This afternoon, the American Public was informed that Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, will step down from his post. Donald has been described as the first “political casualty” of the Iraq War. I wouldn’t describe him so; he hasn’t had any limbs blown off or sustained any other traumatic injuries. Physiologically speaking, he looks fine to me. I will say though, he may rightly become a casualty, even so far as the physical sense, if justice continues to unfold as it ought to. We brought the Nazis to trial; we had better bring Rumsfeld and all his compadres to trial as well. You will find few men alive in the world today who answer for as much senseless violence and are responsibility for such large-scale loss of innocent life (succinctly put: genocide) as Rumsfeld does. Those few who can compare to him in this prestigious measure are most likely awaiting court-ordered death, and many believe Rumsfeld belongs beside them. I, personally, do not have a belief regarding whether or not the man should be allowed to live; frankly, I believe it is beyond what I am morally capable of deciding. I am firm in my belief, however, that if the death sentence handed down for Saddam Hussein is morally appropriate, then such must also be the case for Rumsfeld. Either the mass-murder of innocent people carries with it the penalty of death because it is seriously wrong, or it does not because it is not. Depending upon which of these camps you identify with, you either believe that the two men may live or that they both must be put to death. I don’t see that killing these two men necessarily improves the world in any way, but -at least regarding Hussein- the wisdom of this American culture suggests otherwise, and I find this intriguing.

Saddam Hussein has been murdering innocent people for decades; maybe it was wrong of him to do so, but that surely didn’t bother many people on this side of the Atlantic until very recently. Today, Americans want blood; they want to see this man swinging lifelessly from a tree, and maybe that is wrong as well, but I confess I am far beyond my province to say one way or the other. To strengthen our sense of moral clarity and build confidence in our judgment, let’s take a look at some historical facts.

It was by complete coincidence that in the past few weeks, I happened across the specifics of the largest mass-execution in American History. 38 Santee Sioux were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota on the day after Christmas, 1862. Because I must have been absent from school the day this was taught in social studies class, I was ignorant of it and felt I needed to further investigate.

It appears that Whites and Native Americans had been peacefully coexisting in the Minnesota region thanks to two treaties. These treaties effectively turned nine tenths of the Native Americans’ land into settlers’ land; in exchange, the Native Americans were to receive provisions which they needed for survival. The onset of the 1862 winter approached after a sparse gaming season and meager harvest that left the Native Americans completely dependent on those provisions. The settlers, presumably having been adversely affected by the dire hunting and farming conditions as well, withheld the provisions and the Natives Americans began to starve. Little Crow, a Native American and Chief of the Mdewakantons, led his people to appeal peacefully before the ‘Upper Agency’ for what was rightfully theirs. They were denied; the resulting forced-hunger imposed onto the Native American culture caused the erosion of their peace-loving tradition and philosophy. So began the historical “Dakota Wars”. After a deplorable but characteristically American chain of events transpired*, the crux of which was the Americans’ devaluing of a peaceful native culture’s citizens’ lives, the 38 Santee Sioux were put to death, hence the greatest mass-execution in America’s history.

The historical accounts I found citied a book by Vine Deloria, entitled “Custer Died for Your Sins”; it is worth looking through if you have the time, but I’m including the cited passage in case you don’t.

“When one examines the history of American Society one notices the great weakness inherent in it. The country was founded in violence. It worships violence and will continue to live violently. Anyone who tries to meet violence with love is crushed, but violence used to meet violence also ends abruptly with meaningless destruction.”

The author continues with a conceptual interpretation of American Military History, highlighting our war-fighting style and emphasizing that we have never ‘lost a war’. Shifting his focus to peace, he writes:

“But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict. Consider how quickly America seems to be facing its allies of one war as new enemies.”

-Consider that these words were written nearly forty years ago but imagine they were written 40 minutes ago. Fascinating, isn’t it? It leaves a lot unanswered about Rumsfeld, what the world ought to do with him, and even if what he did was, at least in our cultural context, morally wrong. This is the danger hidden in examining history, our culture, and the ugly truths embedded in both. Revealing facts may undermine the pretenses on which we’ve been operating the past 230+ years. Have we got the stomach to face ourselves in the mirror? I suggest we do so and find out.

*brilliantly articulated by “NACF Kilia”
See – http://nativenewsonline.org/history/hist1226.html

“It is frightening when even college students relinquish their sense of curiosity and skepticism. I know college students who are confused about the true meaning of words and I know fear.”

“Solidarity has been liquefied; apply as much pressure as your strength allows you to exert and pray to whichever God you serve that it is enough to reestablish our broken social bonds and recover unity.”

