I consider myself a patriot. There was an odd feller around in the late 1700's who was called, at least once, "that dirty little atheist". He wasn't really (more Deist/agnostic), but he wrote something called The Rights of Man. You can read it here. His name was Thomas Paine. I would hope the time would eventually come when most people could truthfully say of themselves, along with Paine, "The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." Obviously, we are nowhere near such an enlightened state, as a nation or as a species. Meanwhile, as long as patriotism - to a point - seems fairly reasonable, I am one. I like the ideal of the Oath of Enlistment into the US Armed Forces. It says:
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962). Source.
Okay, so I'd drop the goofy "so help me God" part, and I'd have to look long and hard at what might happen if there were a clear contradiction between the first two clauses and the third... what if "obey[ing] the orders of the President..." etc., was a violation of "defend[ing] the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"? How many potential military recruits do you suppose ask such a thing of the recruiter...or think of it before they get to that point? In the video I will point you to, a guy says something like, "When you are in country, you really don't have any choice, people are shooting at you, etc." No kidding. That's why you should think of these things BEFORE you sign yourself up to be in a military.
You might remember seeing George Bush, shortly after 9/11 happened, standing at Ground Zero shouting into a megaphone something like, "Soon, the people who brought down these buildings will feel us all". At that moment there was probably a collective "Huuahhh!" from most of the American population. I was thinking, "Well, not really, cuz they're kinda dead...vaporized even... by the impact and fire of a passenger jet slamming into a building at several hundred miles an hour." We were told that the nation of Iraq and it's sadistic leader (one of the many the US had installed there over the decades), one Saddam Houssein was behind this attack and they would shortly pay dearly. They did. They still do, as well as the people of Afghanistan and now Pakistan, and likely soon, Iran. But America has paid, and continues to pay, and will pay in the future, just as dearly.
Later we were told that neither Saddam Hussein nor the nation of Iraq had anything to do with a group called al Qaeda or 9/11, that the men who flew the planes into the buildings were Saudis...from Saudi Arabia. Well, never mind, we saw to it that Saddam was hanged anyway cuz he was a bad man. And besides, his name was Hussein. See video.
And did we attack Saudi Arabia? Well, of course not, that would be silly.The family of our president at the time, the Bush family, has long had very close ties with King Faud and the rest of the Saudi Royal Family. Oh, and that bin Laden guy....the one man that the most sophisticated intelligence and military operations on the planet can't seem to find? His family, the bin Ladens, is said to be second only to the Royal Family in wealth and power in Saudi Arabia...and naturally, people with that much money and power are also close friends with the Royals and the Bushs. Check out The Bush-Saudi Connection.
So...we DID attack a couple of nations that had nothing to do with 9/11, we did NOT attack a nation our government says was responsible for 9/11. You gol-dern pinko commie bastard, this is AMURKA! and when the president says fight, we fight! Uh-huh. I try hard to not be an all or nothing guy...sometimes there is middle ground. I can't truthfully say I don't support ALL the troops. The ones in this video? They seem supportable to me. There is a video I would hope you would take the time to watch. I'm including a trailer for it below. Can't embed the whole thing but I will give a link. I was gonna embed it but I got the message at Youtube that NBC had pulled permission to view it because of copyright issues.
You know one reason I support this kind of soldier? Seems a lot of them finally got a clue that all enemies of the US or its people or its Constitution are not necessarily in other countries; not necessarily gooks and ragheads; not necessarily in fatigues or dress uniforms. Sometimes enemies are (gasp!) "domestic"! Sometimes they are handsome American boy-next-door types, with five thousand dollar Gucci suits. You can watch the whole video at this link:
The Ground Truth: After The Killing Ends
My friend Tex Shelters also has a nice blog on this subject here.
TRB
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