What Happened to America?

I always like to think that America is exemplified in my mom. Especially the things that she said. Things like “You reap what you sow.” And “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” And then there’s my dad, who taught me that the strongest man in the room has to be the most gentle, and that anytime someone has a monetary interest in something to beware – they’re probably just trying to get their hand in your pocket.

I wish that Mr. Bush and the rest of our “leaders” throughout this mess since 9/11 had the same mom and dad that I did. Obviously THEIR moms and dads didn’t teach them the same lessons.

If they understood the meaning of “You reap what you sow”, they would understand that if you plant the seeds of money and training and weapons with a nutcase like Osama Bin Laden (as we did in the eighties), it will eventually come back to bite you on the ass. They would understand if there’s a picture of you shaking hands with Saddam Hussein one day and then calling him the most evil man since Hitler the next, no one will trust you.

And the golden rule? The eleventh commandment? Do unto others as you would have others do unto you? We called the leadership of Emperor Hirohito in Japan during World War II and the leadership of the Viet Cong in Vietnam twenty odd years later because they tortured. And, in the later war, a lot of our guys signed (what we call) false confessions under the strain of torture. And yet now WE torture, and prosecute people based upon the (what we call) false information achieved. Honestly, if we’re going to prosecute Middle Easterners for war crimes based on information achieved through torture, then don’t we have to go back and try all of our guys who signed confessions during Viet Nam? If the information is reliable, it’s got to be considered reliable in every case. Not reliable when we do it and unreliable when anyone else does it. Then there was the case of the Afghani cab driver who was taken to an American prison camp there, based on information from someone else in his village. Our camp had been attacked by rocket, see, and this dude fingered the cab driver and his passengers as the trigger men. Got a good reward for it, too. More on that later. Anyhoo, after five days of being sleep deprived, hung up by his arms from the ceiling so that every time he started to fall asleep the pressure on his lungs would become overwhelming so that he started suffocating (same way Jesus (and everyone else who was crucified) died on the cross, I might add), and numerous beatings, he died. No big surprise, I guess. When a doctor examined this cab driver, he described the man’s legs as having been “pulpified” from beatings. Do you have any idea the kind of condition that that man’s legs must have been in for a doctor to use an unprofessional non-word like that? He was literally beyond his ability as a doctor to describe the wounds.

As to the last point, my dad’s observation about human beings and money…

We offered rewards to people in Afghanistan who would turn in people associated with Al Qaeda. Of course, it only took us a couple of years to figure out that people were turning in their neighbors so that they could take over their neighbor’s farms and opium crops. Guys were turning people in that they just generally had gripes with. That’ll teach ‘em. And let’s not forget the guy who turned in his true love’s father because the man refused to let him marry his daughter. And they got BANK for this lynch mob bullshit. Oh, and the cab driver that I spoke of earlier? Turns out that he was totally innocent. Only took four or five times that the dude that turned him in turned OTHER people in for rocket attacks for us to figure out that HE was the one attacking us with rockets and then fingering some poor innocent in order to collect the reward. Oops.

We’re the strongest man in the room, folks. How long do you think that it’s going to take us to stop being the bully and go back to being the guy who’s protecting the weaker guys? How long is it going to take for us to go back to being the gentle giant who only beats up those who attack us, which these people didn’t?

Peace.

Eventually.

I hope.

Randal