These are my thoughts for the day. I became frightened when I read a few things in our college newspaper (Marist College), though I am not easily frightened. These frightening things were widely known, so I’m unsure of why they struck such discord; they did nevertheless, and, low and behold, I am furiously blogging again after 2 1/2 months of silence. Read my columns in The Circle (Marist’s newspaper) if you’re curious, read Chomsky if you’re open-minded enough (read independent media if not), read Freire or Kozol if you’re a concerned educator like me, but -mercy of The Almighty- read something! Remember the Downing Street Memo. Remember Alberto Mora’s famous Torture Memo. (they call these things “memos”, they must be remembered)

Remember your God; to do so, you must first know your God. To know your God is to know yourself, and you have no God but the one you serve. If a slave cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), then choose your master wisely; you only get one. Religion, if it endeavors to achieve a relationship with something unobservable/supernatural, is as much an accomplishment of the mind as it is an accomplishment of the spirit. Both are gifts from our creator; both become cataclysmically toxic when misused. If your faith is tied to a secular agenda, you may very well be a murderer and not even realize it; better to err on the side of peace than to risk otherwise, I believe. I fail to accept that any man or woman who lived their life in pursuit of peace will, upon their death, be judged harshly for doing so. War has been around long enough for us to realize it is not altogether a good thing; it has proven most harmful, in fact, and will likely continue to do so. Perhaps we should try something else…

To which I have only the simple rebuttal, “Are you feeling encouraged, Dick?” Oh, Cheney. Your terroristic tendencies are becoming more and more undeniable with each moronic thing you publicly say. Let’s ignore this al Qaeda reference, since the words ‘al Qaeda’ are essentially meaningless to everyday Americans like myself and may rightfully be seen as shameless prods of push-button style fear-inducing politics. Can anyone explain to Cheney, in words he will understand, the function and application of popular vote? How about the citizens of a state expressing their collective desire to dispose of a politician they no longer wish to have represent them through practicing the democratic process? I believe these activities lead to an expression of the “Will of the American People”. So what’s our VP talking about? Who are these “types” that are trying to “break” precisely what took place in Connecticut recently? I suppose they’d be anybody who runs interference against our citizenry’s efforts to behave democratically, and do you think this includes those who do so through manipulative tactics capitalizing on the people’s fear? Sure it does; after all, that’s exactly what terrorism is. Fear-driven politics.

I have admittedly never spoken with or read the words of an “al Qaeda type” before, though my government leads me to believe they are mostly of Middle Eastern descent. Perhaps this is true, I don’t know, but I don’t think their ethnic background much matters; I’m more concerned with their motives and ambitions, their methods and such like that. For this reason, I have ascertained that this Dick Cheney, whom also I have never met or spoken with, must be an “al Qaeda type”, despite that he does not resemble Middle Easterners at all, but looks more like he’s descended from white privilege. Appearances matter less than character qualities and personal ambitions, or so any sensible person can figure out. In attempting to impede willful action through appealing to the fear of the American people, willful action as demonstrated by these Connecticutians and prevent its imitation elsewhere in our country, Cheney must be self-encouraged.

“Any social structure that shunts out critical perspective and slams shut the eyes of right skepticism is condemned to the undoing of itself through its imprudence and self-instilled ignorance.”

Still with me? Try this one:

“Any participatory society that consciously leaves behind any of its potential participants, essentially barring them from the democratic process, is fundamentally weaker for its practice of exclusion.”

Sound about right? They’re sort of self-evident truisms, aren’t they? (as if the opposite scenarios could possibly be true) I think by common sense these are proofed from corruption or distortion, but sadly, they are apparently not impregnable from assaults brought on by present-day power. Private power that serves no end other than to sustain itself is inherently anti-democratic when it intrudes into the domain of it’s parent country’s government; this is nevertheless commonplace in the modern world, and with the advent of globalization, the destructiveness of its antisocial side-effects is exponentially intensified. It is for this last self-evident truism that the utter necessity for activism has reached a state undeniable for those concerned about the world.

The more one sees, the more one understands; but there is very strong social pressure against both of these activities applied by those who possess inordinate amounts of power. An individual must resist these pressures and make a conscious effort to see and to understand; failure to do either of these is symptomatic of chronic failure to be truly free. One can easily become wrapped into an unsustainable routine of thoughtless consumption and operate under the false presumption of freedom without realizing how much freedom and personal power they have passively ceded. The freedoms to see, to feel, and to believe are the most hard-fought and precious freedoms we have, but they are also the most seldom used, and this is truly a tragedy. If you cannot effectively stand against what our corporate-driven consumerist culture suggests you ought to do and still maintain your comfort and contentedness as an individual, how can you honestly believe you have freedom?

“Support our Troops”
“Freedom isn’t free”
“Proud to be American”
“9/11 – Never Forget”
These are all examples of mantras repeated unceasingly throughout America nowadays that most mouths utter them without examining their denotative meaning with the brains behind them. In short, what do all these bumper stickers actually mean, does anybody know? I Do!

