama’s mismanagement so don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain; it was mostly Bush’s fault!
Wikileaks has been off the air most of the day today either because their servers not being able to handle the demand or we’ve been blocking the site? If I were Julian I’d find a real good place to hide for a while, somewhere underground where the satellite surveillance can’t track you and the Predator and Reaper drones can’t reach!
In Other News
I guess we must be swimming in money, huh? We must have all the money we need for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Food Stamps? There must be plenty of money to replace bridges, dams, highways and various other bits of our crumbling infrastructure. Plenty of money to build new schools, complete with state of the art computer and science labs. Money for college loans for everyone who qualifies and wants to attend and all those who need to retrain. Extra money for new Post Offices and libraries. Enough money to hire all the teachers, police and firemen that we need. All the money for our veterans, their families and hospitals that is needed. All the money that we need for scientific research into new methods for clean power and a new green economy? Do we have the money for all of that and more?
If we don’t have that money, would someone please explain to me why we have $60 billion dollars to waste for new war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan? That’s on top of the largest military budget in the history of the world. A budget so vast that all of the other countries in world combined spend less than we do! How is that possible?
Why has it taken us nearly three times as long as it took to fight and end World War II to fight to a draw against a bunch of second rate, poorly armed, bare foot, underfed guerillas? How many more millions of innocents will be maimed or murdered for our blood lust in Afghanistan and elsewhere? How many more decades and administrations will we have to endure before we pull out and what will have happened to America when we finally do? How long will we have to wait until one of our fearless leaders finally tells us what “winning” actually means?
The fascists in Congress want to end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and take that money that you paid into those programs and spend it on more wars. Will you let them do it, America?
And Finally
I see where one of New York City’s favorite bigots and crooks is at it again. Charles (Kill the Crackers) Rangel has taken time out from his criminal defense to insert yet another attempt to reinstate the draft. Charlie’s been at this for the last five years and, fortunately, it’s never made it out of committee.
House bill H.R. 5741 would draft not only men but women as well, into two years of slavery…er…public service either in the military or a civilian service like Fatherland, oops, Homeland Security for everyone between the ages of 18 and 42. Charlie keeps submitting this one because he thinks that whitey isn’t doing enough of the fighting and wants to assure that we have the same resistance and mayhem to these unwars as we did during the Vietnam unwar.
While it might give us some better music, a la the 60s and early 70’s, and get American youth off their lazy asses and back into the streets where they belong, the down side would take several large volumes to state. However, in a nutshell, forced mandatory national service is involuntary slavery, pure and simple. No matter whether you’re murdering innocents abroad for Wall Street or doing the same thing at home by rounding up Ma, Pa and baby sister for a trip to a “Happy Camp!”
Charlie’s bills have never made it out of committee and neither will this one because the US military doesn’t want it. The idea of a military draft is anathema to most Americans and the resulting draft riots would make the 60’s riots look like a Swiss Picnic by comparison. Obama doesn’t want it and no one hoping to be reelected will vote for it. This is just Charlie’s way of saying “F*ck You America” on his way out of Congress via a forced retirement due to his lack of ethics! Have no doubt that Charlie will be back, no doubt hustling as a lobbyist for the military/industrial complex!
ERNEST STEWART publishes a weekly political commentary column, ISSUES & ALIBIS. Stewart, a.k.a. Uncle Ernie, is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 9 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine.
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