Monday, January 10, 2005

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Soldier cleared in drowning case

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Soldier cleared in drowning case

Who the hell knows who the insurgents are now. They could be Al Queda, Hussein loyalists, Sunni, Shi'ite, whatever. They may or may not even be Islamic extremists. But they all see themselves as freedom fightrers, opposing an occupational tyranny that could really give half a damn about them.

When we excuse the actions of our soldiers overseas, we do several things. We invite the harsh critisims of or enemies and allies alike. We play into the fears of ordinariy citizens that fear we are in Iraq to take oil from the ground at gunpoint. We add fuel to the fire to those who would harm us, and we legitimize the prejudices they hold against us.

The sad fact of the matter is that we, as a country, really don't seem to give a shit. Two things should have happened after Sept. 11, 2001 - we should have dissected the event to its smallest pieces and addressed the shortcomings that allowed such an event to happen, and we should had debated openly why someone thought that the only way to get the American public's atention was to try to park a plane inside a building. Instead, we put duct tape on our windows and beat up on the Arab-Americans and immigrants for the crime of being Arabs.

We are numb to the news because of overexposure, so we say. We disregard that there are people that have become numb because it's their reality. We simply turn the channel.

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