I started my day as I usually do, by getting up at six-thirty am and getting the kids hustled off to school, came home to have a cup of coffee and catch up on the news on yahoo. Ah bliss, my quiet time of the day. The husband works second shift and won't be up till later and there aren't six hundred kids running around being kids. It's my special time of the day for me to be quiet with my own thoughts, take a look at the world around me and contemplate, unfortunately that usually gets me in trouble. I think too much and to hard, and then wonder why the people around me don't. There are so many issues in today's society that are perplexing at best and downright maddening at worst.
Human lives, as currency was my thought process for this morning. How cheaply the leaders of the world spend them. Whether it's the President of the United States of America, or the rebel leader of a poverty stricken South African nation... or a viciously cruel dictator in the Middle East. It seems as if every morning I'm greeted by new pictures of death, ethnic "cleansing" in the Sudan, "rebel" fighters in Liberia killing civilians and the countries armed service members who in turn were killing civilians and rebels alike, dead Iraqi citizens, the dead from other Middle Eastern countries, dead Israeli police and civilian's, dead Palestinians and then this morning the picture to top all pictures. The cargo hold of a military plane filled with the flag draped coffins of our military men and women. The article that went with the picture particularly disturbed me. It went into detail about the female contractor, working with the U.S. contingent in Iraq, which had taken the picture to illustrate the respect and dignity with which our fallen soldiers are returned home. She lost her job because the Presidents of this country seem to, President Bush at this point, think that somehow a nameless coffin is an invasion of the fallen soldiers family's privacy. Do they really think that these sanitized pictures of war torn dead are an invasion of privacy when no names are in any way shown? Or is it that the Presidential Administration fears that we will see these pictures and understand on a more fundamental level what this so called "War on Terrorism" is really costing us?
If we were to believe the reasons we are given via the media for why people are dieing in conflicts everyday our credulousness would have been stretched to the breaking point years ago. It is incredible to me to think that the foremost statesmen in the world today are unable to cut through the quagmire of conflicting emotions and views that populate today's global political scene to the underling problems and deal with them in a manner befitting the worlds most advanced societies. With the resources we have at hand scientifically, socially, morally, with all the think tanks and educated, intelligent people we have at our disposal was a war in Afghanistan and Iraq really necessary? Our we, as a nation of supposedly thinking, independent, rational people, supposed to believe that our government really thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? And if so, why then, did we not invade North Korea the few short weeks after the War on Terror began when they announced to the world at large that they DID have nuclear weapons? The only answer I have been able to come up with since this all started is that it is terribly interesting to me that Iraq sits on top of the second largest reserve of oil in the world today, and Saddam Hussein had conveniently forgotten to be gracious to the country that put him on his metaphorical throne through the CIA coup in the seventies.
Okay so now Bushes administration falls back on the humanitarian angle. "The poor repressed Iraqi people needed to be liberated from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein's' cruelly oppressive years of rule." Uh yeah RIGHT! I'm thinking to myself of at least one major incident that happened very shortly after we had a major military presence in the Middle East. Liberia ring any bells? I believe we had several international aid organizations as well as the majority of the civilian population of that country begging President Bush for military aid long enough for them to regain some stability. To stop the dieing please, please President Bush send in the marines. You know how many we sent? To a country that we initially established as a safe haven for the freed slaves of this country? To a country that we have a continued obligation to? I think (I'll have to go look it up again in a minute) we sent 60. So I guess if your country's not sitting on top of oil your humanity isn't important to President Bush.
Then they go for the "Even if we didn't find any WMD's we have always known that Iraq was a safe haven for terrorists the world wide and was a pivotal area to be neutralized." That one was a little harder for me to swallow even. Okay so I'm still in my seat like a good little girl waiting to be spoon-fed something believable from Uncle Sam. Of course in the back of my mind is um let's see now, maybe Libya? Or how about Iran? Some of the more poverty stricken African nations that are in shambles even. South America, Cuba for Christ sake, all of which we all know harbor unsavory types that like to blow people and things up. But whom do we actually invade? Why Iraq of course, all that yummy oil down deep in their soil was maybe a little too much for the Bush family to say no too. Not that it's affecting us at the pump at the moment oh no. Why use the United States military as your own personal army for gain and then not reap the benefits of higher gas prices at the pump?
Of course I'm sure the Bush family would say that the oil had nothing to do with President Bushes decision making processes and use the fact that oil pumping in Iraq is no where near what it should be efficiency wise and probably won't be for years, so of course they aren't making any money from the Iraqi oil fields. Of course they also wouldn't want to bring up the investigation going on into possible corruption within the Energy Commission...hhhmmm....wonder why? Then I read a quote from a United States military official saying that we can't go in, destabilize a nation and withdraw, leaving them with chaos, and that with the climate of hostility that still exists in the region he can see us maintaining a military presence for a decade at least, for the safety of the civilian population and to insure world peace. Maybe he meant to say he could see us maintaining the Bush family's use of the United States military as a private merc company to ensure the productivity of the Iraqi oil fields after their up and running? Because if you take a look at the culture of this region? We will never affect a lasting peace.