“Support our Troops” – a few hegemonic, ethnic-intolerance based wars are raging throughout the third world and are being fought by young American boys and Girls. I honestly don’t give a shit that these young Americans are getting killed, or for that matter, that families living in these countries are routinely slaughterer by the thousands solely for being born with the wrong shade of skin. Besides, my life is too inwardly-focused to take action on their behalf; that would disrupt my daily routine. I did, however, spend a couple bucks on this magnetic bumper sticker because then I can say that I haven’t done absolutely nothing about American-borne global injustice and, as a consequence, I sleep more easily at night. It’s pretty cool looking too, isn’t it?!

“Freedom isn’t Free” – this one I honestly have not even thought about at all; I just purchased the bumper sticker, probably without even reading it (thought the flag on it looked really trendy). If I had contemplated it a bit, I would have realized how laughably self-contradictory it is. Freedom is, by its very definition, free; anything else isn’t freedom (hence the root word ‘free’ -see how easy that was!). The expense precluding this bumper sticker’s unstated antecedent from being free (for clearly ‘freedom’ is this grossly misplaced scapegoat) is ‘aggression’. I’m not talking about the sort of aggression most of us are somewhat guilty of in our adolescent or young adult years; I mean grand-scale aggression, the sort that Gestapo agents and Nazi death squads were executed for at Nuremberg. In that sense, there is a good deal of truth to this sticker’s true meaning: unprovoked-genocidal-behavior-directed-against-the-defenseless-
civilians-of-the-third-world isn’t free.

“Proud to be American” – more truthfully translates to ‘Embarrassed to be chronically insecure about myself’. I take pride in being American, even though all that ‘being American’ theoretically entails is being born within a specific set of legal circumstances and topographical boundaries. My feelings are hurt and I become hostile when someone implies I am (gasp) “un-American”. My knowledge is probably completely amiss of the Constitution’s words, or the fact that my America’s health care system is counted the worst of any industrialized nation (effectively meaning the ‘America’ I am proud to be a part of is slowly killing me), but identifying with this spirit of nationalism works wonders to compensate my serious shortcomings in self-esteem.

“9/11 – Never Forget” – this is a tricky one, tough to nail down, really. If I forget 9/11, my mind will become entirely destitute of any dimensional depth with regards to current events, politics, and contemporary history because it is the only fragment of any such understanding/awareness I now have. That would be bad. I think also that if only I can devote all of my attention exclusively to the memory of one isolated historical event which took place five years ago, I can successfully tune out all of the U.S. borne injustices that obscenely dwarf the tragedy of 9/11. I’ll also never piece together the naked truth that U.S. foreign policy preceding that event literally invited commercial planes into skyscrapers as the only means of a disenfranchised global community capturing the world’s attention to assert its distaste for economic slavery and American hegemony. I’ll keep staring at those fallen towers and perhaps 200,000 Iraqi citizens weren’t brutally killed in their homelands, as subsidized by my own tax dollars -9/11 – never forget; and nothing else in history ever happened.

Ahh, the satisfaction of comprehension. I’m glad all that fog has finally been chased from our virgin minds; now we can get onto correcting the errors we, as a country, have made. Let’s prioritize countering the activities that endeavor to kill people on an industrial level. We are still left with many choices! Protecting the environment is a good one, or the removal of trade sanctions and embargoes directly responsible for wide-spread famine and epidemic levels of diseases and illnesses which are easily vaccinated in the industrial countries. Or how about standing against this grotesquely inhuman “Global War on Terrorism”; we can argue against its persistence on the pretence of its absurdity, realizing that any comprehensive, worldwide campaign against the manifestation of terrorism in the global context would begin by bombing the Whitehouse and the Pentagon to dust. I don’t mean to sound snide or sarcastic; such action would adhere precisely to the Bush doctrine on combating terrorism. All of you who fancy to brand me a Godless liberal and call it a day would be well-advised to consult a history book while bearing in mind the immortal words our beloved commander-in-chief had stated on the eve of the war on terror: “no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support them, because they’re equally as guilty of murder” (or something to that effect). Reconcile that bold declaration of policy with realities of U.S. policy resulting from the Dili Massacre in East Timor; reference the 12 November ’92 Boston Globe for an article about the civil court case Todd vs. Panjaitan. Connect these two for an interesting perspective of United States terrorist-harboring behavior. Of course, to do so, we need to agree on a few ground rules. 1) Murdering defenseless civilians who are peacefully gathered constitutes terrorism. 2) “Defenseless Civilians” are entitled to life irregardless of their ethnicity or nationality. 3) Legal statues of limitations will be upheld (there is none on murder; the Dili Massacre occurred in 1991). 4) The United States must hold itself to the same standards of moral conduct that it impresses upon the rest of the world; failure to do so incurs defiling the nobility of any of our diplomatic endeavors, a practice essentially shifting what we call ‘acts of terrorism’ to something more closely resembling ‘resistance of foreign imperialism’.

