There is, but frankly it’s pretty unappealing. I’d rather interview the dead than be one. I hate returning to my regular Monday posts on a down note, but see no other way. It’s not that my off time was unproductive–got the major revision of TIES THAT BLIND finished and will begin the second revision after my publishing work partner re-reads the book and we review her comments. So, as far as writing goes, I’m pretty pleased. And, in fact, I had a much cheerier post planned for my return.
So why the down?
I read the newspaper every morning. And every morning I read about another fifty dead Iraqis. Another car bomb in Afghanistan. Obama ready to drone Syria—which most of Congress and even more of our population oppose. And then he catches hell from talking heads and those same opposing congressmen for agreeing to a negotiation rather than a bombing.
Ah-h-h, bombing—and they call baseball the “national pastime.” Since the Korean War we have bombed the following countries AND a city in the United States:
- Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
- Indonesia 1958
- Cuba 1959-1961
- Congo 1964
- Laos 1964-73
- Vietnam 1961-73
- Cambodia 1969-70
- Grenada 1983
- Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
- Libya 1986. 2011
- El Salvador 1980s
- Nicaragua 1980s
- Iran 1987
- Panama 1989
- Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)
- Kuwait 1991
- Somalia 1993
- Bosnia 1994, 1995
- Sudan 1998
- Afghanistan 1998, 2001-present
- Yugoslavia 1999
- Yemen 2002, , 2009, 2011
- Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis)
- Iraq 2003-present
- Pakistan 2007-present
- Somalia 2007-8, 2011
Plus:
Iran April 2003 – hit by US missiles during bombing of Iraq, killing at least one person.
Pakistan 2002-03 – bombed by US planes several times as part of combat against the Taliban and other opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan.
China 1999 – – Its heavily bombed embassy in Belgrade is legally Chinese territory, and it appears the bombing was no accident.
France 1986 – After the French government refused the use of its air space to US warplanes headed for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes were forced to take another, longer route and, when they reached Libya they bombed so close to the French embassy that the building was damaged and all communication links were knocked out.
Philadelphia May 13, 1985 – A bomb dropped by a police helicopter burned down an entire block, some 60 homes destroyed, 11 dead, including several small children. The police, mayor’s office, and FBI were colluded to “evict” a black organization called MOVE from one house and the effort got out of hand
(http://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/united-states-bombings-of-other-countries)
Do the math. In the fifty-four years since we stopped dropping bombs in the Korean War, we spent 36 of them dropping bombs on someone else. Or, if you want to reduce the fraction, it comes down to a very disturbing super-majority of two-thirds. I thought about researching the number of civilian casualties now simply known as “collateral damage”, but frankly, I was afraid I’d throw up. And I really hate to puke.
I imagine there are people who might be able to find rationalizations for some—or even all the above. And I say go for it because it sure doesn’t look like anything is about to change. We might as well have “reasons” for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. We ought to have “reasons” for a military force greater than that of damn near every other country combined. Let alone, “reasons” for not spending that unconscionable amount of money on giving our kids great schooling and healthcare.
Bottom line; we’re still taking scalps.
Some of my disgust probably comes because of age. I’m getting closer and closer to “the way out of here” and the older I get, the more violence sickens me. To have my homeland be a serial killer on steroids is excruciating. I’ve been alive through all the above and shudder to think how much more “collateral damage” I’ll live through during the rest of my life.
It would be easy to simply blame politicians, generals, national security councils. Too easy. We the people allow, encourage these mass murders. And I see nothing on the horizon that gives me much hope for change. Hell, the Socialist French President was extolling the virtues of bombing Syria.
Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to live in a country where bombs rain down day after day. Or even the threat of it. I have a Palestinian friend who once told me the first word he ever learned was “bomba.” The very idea of spending every day and night literally waiting for the bomb to drop is almost unfathomable. But in a country where every car’s backfire sends people scrambling for shelter, it’s a whole different experience. Those of us who are old enough to remember “duck and cover” probably remember the apprehension that came with the drill—and that was merely practice. As tragic, frightening, and painful as 9/11 was, it doesn’t equal the slaughter and fear we’ve inflicted upon innocents throughout the past fifty-four years. So many others have awakened every morning wondering how many of their family members are still alive. Not something our own children are forced to cope with.
Although I know a lot of people who feel the way I do, I still experience myself as A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. I go about my daily life, worrying about my relatively insignificant problems, then each morning coffee get jolted back to crazy. Only it’s apparently not crazy. It’s our country and the world in which we live and this is why I felt compelled to write this post.
I am, however, pleased to be writing my Just sayin’ column again. I missed doing it and missed the comments from people I know and those I don’t. And while I do feel intensely about politics and the United States’s role in this insanity, my column will once again tackle a variety of subjects, ideas, art, entertainment–as well as more INTERVIEWS WITH THE DEAD. Just sayin’ will not be an every week political rant–but I gotta tell you, thems there some low hanging fruit.
The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life-–Jane Addams