Obama may be Cute and Cuddly, but he’s not Housebroken

I had kittens when I was young. When you first get a kitten they are so cute and cuddly. But they pee and crap all over the place until you house train them. How do you do that? There is one very fast and fool proof way. Rub their noses in their crap. All it takes is once and they never crap on that place again. Rub their noses in it and then put them outside in the dirt. They make the connection.

Our country and our leaders need to have their noses rubbed in the crap they do. They need to take a good long look at the death, pain, suffering and destruction these wars are. Look at the lost limbs, the dead infants and toddlers, the devastated families, the broken bodies of our GIs, their broken families, their lost wages of never being able to work again. Take a good long hard look at those pictures, show them to the American people and then once again. tell us why these wars are so necessary. Tell us why wars that proliferate terrorism, instead of quelling it, are necessary. These wars are a liability to freedom. They motivate families of the innocent victims of our racist military to become terrorists against the U.S. military. If the U.S. were occupied and our families killed, we would do the very same. Our troops don’t protect our freedom. They endanger it.

The President has stated he will not release photos of torture carried out by the U.S. The argument is that this release would endanger the lives of Americans. Meanwhile, it’s obvious the photos would implicate the U.S. and the Obama administration, even though the torture was carried out in the previous administration. The wars continue. GITMO is scheduled to close, but it’s still open. Renegade marines loyal to Rumsfeld continue to carry out atrocities against Afghan civilians. Bush is gone but his policies still linger like the stench of a week old litter box.

^{AP photographers, Eddie Adams’ photograph of Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém on February 1, 1968 and Nick Ut’s photo of a naked 9 year old, who’s clothes were burned off by napalm, taken June 8, 1972}

The problem here is that the truth is censored. This is the policy of the U.S. military and it is how they get away with the war crimes they commit. If people saw what goes on in war, as they did in Vietnam, these wars would be stopped. There are two photographs that are purported to have stopped the Vietnam war, one by Eddie Adams of a Vietnam officer executing an alleged Vietcong officer. The other is by Nick Ut of a naked 9 year old girl running toward the camera to flee a South Vietnamese napalm attack. During that war the American public saw weekly graphic photos in Life magazine of U.S. servicemen with their guts blown out, or their arms and legs shot off. The nightly news reported the body count. We see very little of this today.

The war in Afghanistan is very much like the war in Vietnam. As Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich testified to Congress, when he quoted The 25 Year War, a book by Gen. Bruce Palmer written in 1984,

“With respect to Vietnam, our leaders should have known that the American people would not stand still for a protracted war, of an indeterminate nature, and with no foreseeable end to the U.S. commitment.”

Bacevich continued,

Today exactly 25 years later, we once again find ourselves mired in a protracted war of an indeterminate nature, with no foreseeable end to the U.S. commitment. Just as in the 1960s we possessed neither the wisdom nor the means needed to determine the fate of Southeast Asia, so today, we posses neither the wisdom, nor the means, necessary to determine the fate of the greater middle east.

The horrors of war, if revealed, and when they were revealed in the past, make us realize how wrong these wars are, and allow no refuge from the truth by our warmongering military complex.

There are pictures of war, of the civilian atrocities, injuries and deaths, along with the same pain and suffering our troops endure in these wars, for which they even admit they know not why they are there. Many such pictures are censored by the military. But some get through. What we are seeing with the administration’s censorship of the torture is more of the same. They censor these photos for political self survival and to keep these wars going. They know if these photos get out the people will not stand for these wars to continue. The rhetoric about such photos endangering lives may hold some truth. But a long protracted war will certainly bring on much more death, pain, and suffering and outlandish war expense. If the release of these pictures stops the wars sooner, an obvious likely result, then their release will save hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives, including thousands of U.S. GIs and the devastations to their families.

Photos of Iraq and Afghanistan Wars on The Stop War Project Network

Iraq is an illegal preemptive racist genocide. It started that way, and it continues that way. The fact that we plan to exit Iraq in another year or so does not make it any less illegal. As long as Americans are there, they are engaged in an illegal preemptive occupation, forsaking the lives of innocent civilians as a matter of policy. Afghanistan has the very same policies. We are there under the pretense of fighting the terrorists who committed 9-11. Those terrorists, Al Qaeda, are not in Afghanistan. They are in Pakistan. So why are we dropping bombs on Afghanistan?

We would never stand for our police to drop bombs on neighborhoods in the U.S. just to make sure they kill some gang bangers, forsaking the lives of the innocent. Yet we allow our military to do this very thing day after day as a matter of policy. Why? Because the victims are not Americans. They are Muslims, Iraqis, and Afghans. No matter that they include innocent men, women, children, and infants. We don’t care because they are not Americans. That is a racist policy. That makes America a racist nation. If you can live with this, then you are racist.