Browse these sources if you wish; accept your role as passive perpetuator if you don’t. Comment if you feel there is a third course I’ve overseen; I would be delighted to hear it. Don’t allow yourself to become discouraged, in any case. Whichever of these three categories you identify with (of the two I’ve described or the third, unknown), we can all contribute to the causes of justice and peace. While I don’t feel that repeating hackneyed bumper-sticker wisdom accomplishes anything, I feel that a sharpening the senses, thinking critically and with motivation for conscious, calculated action, can.

I can account for my unawareness, my being forced to assume: I was a bit cut off from the political world while volunteering at the RAM (Remote Area Medical) event that took place this past weekend at the Wise County Fairgrounds in western Virginia. RAM is an annual, all-volunteer event that provides medical, optical, and dental services to the uninsured/unable to pay, free of charge. Sixty-six hundred patients received services in one weekend that they’d otherwise be forced to live without. Involvement in the event I consider a privilege because I have never, in my life, seen anything like it. A gathering of thousands of strangers in the mountains of rural VA, coming together to provide or receive the goodwill that sustains life, in the physiological and spiritual sense; there are few things in the world like RAM.

Outlining the positive side to RAM is a pleasure, but I cannot distract my thought process from the negative side, the omniscient, ugly reality that has necessitated RAM.

RAM captures, in essence, the largest single piece of America’s social programs inadequacies that someone can view all at once. Thousands of people drive from distances sometimes hours away to wait several hours through the night, uninhibited by rain or cold, to receive medical care that they cannot afford and that is performed entirely by volunteers with equipment and supplies that are donated. Why is this necessary in such a wealthy society? Why are provisions of these services so sparsely available to the economically disadvantaged that they have to negotiate such obstacles to acquire them? Why is it necessary for such a tremendous outpouring of selfless goodwill by nearly a thousand volunteers in order for the poor to get basic medical services that the state and the privileged citizens of that state take for granted? These questions have no answers because they’re seldom asked; they probably cannot be explained logically and rationally without conceding that this country has become a veritable cesspool of socioeconomic injustice and class over-stratification. These words sound harsh, but there is clearly no other way to rationalize RAM. It exists because a small but growing unrepresented faction of the U.S. populace is literally left to their own meager resources for survival, and they are unable to achieve survival without the altruism of those volunteers acting in defiance to the social/economical schematic of American Society.

This assessment, though appropriate, is too depersonalized to effectively convey the myriad of unforgettable images I confronted and that, indeed, ought to confront the national conscience. I was faced with people, a very great many people, people of a widely diverse spectrum of backgrounds, all with one thing in common: they are the people you never see discussed on the floor of political debate, receiving the needed attention of government. These people were, from epidemic levels of marginalization and apathy, dead to the state.

At a personal level, I can share one of those images that may help give my assaults some grounding context. The most disheartening thing that I saw was a young adolescent girl, perhaps 15 or 16 years of age, in tears, in pain, and unable to speak because she had recently had teeth pulled. I couldn’t tell how many; her mouth was full of blood-soaked gauze. I think some must have been front teeth, judging from how the gauze was arranged in her mouth, but I can’t be sure. The expression on her face spoke of a girl whose life was changed, permanently and regrettably, for the worse. I was awestruck and unable to think of anything else for a while after. At such a young age, she has lost her natural adult teeth, her appearance altered and her hopes of growing into adulthood with a naturally beautiful smile were compromised. The question I could not stop asking myself was why had this happened? Why was this not prevented? I couldn’t understand; I still cannot understand. I believe she doesn’t either, or anybody else for that matter, but she is the only one who paid for this indiscernible injustice; I have all of my teeth even though my grasp of this is no better than hers. Are her teeth merely an expense of free-market capitalism? Perhaps they’re an abstract and unusual casualty of the Global War on Terrorism? Maybe the protection of her dental hygiene is in conflict with the right of grotesquely overgrown international corporations to expand uninhibited by the needs of individuals to whom they’re not responsible? (Devil’s advocate for a sec) Her parents should just be more economically successful, I suppose. The provision of her proper growth and development as a child by social programs would only stagnate her parents’ efforts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and contribute to the consumption-driven economy. We, the affluent members of society, would have to work harder; better to let her teeth rot. (Devil’s advocate, stop!) These perspectives, though never overtly stated, express what must be the nation’s collective thought-process. Of course they’re unstated, they self-discredit immediately when spoken aloud. The idea that our economic system is anything even resembling a free-market is illusory and quickly unravels when critically examined; the GWOT cannot logically be tied to domestic social issues by any freethinker that has averted the Bush-indoctrination suggesting any injustice is tolerable provided it brandishes the label “combating terrorism”. Lastly, it is important to reconsider the rights we presume entitled to corporations. Corporate right does not supersede individual right; the idea that corporations even have rights at all is a fallacy. Corporations are not people, so when we justify the suffering of people as an inevitable but acceptable consequence of protecting the rights of corporations to grow and prosper, we are speaking an entirely different political language, one alien and not interpretable to the idealisms of American Democracy.

