HELIOLITH

Three days have passed, and the U.S. media is pandering to the plight of our Marines in Iraq. Yes, I pay taxes, and therefore I support the military. Therefore the blood of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of U.S. troops is on my hands also.

Update/clarification: I admire Saheli as she salutes the Marines for their honorable allegiance to the goverment, but I cannot myself find that same respect in their allegiance to a country so far from righteousness, so far from honor. I honor them as human beings, but their violent assault that is based on geo-political expansion and fallacious political reasoning is a betrayal of humanity.

In a country that just voted a war-criminal in as president for a second term, I am pondering what my options are. Go read this Iraqi girl’s report after seeing the (uncensored) version of the shooting on Al-Jazeera. Oh but we Americans couldn’t handle the footage I guess? Al-Jazeera also reports civilians having charged the U.S. troops with more executions of the wounded and with dragging bodies behind their tanks. Riverbend was eating food on the 3rd day of a muslim holiday with her family when she saw the footage,

We sat, horrified, stunned with the horror of the scene that unfolded in front of our eyes. It’s the third day of Eid and we were finally able to gather as a family- a cousin, his wife and their two daughters, two aunts, and an elderly uncle. E. and my cousin had been standing in line for two days to get fuel so we could go visit the elderly uncle on the final day of a very desolate Eid. The room was silent at the end of the scene, with only the voice of the news anchor and the sobs of my aunt. My little cousin flinched and dropped her spoon, face frozen with shock, eyes wide with disbelief, glued to the television screen, “Is he dead? Did they kill him?” I swallowed hard, trying to gulp away the lump lodged in my throat and watched as my cousin buried his face in his hands, ashamed to look at his daughter.

To get a full picture of how many Iraqis must feel her full story (not long) is really worth a full read. Another marine was quoted as saying, “I would have shot the insurgent too. Two shots to the head,” said Sergeant Nicholas Graham, 24, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “You can’t trust these people [sic]. He should not be investigated. He did nothing wrong.” We are so sheltered from the realities of this war. These people are defending their homeland against us, the aggressors, the destroyers, ransacking their cities, killing their men, women, children, families, for what? You try to remain “unbiased” and buy the party line about “defeating insurgency” and “eradicating rebels” is this really about idealogies? Or is it about control and dominance? How many Americans would stand by and watch a military occupation without taking up arms? Can you blame people for wanting to defend their homeland?

I’d really like not to be focussing on this right now, and I would, if you can answer me this: What’s more important that drawing international attention to this downward spiraling tragedy of a meddlesome, self-interested, exercise in vigilanteism? How many more must die before we retreat from this fiasco of military intervention? Our president is failing us, by sending thousands of troops into harms way when it isn’t necesary, or even justified by any stretch of the imagination.