"An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately." ~ Zogby, February 28, 2006
We can not spread the democracy that we do not have.
13 comments:
It is not enough that you served with honor
It is not enough that you died for the cause
It is only enough that you are most willing
To die over and over until death has no loss
`til it finds passage through the vein of self
Torturing you through its very pounding
How dreaded and parched is your termination
How outrageous and bloodied damp are theirs
How might we know the horror of your plight
Without looking deeper than the beggar’s eyes
Without examining infinitely the empty corpse
Without narrowing our glance at rib and tongue
It is not enough that we serve a mighty tower
It is not enough that we die at its engulfing us
How might we know when it has come `round
Come to collect our very bones for the sacrifice
Will it place marks upon our shoulder, forehead
It is not enough that you served with solid honor
How might we know without ownership of you
That you gave up everything of you to save her
How might we know unable then to see the person
It is not enough that you, sir, were willing to die
It is not enough to lay claim to that and that alone
It is only enough that you are one most willing
Death to repeat within you and you evaporate
To die again and again and again and...
Excellent post my friend. Love the poster-art...
Mellissa, what a powerful post. You summed it up with just one sentence. I'm pretty sure that there aren't many countries that envy the fascist dictatorship that we have.
Democracy at the end of a gun is not democracy.
You are absolutely right.
"We cannot spread democracy that we do not have."
Sheer perfection.
Wery well said, MsL.
Support the troops. Bring them home.
We can, however, bring the joys of The Bush Economic Miracle to Iraq-and indeed, we have.
In much the samw way Chimpy policies gutted domestic export businesses and turned energy policy over to the megacorps selling energy, in Iraq the transformation is right along Chimpy lines. They've gone from a net exporter of agricultural products to an importer of almost all foodstuffs, and their oil sector is being ladled out to Chimpy's buddies. A basically self-sufficient nation in many ways is now a third-world beggar state. But Chimpletons can't figure out why they hate us!
Heckuva job, Chimpy.
America has stated plainly and loudly what they want. But who's listening? Pelosi? Bush? Cheney? ANY of the so called "Democrats" we worked so hard to get elected?
The oil deal is getting closer to being signed. Maybe then......
This is a very unpopular war. I know that we will never succed in Iraq, at least not with this strategy. Visit Kernals are poppin. It is by a soldier.
I listened to Wesley Clark on Democracy Now yesterday. He was asked about the soldier that wouldn't go to Iraq to fight. He said the man was courageous, but that he had to be punished by the law because the war is not Illegal.
Clark said the war was illegitimate, but not illegal.
It was our own Congess that put the stamp of approval on it when it started. Even if they had the srong information or bad intelligence, they approved it.
Now, they must stand and disapprove it. Stop the funding, call an end. Make bushco negotiate peace and stop the killing. If congress won't do that, the war rages on.
Because we the people allowed congress to let this war begin, we are partially at fault. We must support the troops in any way we can.
Benefits for returning veterans and an end to the war is the best support.
From Edward R Murrow...
“The Senator asked, "Upon what meat does this, our Caesar, feed?" Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare's Caesar, he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
...We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
...We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age.
We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
….Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
I wish we could end this senseless war...where is the freedom of our land when we cannot end the corrupt government?
Let's keep those voices of opposition loud and not be in fear of our message :-)
Great post!
That's why I could never figure out why those of us who want the troops to come home are said to "not support the troops".
It sounds like the men and women over there would want the same thing, so how am I being unsupportive?
By the way, they also like to call them "troops" because it doesn't sound like "people".
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