Grassroots activism is, as in nearly every other case, desperately in order. Acting in the interest of others in this case is actually, in the long-run, acting in one’s self-interest . You may consider yourself non-poor if you have that luxury, but consider this: poverty may never be more than arms-reach away. What I have learned so far from the speaking forums at the National Coalition for the Homeless is that homelessness affects only one group of people along with their children: those who never expected it. If you think you’re safeguarded from the unfathomable trials of poverty, you’d be well advised to think again. And if you’re curious to know whether or not someone with privilege will advocate for your cause should you discover poverty first hand, the answer is easy: ask yourself, will I advocate for the cause of someone in poverty? If you don’t follow reading this blog post with conscious activism, I guess you have your answer. Good luck avoiding the far-reaching claws of disenfranchisement/disempowerment; they’ve been known to affect some high-flying, unsuspecting individuals. If you do, however, become active in reversing the struggles of so many unsuspecting and undeserving victims, then you will come to know the adventurous joys that I have experienced and referenced previously as a privilege, “few things in the world like it”.

Recently, my memory revisited the occasion in which John and I stood before nearly thirty snickos (staff NCOs, a “Staff NCO” is an enlisted marine with a rank of Staff Sergeant or higher) in May 2004, while we were stationed near Fallujah, Iraq. From one perspective, it is a tale of two degenerates answering for their misconduct by being shamed for their actions in front of their superiors. From another, it is an account of two corporals vs. every senior enlisted man in their entire company -and may the best men win. The lot of us grappled, the fight was dirty however unphysical; a cut-throat game of psychological chess ensued that night. I believe both sides departed bruised and battered, uncertain of the victor. John did not seem at all appreciative of my free-spirited belligerence and its ability to get him roped into a bind, but I am certain, as certain as I am of the origin of rain to be from the clouds above, that the two of us had been forged into life-long friendship that night. We share a friendship that’s proven unbreakable by the forces of baseless pride and ignorant presumptions of self-importance as embodied by the pitiful leaders we encountered together.

The ordeal began with a crude piece of unedited writing the two of us co-wrote and submitted to our squad leader. You know the type of thing school kids are forced to do when they misbehave, how they have to write this-many thousand words about such and such or something else and, bottom line: nobody reads it -right? Well, in this case, the piece was read indeed, and it was not very well liked. The assignment was 5,000 words on Marine Corps leadership, but we only penned out around 2,000 or so. 2,000 proved enough to turn a few heads and land ours on the chopping block. The following afternoon we both found ourselves in front of the company level Commanding Officer, one at a time, trying to placate the Captain and preserve our hides. This was around the time I was informed that I didn’t have the right to the air I breathed but that I wasn’t worth the expense of the bullet it would take to kill me. I found myself in sharp disagreement with both of these assertions and tactfully informed the Captain of this. We argued for a while, neither of us willing to compromise. After a semi-intense face off with the man (backed by three of his cronies because he presumably didn’t have the pebbles to face me one on one), I was dismissed and told this matter was still not resolved and would remain so until I was back in the U.S., a civilian, dishonorably discharged from the military. I assessed the threat as empty and the emotions that spurred it as pathetic, but I kept these assessments to myself for I felt their source, the captain, was a man beyond redemption. He was right though, the matter was indeed not resolved; John and I were summoned once again, later that evening, this time to report to the berthing hut of the company 1st Sgt. Upon entering the hooch, we were welcomed not just by the 1st Sgt., but also by 27 other senior enlisted men of our company, ranging in rank from Staff Sgt. to Master Sgt. I’d estimate their cumulative time of military service to be something in the neighborhood of 500 to 600 years -stacked against the 7 shared by John and I. Immediately after coming inside, the door was secured behind us and we were handed our legendary manuscript. The 1st Sgt. ordered us to read our words aloud and to heed any interruption by the marines present in order to answer any questions to their satisfaction. We proceeded with his orders; John read slowly and clearly what we had written and I surveyed the 56 eager and bloodthirsty eyes that never left John and I. I suppressed my grins, forced myself to appear calm though I was extremely anxious, and didn’t suppress any tears or fear because neither of these surfaced to threaten my composure; I must admit though, having all of these thoroughly indoctrinated and vigilant marines before me, seeming to be just a few pokes away from assault mode, was kind of euphoric. I masked my pleasure in an effort to appear professional, even though it was truly a boy-hood dream fulfilled: having dozens of men that I vilely despised listening to my friend and I formally charge a stream of deep-cutting grievances against them and the institution they held sacrosanct but that we held in contempt. The interruptions the 1st Sgt. had forewarned arrived frequently, sometimes several one right after another with no reversions back to the reading to offer us respite. I handled the majority of the questions, speaking softly but sincerely -a strategy I’d developed on-site to command silence while endowing my words heavily with meaning and integrity. I looked deeply into the eyes of whomever dared pose a question, pausing extensively for each breath, allowing each batch of my words to sink in before beginning the volley that followed them. Many of the snickos appeared never in their lives to have thought independently before, but they took to it like an infant learning to crawl: struggling hopelessly at first with the new discovery, much to the amusement of the seasoned veterans (John and I) who observed, but unembarrassed and playfully enjoying every moment of the learning process; it was kind of adorable. Many were stalwarts, tough to break, that could not bear to request clarification of something expressed by a subordinate; I gave each of these men a concentrated glare every time John’s reading arrived upon a vocabulary word I knew they’d never before heard, and each time they’d look away, knowing that I knew they didn’t know, their pride sustaining one blow after another. Others became intrigued by our writing (after all, it was common sense-based) and gradually became comfortable asking what we meant by certain things, what we thought about certain other things they’d thought of but that we’d omitted, and offering their own perspective, which nearly always opposed ours, but expressed in a civil, lateral tone. These communications were, however, isolated cases of very carefully guarded outreach and deviations from their prideful group decorum were only ever mild at best. Throughout the impromptu course of instruction, the underlying tone was one of cold hatred and disposition. From their angle, John and I had approached their altar before rendering appropriate customs and then we defecated on it, wiping out buttocks on the shawl; this was displeasing to them. Our conversational contributions flew back and forth, packaged in professional language, but making minimal efforts to conceal the mutual disaffection for each other inside.

