You could be right. I am profoundly disturbed by the general numbness, denial, dissociation. The wars may have to get very bloody and horrible before anything changes.
Obama campaigned on escalating and "winning" the war in Afghanistan. He then ordered a build up of troops. Now it is going poorly and, not surprisingly, more people are dying. The general is trying to do what the administration asked him to do, which is what the military does -- follow the orders of the president, and I guess, the Congress, which seems to have almost no power anymore. The general is trying to "win" the war, which, within a miliary paradigm, would require more weapons and more troops. The problem is the paradigm was all wrong from the beginning, and Obama never should have employed it. He should have read more, listened more, and thought more deeply before sending troops, many of whom have already been to Iraq multiple times. It is a disgrace.
Historically, "whore" is a term used to refer to women who have sex for money. The situations in which "we" now find ourselves were not created or pepetuated by women who have sex for money. The comparison is not apt, in my opinion.
Tell everyone you know -- Turn off the TV and think for yourself.
"Fathers and grandfathers," with the silence and complicity of mothers and grandmothers, helped create the violent disasters we now face. I remember in my readings of WWI and WWII that both were begun and ripened with deceit, profiteering, racism, paranoia, ignorance, hatred, objectifying others, and misogyny. I agree that fearlessness and courage will be necessary, but we must cultivate other qualities that the ones that generated past wars and continue to generate new ones.
Cut off the TV and read only independent media --
www.democracynow.org, here,
www.afterdowningstreet.org, others, Also Jeremy Scahill is a fearless, compasisonate, and intellectual reporter and writer. There is hope when I read people like him. We have been taken over by abstract and manipulative language, but we can wrestle out and keep wrestling out.
Why don't we hear the details of this article in schools, churches, and around the dinner table? Why are people so resistant to this thinking? We should all question language like "customs of war," "just war." and similar terms. How can you make rules or regulate such barbarism? Don't we see time and time again that it doesn't work logically or spiritually? See the stories of the new killers on the base in CO who have returned from war; of ordinary people who torture and justify it with thorough language; even Obama, everyone's "nice guy," easily sending thousands more Americans to repeated soul-murdering deployments to more and more war.
I like this article and think we should all question the silences of churches on war, violence, and torture -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza. Makes me wonder why the churches exist if they don't speak up. McGovern's quote of St. Augustine at the end is troubling, however. Wasn't St. Augustine one of the first author's of "just war" idea?
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