- There may have, perhaps, been a time when America was
a land of at least some brave people. although arguably a nation that celebrates
as heroic a history that features lots of people with modern guns and cannons
conquering and destroying another people who were living in the stone age
and fighting back with bows and arrows, and that built its economy on
the backs of men and women held in chains certainly has a tough case to
make. What is clear though is that there is nothing brave about modern-day
America.
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- Whatever we were, we have degenerated into a nation
that finds glory in deploying the most advanced high-tech, high-explosive
weaponry against some of the world's poorest people, that justifies killing
women and children, even by the dozens, even if by doing so it manages
to kill one alleged "enemy" fighter.
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- A nation that exalts remote-controlled robot drone aircraft
that can attack targets in order to avoid risking soldiers' lives, even
though by doing so, it is predictable that many, many innocent people will
be killed.
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- A nation that is proud to have developed weapons of mass
slaughter, from shells laden with phosphorus that burns to death, indiscriminately,
those who are contacted by the splattered chemical to elaborately baroque
anti-personnel fragmentation bombs that spread cute little colored objects
designed to look like everything from toys to food packages, but which
upon contact explode, releasing whirling metal or plastic fleschettes which
shred human flesh on contact.
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- The Marines who battled their way up the hillsides of
Iwo Jima, or the soldiers who struggled ashore under withering fire on
the beaches of Normandy would be appalled at what passes for heroic behavior
in today's American military. But that's not the worst of it.
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- The worst of it is back home in the USA, where millions
of citizens who bitch about their taxes and who pay as little attention
as possible to the fact that their nation is deeply mired in two wars,
routinely refer to those who do their fighting for them as heroes, but
then want nothing to do with the consequences of those wars (or for that
matter the people who actually fight them)...
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- For the rest of this story, please go to:
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- http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/317
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