Our lives were threatened, I remember that. The 1st Sgt. once said something about a lack of witnesses… if something should happen in that room… us not walking out. He said “or maybe there aren’t any witnesses”, I recall verbatim, and his eyes as he spoke were unforgettable. After he said so, I remember eyeing the 28 pistols in the room and the 28 marines holstering them. I remember calmly realizing that in an outright shooting match, John and I would most surely lose and be killed, but thinking I was quick enough to maybe gun down a few of them first. Concentrating deeply, I looked throughout the room and carefully selected the targets I would dispose of in order of their priority; I would never have such a chance. The conflict that broiled between our two sides, the two of us against the twenty eight of them, never transcended the medium of spoken language. Did I, at least at first, find this a bit disappointing? Did I consider the loss of my life a price worth paying if it meant bringing a few of those wretched, soulless, despicable men down to a lifeless slumber beside me? It’s possible. Was I beginning to embrace an ideology that I hadn’t yet come to intimately know but was getting my first tastes of understanding that night, the ideology of peaceful resolution? It’s possible as well, I suppose. Respecting universal humanity and acknowledging the value of human life are lessons and styles of living that repetitiously cycle through various stages during the course of one’s life: learning, forgetting, unlearning, remembering, and relearning. Perhaps there are more; it is a difficult discipline to master. But I do know, with absolute certainty, that all thirty of us did sleep peacefully that night, whole and free of gunshot wounds, the same way we had awakened that morning (if only all veterans could be so lucky). The exchange lasted between two and three hours, an exchange restricted to words and the thoughts/emotions that had bred them. Our M-16s draped inanimately at our sides, vessels of intolerance and injustice left lifeless and silent, for these were not the tools with which we crafted our combat. We stood unarmed but for our words, warriors of the pen, not of the gun.

I remember capitalizing decisively on a faux pas opportunity the 1st Sgt. let slip once when he chastised my for citing poetry (something considered by the insecure to be feminine/homosexual and therefore placeless in the military), he said “have any other poems you’d like to share with us?” I responded that I did and drew a notebook from my cammie pocket wherein I had jotted down a poem I came across while reading Phillip Caputo’s book, A Rumor of War. For the benefit of my readers, I will retype it here in the blog, from memory:

And the end of the fight
Is a tombstone, white
With the name of the late deceased.

And the epitaph drear:
“A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East.”

I described for them what I believe to be an obvious parallel between the war Caputo wrote about, the War in Vietnam, and the war we were fighting at the present day, the War in Iraq. They dismissed the idea as preposterous, pointing out that Caputo’s credibility was questionable because he had been a commissioned officer, not having the heart to hack it in the enlistment corps. I didn’t respond; I didn’t know of a convincing way to do so in addressing rear-echelon mechanics that were safeguarded from action their entire careers but had nevertheless spoken so condescendingly and self-importantly of a platoon commander who continually saw combat in the early stages of the Vietnam War. “Just an officer…” -I remember thinking these men were depressingly destitute for passing up an opportunity to grow wise if only they could, for even just a few seconds, shelve their pride then consciously reflect. Pride is an inhibitor of understanding; perhaps this is why so many who perceive themselves as elitists in some regard are so often ignorant.

