Upholding honor is easy when it costs you nothing;

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M

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 09:01:02 -0500

Upholding honor is easy when it costs you nothing;

 

 

 

 

Semper Fi

Upholding honor is easy when it costs you nothing; denigrating it easy

if the profits are there

 

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

7/27/05

http://zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/semperfi.htm

 

According to Greg Palast, the images and video stills being held onto

by the government are utterly horrific. They supposedly detail

incredible atrocities, including the torture and rape of children as an

interrogation technique against the mothers and fathers. It's hard to

imagine humans sinking much lower than that. They also allegedly show

rape and murder of adult prisoners.

 

Rumsfeld said of the 87 images and four video tapes, " They're hard to

believe .....blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane. " He added, " If

these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters

worse. "

 

You have to wonder what the hell it would take to make a neo-con

Republican describe actions as " blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane. "

I mean, that's how these guys make their living. Rummy is one of the

same group of dirtbags who lied the country into an unnecessary war,

and his party is devoted to stealing America's wealth away and giving

it to the undeserving richest one percent. What could possibly stir

feelings of moral outrage and injustice in a man like Donald Rumsfeld?

 

On the other hand, any military person, active or retired, who feels

the tapes shouldn't be released probably isn't doing so out of a

misplaced sense of party loyalty, or even just the " cover your ass "

reflex that people in public service – including the military – grow out

of sheer reflex. After all, they looked at the Abu Ghraib photos from

before, and they didn't have the luxury of thinking, " those bastards! "

Those bastards were in the same uniform. They weren't " they " to the

vets. They were " us. " To many decent, proud vets the images weren't

just a disgrace to America; they were acts of betrayal against the

vets personally. The swine at Abu Grhaib besmirched the military, and

in so doing, committed an affront against every man and woman who ever

served with decency and integrity.

 

So if some vets don't want to see more stuff that might be even worse

committed by people in the uniforms they once proudly wore, I can

understand that. I won't censure anyone who feels that way for those

reasons. Mind you, this does NOT apply to chickenhawk neo-cons who try

claiming that demanding the release of such photos is unpatriotic.

Their notion of " patriotism " is that of GOP über allës, and no more

patriotic than any other self-serving corrupt dirtbag who wraps

himself in the flag in order to disguise his true motives.

 

But vets are off the hook. They're going to look at those images, and

what they see will reflect upon them directly, in their own eyes. They

will be deeply shamed. That's not right, and it's not fair, but that is

what this administration has done to America's once-proud military.

 

But not all vets are willing to be consigned to the status of

collateral damage. Some, especially vets coming back from Iraq now,

are taking a more proactive approach, and this makes for a seismic

shift in American politics.

 

Take, for example the FOIA request for the release of the latest Abu

Ghraib material that the administration is illegally blocking. The

request was filed by a group called " The Center for Constitutional

Rights " which served as an umbrella group for others, including

" Veterans for Common Sense " , and " Veterans for Peace "

 

That's right: vets are among the forefront in demanding that a full,

open, honest accounting be made of what has happened in American camps

and gulags abroad, no matter how much it hurts.

 

You want to talk courage and patriotism? What these veteran groups are

doing, that's courage and patriotism. Accept no substitutes.

 

Back in the 60s, the Peace Movement got off to a rough start. It was

easy for hawks to dismiss the peace movement as a bunch of appeasing

chickens who didn't want to fight, and who hadn't ever fought. Back in

those days, conservatives often WERE vets, usually of WW2, and so they

could get away with saying things like that. The only thing the two

sides had in common was a mutual contempt for chickenhawks–people who

advocated war but who never wanted to fight themselves. Nobody in 1970

would have believed that the next time the country got into a major

war, the President would be a drunken bum who washed out of the Air

National Guard, and the Vice President would be a stuffy little turd

who loftily explained that he had " more important priorities " while

getting five deferments.

 

Then the vets started coming back from Vietnam. To nearly everyone's

surprise, a lot of them got involved in the peace movement. And

suddenly it was transformed from a marginalized group seen as

peaceniks and draft-dodgers into a formidable political force.

 

I don't know the composition of " Veterans for Common Sense " and

" Veterans for Peace " , but if it doesn't include freshly returned vets

from Iraq, it will soon enough.

 

Putsch is facing a political nightmare (one of many): vets are starting

to come back, and they are not happy about how the war has been

conducted, or his " leadership " or the fact that he is still lying to the

country about why America is fighting, what it is fighting, and how it

is fighting.

 

They are coming back, and finding that public support for the war has

dwindled to historic lows. They are coming back, and learning that the

country has realized that the rationale for war was a pack of lies, and

that the public is already starting to get the idea that the happy happy

propaganda babbled by Faux News and the rest of the GOP house organs

is bullshit of the purest ray serene.

 

They WILL speak out, and it will be devastating. We're getting a

preview of what is to come in Ohio's 2nd Congressional District, where

the Democratic candidate in this heavily Republican district is 43 year

old Paul L. Hackett, a Marine who openly and contemptuously refers to

Putsch as a " chickenhawk " and charges that Putsch has not given the

troops in Iraq adequate material, supplies, or support. What makes

Hackett unassailable on these issues is that he just came back from a

tour of duty in Iraq. He vows, if he is not elected, to return to Iraq

for a second tour.

 

Hackett is the first. He won't be the last.

 

He's already been joined in the campaign fray by Max Cleland, retired

Democratic war hero from Georgia, who has already experienced what

Hackett will surely experience: the disgraceful, unpatriotic, vicious

and lying GOP propaganda machine. Coulter will probably attack him in

her plagiarized columns, and the rest of the Faux smear machine will

explain that no disaffected grunt could know more about the war than a

cowardly chickenhawk who drank his way through a ticket to avoid war

30 years earlier.

 

Other returning vets will see this, and if Iraq itself didn't leave

them angry enough, that'll do the trick. They'll be ready to fight for

their dignity, and the dignity of America.

 

Putsch's worst enemy will be the guys who have survived his lies, and

are coming back to tell the tale.

 

--

The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making ten-thousand revolutions a

minute and man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is

the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him

the ride. --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

 

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com