The entire area has a completely different mindset about the roll of religion in today's society. They believe that a separation of church and state is blasphemy. We, as American's, who try and follow this practice of tolerance, are infidels of the highest order, and we're always sticking our noses where they don't belong. It doesn't matter that we are right. It doesn't matter that we have the numbers to prove we're right, i.e. higher literacy and lower infant mortality rates, better laws to protect woman and children's rights etc. Our numbers may be better but the cost is too high in their eyes. So who are we to tell them how to live, what to think, and how to treat each other? Arrogant busybodies in their eyes I'd bet. So the administration of our government goes and invades two very foreign (in beliefs and living practices particularly foreign) countries claiming they want to stamp out terrorism, route out any WMD's and institute stable governments that will protect human rights, raise literacy yadda yadda yadda, and of course be friendly to us for putting them in power. Uh, REALITY CHECK TIME!!!!!!!!!!
People in general don't make decisions based on what's "right" unless they are very good people and it's a critical situation where the consequences of their actions aren't as important as doing what's "right". I mean think about it for a minute. If it's not a life or death thing don't most of us weigh the outcome before we decide on a course of action? As in your having trouble with a relative, maybe their sticking their nose into your life with a lot of unwanted, unsolicited advice that you think is total crap and it's really getting on your nerves. Now you know that unless it's that your beating your wife or children (or husband I have heard of that one recently) or something illegal what you do in your house is your business and no one else's. You would be completely justified in politely telling this person that you really are bothered by this and want them to stop. But let's say this is a really, really, touchy person, not a bad person just really touchy and you know that saying something that assertive will send them zooming to the moon. So then in the back of your mind your weighing the consequences of losing their friendship and wreaking complete havoc within the family over something you disagree over or just trying to ignore the behavior you don't like. Now the "right" thing to do would be to tell them to butt the heck out of your business. As long as you do it in an assertive, not hateful way, you have nothing on your conscience. Their reaction to you asking them to quit being a busybody is their problem not yours. But how many of us do that? Don't most of us just try to bump along and swerve to avoid the potholes and speed bumps along the road of life? Before we will take action the payoff has to be of higher value to us than the natural consequences of our actions. The point of this little detour into social morality is this. Our culture is based on tolerance. We still have a ways to go to get to a really good place but we are light years ahead of the Middle East on this issue, so as a nation it tends to take more stimulus for us to react and we are basing our decisions on what they in the Middle East will do according to what we would do in a similar situation, based on what's important to us. In our country if your wife cheats on you you usually divorce her, in their country if your wife is an adulterer she's stoned to death. I think there's a tiny bit of a difference there don't you?
There can be no resolution to the conflict in the Middle East as long as there is a western Christian presence there. Our morals and values are to different from theirs and the impetus we would have to have to spur us to action is far greater than what they will need. So what does this mean? Well our boys (and girls) in blue, and green, and BDU's are dieing for nothing, and this brings us to my main gripe right now.
The pictures. The picture of the cargo hold of a military plane that's holding the flag draped coffins of OUR fellow countrymen and women. Men and women that took an oath when they joined the military to protect the United States from threats within and outside of the country that are being sorely abused by the Presidential administration we currently have. And now "OH MY GOD" we must not show pictures of the bodies of our countrymen being returned home with respect and dignity? Draped in the flag they died serving? And the only reason the administration is giving out via the media is that it is an invasion of the families of the deceased soldiers privacy? Uh wait a minute. The names of the soldiers aren't visible in these pictures. You can't point at any one coffin and say, "Oh John Q is in that one and look how they didn't tie that corner tightly enough isn't that just shameful?" Where is the invasion of privacy? Even if we don't hurt as much as the individual families of these soldiers, as a nation we grieve for every coffin that comes back. When they are in uniform in a special way they belong to all of us. They are everyone's son, daughter, wife, mother, father, husband, uncle, aunt and our country as a whole is losing a very special person that can not be replaced.
The only reason the Bush administration truthfully has to keep these photographs out of the media is to keep us from feeling the impact on an emotional level of what his private agenda is costing us in terms of our most precious resource. Our people. The leaders of this country to further their own ends are spending human lives very freely, and cheaply. My question is this. How long are we going to accept this type of behavior from our elected officials? How many more of our son's and daughters have to die before the American public takes a look at the facts and makes a stand? When will we demand that our military quite being used as a private mercenary company that the taxpayers finance financially and all of us pay for emotionally? When will the average citizen of this country take ten minutes to do a little bit of reading and educate themselves instead of allowing the government to spoon feed them what they want us to know? When will we take responsibility for our inaction and witness by looking at these sanitized pictures of what it's costing us? If we are convinced that President Bush's reasoning is sound and clear then shouldn't we have the strength to look at these pictures and grieve with the families, all the while knowing in our hearts that their deaths were horrible but justified? Or will we continue to not look and not face the fact that we have been lied to and the deaths of over 700 service people have been nothing more than a crying shame. Our country was set up so that the average person became the watchdog of the government and that watchdog is bloated and out of shape with self-absorption. Why bark at the intruder when it's so much easier to lay in the shade? Be careful. If your quiet long enough your shade will be taken away.
E.A. Henson
April 25, 2004
Update: Isn't it interesting that in his testimony before congress on the Iraqi prison scandal Mr. Rumsfeld stated that
"It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Words don't do it. The words that there were abuses, that it was cruel, that it was inhumane, all of which is true, that it was blatant, you read that and it's one thing. You see the photographs, and you get a sense of it, and you cannot help but be outraged." Doug Mills/The New York Times
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday on Capitol Hill.
I wonder if that means the administration is all to aware that pictures of our dead soldiers coming home in boxes gives us a "vivid realization of" what is actually taking place? Ya think?
The above quote was taken directly from a news article detailing Rumsfeld's testimony before congress on the abusive situation in the Iraqi prisons.
Talieson.com