The ambitions of the Captain remain unrealized even to this day. Both John and I were honorably discharged from military service and never looked back. John got out first, but the two of us met up a couple months later at Myrtle Beach, S.C. I was happy to see his hair growing back, a symbolic indication of gradually returning to civilian life. He asked me about the goings-on of our unit back at Camp Lejeune and laughed hysterically at my cynical but truthful responses. He seemed to have developed an appreciation for by my free-spirited belligerence since that night in Iraq. We never again saw the 2,000 or so words that caused so much disruption; they were hand-written and never copied, lost forever along with any respect we might have had for their original premise: Marine Corps leadership. The reality that so few people will concede is that Marine Corps leadership is like any-other: a few good apples and a few bad apples with the majority lying somewhere in between, Nothing Special. To complete the hackneyed Marine Corps slogan, “a few good men”, I will add the second facet that so few people even know exists: “A Few Good Men, A Whole Lot of Douche Bags”. Judging from my experiences that night in Iraq, I’d estimate the standing ratio of douche bags to good men in our unit was approximately 14:1, the pistol-bearers comprising the former; myself and John, the latter.

So what changed? Simply stated: very little. The war continued, as it does even today, and all of the relating injustices that branch forth continued, multiplied even, as well. Why then the bold and loaded title? Because the changes, though very little, comprise the potential result of answering the call to defiance. Hierarchies in which John and I once were repressively enmeshed we had effectively shattered and then erased. No longer did these men view us as two little “semper fi” corporals that happily adhered to an arbitrary command structure without critically examining its merits. We, the defense department’s goons, fought an unjust war, but John and I deprived that war of one properly functioning company, inverting it into one devoid of the textbook ‘good order and discipline’ that military fanatics obsess over only by responding to that call, seeing and expressing that the entire campaign lacked that ‘good order and discipline’ itself. This is the power of standing against power, the reward for self-liberation from a pattern of thoughtless submission to illegitimate authority, the hope for a world deadlocked in the crosshairs of a self-defeating culture of consumerism and genocide. Answer the call, that is my advice for all who read my words; the changes may by difficult to discern at the macro level, but your personal gains will be of a measure astronomical. Though uncertain of the victor, we were, conceivably for the first time, certain of ourselves.

What I mean with what write, surely not to appear the sour grape, but to ask of every American citizen, rather beseech of all able-minded souls that still possess the breath of life and the strength to stand, to reflect upon, if even for only one moment, the progression through the pages of history, the state of affairs at present, and the prospect of days still to come, and to attempt to fathom this nation and its continued prestige as a world power.

This nation’s presence in the world as its supreme, uncontested power; this nation’s identity as the consumer of the worlds resources, in actuality, the consumer of the world itself; this nation’s behavior in the global community as morally groundless, purely egotistic, and boundless in its capacity to repress, intervene, augment terrorist operatives against, and crush with all its strength, other nations’ efforts at establishing democracy anywhere in the world; this nation’s people’s collective identity as flatly ignorant though selectively attentive, and basely apathetic to the most pressing of world affairs; this nation’s cultural traditions rooted in transparent myth, thin veils behind which the truth, perverse obsessive genocide and other despicable things, lurks unspeakably.

These are the realities we, whether cognizant of or not, celebrate when we declare our allegiance to the stars and stripes. The supposition that we enjoy the greatest amount of individual freedom known to any citizenry of the world is a less-than-skin-deep fallacy. Our country’s freedom, though extremely great, is enjoyed by only a select few, wielded by those few in a manner to further those freedoms at any expense. We are a state controlled by an elitist class -a tight, impermeable circle that functions nothing like a democratic society, something closer to a totalitarian theocracy.

My assertions above capture only a brief snapshot of the world as I see it, see it through all the distortion and deceit, that is; but I am nonetheless very optimistic about the future of this land. I will now share what I believe awaits this human race, its inevitably destination, that end of ends wherein our arrival is continuous, perhaps even at this very moment, but still to greet us in every passage of time that shall follow hereafter until eternity suffers its demise. That any system or institution that presumes to govern the lives of men must suffer the very same trialsome pattern of refinement through progressive deaths that each man, himself, suffers.

The psychologist Catherine Snow explains the process of the developing brain, “Brain maturation is not about the way the brain grows, it’s about the way it dies. As it ages, its neurons disappear.” The process of which she speaks, ‘synaptic pruning’, which posits that an individual’s mind will never have such a high level of neuro-connectivity as it does on the day of his/her birth. Each day that follows is a day that the connections between neurons are severed, the synapses connecting these brain cells are cut, plasticity diminishes and specialization within different domains of intelligence are defined. As a marble statue is crafted through the chiseling away of unwanted marble from the exquisite work of art that awaits its emancipation from within, the human mind is born a block of connected cells that are gradually trimmed to eventually unveil before the world that person’s individual identity.

And the development of government follows this model as well, I believe, for government must certainly be, among other things, a product of human psychology. And looking back through the pages of history, it would be difficult to argue otherwise. Systems of social order began with structures characterized by absolute power. Social reform as imposed by the people began to gradually alter the identity of their ruling entity through progressive evolution typically resembling the “trial and error” paradigm seen in nature. When this particular form of government has run its course, it will be scrapped and replaced; what replaces it must, by reasonable logic, be better. For evolution is neither liberal nor conservative, it serves not the agenda of the Democrats or the Republicans. It concerns itself merely with the survival of it species: in this case, the need and right of the individual, as child of nature, to operate within a civil social order. Happy Independence Day, all my fellow citizens of the human race; I believe that independence indeed awaits, unwritten into the script of history for it is we who must pen it into one of the forthcoming acts.

