I wasn't old enough to understand the politics of the Vietnam war. I do remember the affect the Vietnam war seemed to have on the United States. I remember Kent State, and that Americans had killed American children on a university campus over a war being fought in a foreign country for reasons that no one seemed to really understand. I remember watching the anti-war protests on the news. The police would stand between the anti-war protesters and others who lined the street screaming at the tops of their lungs, calling the protesters "commies," and "traitors," and "reds." I remember listening to a debate on the war. One person argued that unless the US defeated the Viet Cong that the world would come under communist rule. I remember when we evacuated Vietnam, and reading later about the massacres of Vietnamese people by their own people, also about the Cambodians who were killed, all after the war, and by their won people, revenge for their support of the US. Back here at home, it was life as usual. School, church and washing dishes. No communist takeover. We had killed a lot of people, and a lot of people had died because they believed in us, and a lot of our young men had died, and returned home disabled, and insane, and we had spent millions of dollars, and for what? What was gained by the Vietnam war?
Today, our country is again being torn apart by a war being fought in a foreign country. This time it is Iraq. Again we have Americans calling one another traitors, and commies, and saying that if we bring our troops home that Al-Qadea will follow us back here, and the world is going to be overtaken by Islamo fascists. There has not been another Kent state, thank God, but there is a Valerie Plame, an American intelligence operative who was betrayed by her government who leaked her name to the media, exposing the fact that she was a CIA agent working to track and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't al-Qadea or the Vietcong who betrayed her, ironically it was the same White House who told us that we must invade Iraq to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Our government turned upon itself, to undermine a person who was doing peacefully, what they claimed they could only do militarily.
To those who claim that people who oppose this war in Iraq are emboldening the enemy, and that if we bring home the troops, Al-Qadea will come to America, I say "Bullshit!" and I'm no pinko commie faggot, and I'm no Al-Qadea sympathizer either. I am an American. One of the people who believed the government's lies about Iraq and WMD, and who wanted to find a rock to climb under when WMD were not found. I am an American, one of those who watched with tears in their eyes when the Iraqi people, fooled like the rest of us, risked their lives to go and vote for an interim and then a permanent government that was supposed to end the US occupation, and the illegal war. I am now one of those who hate this war.
I hate this war because it is not really a war. They choose to call the invasion a war because it suggests that we had a reason to invade Iraq, and that the Iraqis were our enemies prior to the invasion which is not true. They say war so they can invoke war powers and activate the Commander in Chief, invade people's privacy, tag people enemy combatants and torture them until they are broken and insane without accountability, and rob us of our civil rights and liberties. I hate this war because they lied to the American people and convinced us that there was proof that Iraq had WMD. They convinced our Congress that Iraq posed an immanent threat to the US. None of it was true. I hate this war because it caused us to kill more than 300,000 innocent Iraqi people, and more than 3000 innocent American soldiers and Marines. I hate this war because they have spent billions of hard earned US tax dollars to fight this war, and we don't even know who they are fighting. Who is the enemy in Iraq? Could it be us?
They say "support the troops" by sending more of our children there to fight the phantom enemy, for an unknowable cause. Our children are being killed and maimed for no reason. Yet,they repeat the mantra "support the troops" which means send them to save face for the liars who led them off to start a war against a people who had nothing to do with 9/11. We bombed Iraq regularly, and illegally sanctioned, starving more than 500,000 of their children even before the invasion, and before 9/11. Whose face will our dead soldiers save? Surely not America's blood drenched face. Our face cannot be saved until it is cleaned, and it cannot be cleaned until we end our war against Iraq, and allow peace to come to Iraq. We must leave Iraq because we are the war. We brought the war to Iraq, and we are the war.
The people hate the war because it means that we were not only fooled, but that our deceivers are succeeding. Everyday they are killing more Americans and more Iraqis, and we don't know how to stop them. We hate this war because we hate the liars that took us to war, and we want this war to end. We are the war, and we want to stop warring. We want to make peace with, and for Iraq. We want Iraq to heal, and to recover from a mistaken war. A war that began as part of a wish list for Israel written by the likes of Benyamin Netanyahu, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. It was a racist, and ugly, dirty and illegal idea, that was followed by a racist, ugly, and illegal war.
Support our troops by bringing them home. Support our troops by putting an end to the ugly lie that caused them to be killed. Iraq's crime is that it exists and is Arab. We must stop this war. We cannot allow the lie to succeed, or cause more loss of life and limb, or to cost another dollar. Shame on the lying politicians who have watched as our children die, and be maimed for no reason. End the war in Iraq. America needs peace! No more American blood for the Zionist Empire!