Before I responded, I thought for a moment about the presumption of the warrior as the one who kills. It seems obvious, from the muzzle of the smoking gun that has ended human life, trace backwards from one mechanical part to the next until you reach the trigger; the finger that is closest is connected to the man/woman whom you may rightfully label a murderer, right?

I wonder, though, if that is the whole story. Two strangers, one has killed the other, but not before traveling from one continent to another, enduring harsh and unforgiving living/working conditions, and indeed risking his/her own life to do so. I believe there may be some missing pieces to this puzzle that we must add before we can rightfully call it complete. Who else, for surely there must be others, is involved in this murder? You will find all accomplices in much the same manner that you discovered the triggerman: from the origins (politicians/government officials) of a conflict that has ended numerous human lives, trace downward through the social structure until you reach the very bottom (the citizens of a ‘participatory’ government, the enablers of the most influential world power to act); the closest able-to-vote, law-abiding, tax-paying, suburban middle-class mother is the passive, behind-the-scenes culprit of the 1st-person killer.

Consider the two of these people; their similarities are fascinating. The soldier is obeying orders because he must do so in order to provide for his family. The civilian is paying taxes and spending residual income, activities that drive the economy, because she must do so in order to provide for her family. The soldier does not have time to be critical of his orders and besides, doing so might jeopardize the stability he has established within the military. The civilian does not have time to be politically aware and active and besides, doing research about things like corporate interests in truth-distortion and the nature of the economic vote could uncover uncomfortable realities that might jeopardize the stability she has established within the American culture of consumerism. They’re like twins separated at birth! -their differing circumstances make them appear different, but they are cut from the same stone.

So who is to blame for the man they killed, government? That’s impossible; government does not physically exist. It has no ulterior motives or evil character-tainting sentiments. Is it the elected officers of government? That’s possible but unlikely; their blame, so far as I can tell, must be equal to that of the soldier’s and the civilian’s. Many of the defensive alibis you will hear from government officials are identical to those of the other two: providing for their families, inadequate time to sharply consider the wholeness of things, desire to avert jeopardizing their stability, and these alibis are, I believe, not illegitimate if the others’ alibis are acceptable. Is it human nature? -Moral impurity? -Some inherent, destructive antisocial pathology that is ingrained or acquired during infancy? I felt these were unlikely explanations as well, for the world must have been at peace before its people were at war, but I ran out of time; I had to respond to her questions lest I be considered rude. For the time, I figured our hands must all share some of the strangers’ blood; remove us all from the scenario and the man would still be alive.

I responded to her questions with a condensed version of what you’ve read above, maintaining eye contact with her, the person I thought I hadn’t a thing in common with, and thinking about the families we killed together. I remember the sun was brutally hot that afternoon but we had discovered refuge in the shade of a towering tree. I watched her two beautiful daughters running around barefoot in the tall grass, safe from all harms I could imagine -safe because no nation in the world behaves like ours, behaves like us.

Although the persistence of these atrocities is undeniable, defined “necessary for the cause of freedom” from the perspective of the war’s supporters (whatever that means), any concerned citizen with a desire for resolution ought to wonder if the combat-based dialogue ever indeed “progresses”. The violence in Iraq seems to occur and recur in cycles -and due to the absence of any diplomatic efforts at attaining peace, it is the only hope of achieving resolve- but if you consider that each cycle is identical in its form, function, and objective as the cycle that preceded it, there truly is no reason to believe the dialogue/violence will ever cease. Why would it? Why will two groups of individuals, two groups who never speak but continually kill one another, suddenly stop? There must be some measure of variation between the isolated conversational evolutions (roadside bombs answered by laser guided bombs; assaulting convoys answered by assaulting civilians) otherwise there is no reason to believe they will ever reach a mutual end; the pattern is not linear -approaching a conclusion, it is circular -approaching itself.

The media focus a great deal of attention to the death of Zarqawi and ask what impact his death will have on the state of affairs in Iraq (they no longer have the stomach to reuse the worn out line “it brings us a step closer to conclusion”) and the answer, as clearly offered by al Qaeda, is probably the same as if you’d posed the question dropping Zarqawi’s name and replacing it with Salvador Guerrero (last American killed in O.I.F.): none. The loss of a single man does not affect the legitimacy nor the nobility, and therefore, not the perpetuation of related activity, of the cause for which he died -not Zarqawi’s death, not Guerrero’s either. The only means by which the ongoing pattern of bloody exchanges between the U.S. and Arab combatants can ever hope reach an end is if they are approaching one through dialogue, whether that dialogue is peaceful (as prescribed by international law) or violent (as demanded necessary but never rationalized by the current administration).