Cindy Sheehan: Take This Empire and Shove It!

Echo In Light

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Tue Apr-13-10 12:52 PM
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Cindy Sheehan: Take This Empire and Shove It!

Dear Reader—raise your hand if you don’t know that atrocities happen in war. Now put your hands in the air like you just don’t care.

Psychologist, Robert Jay Lifton, who is a pioneer in the study of what drives otherwise “normal” human beings to commit war crimes calls war: “an atrocity-producing situation.” Atrocities have been committed in every war since the beginning of time, and the sad thing is the barbarity hasn’t decreased. Recently a US soldier tried to justify to me committing atrocities because the "British did it to the Native Americans" in the French-Indian War. This soldier was essentially agreeing with Lifton.

Since war is an atrocity in the first place, war crimes will be committed, period. In many of my speeches soon after Casey was killed, I used to call war “a failure of imagination.” Now I know that’s crap—war is imagined by and for the war machine and gladly perpetrated by its toady elected officials and promoted by its toady media.

This week, several things have upset me about our genocidal foreign policy, but I can’t decide what upsets me more—the genocidal foreign policy or the fact that most of my fellow USAins are sheeple who blindly follow (or not follow) whoever is infecting the Oval Office depending on whether that person has a (D) or an (R) behind his name.

I have spoke in dozens of venues since Obama was inaugurated promoting my e-book: Myth America: 20 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution. Everywhere I speak, someone will ask me this question, and it is almost always this exact question, worded in almost the exact same way: “I didn’t agree with George Bush getting us into these wars, but don’t you agree that we have to stay in Afghanistan to protect the women?” When I ask the person if he/she believed that propaganda when Bush was infesting the Oval Office, he/she says with 100% regularity: “No.” And of course, Afghan women were Mrs. George (43) Bush’s greatest cause. Now we have “peace” groups parroting the same line. Sheeple live in Red AND Blue states. The Robber Class counts on at least ½ of the public being in full compliance with its crimes, that’s why they get away with these crimes on a daily basis.

How’s this for “protecting women?” On February 12th, US Special Forces attacked a home near Gardez and in that attack three women were killed. Two of the women were pregnant. Our military claimed that the women were stabbed to death before the US raid, but the truth finally came out—US Special Forces who subsequently tried to dig the bullets out of the women to hide their hideous crimes killed them, too. Cover up—the specialty of The Empire and The Pope. How can we believe anything that comes out of the mouth of Stainly McChrystalMeth much less that the US is “minimizing” civilian deaths?

At the end of last year, eight Afghan students in Ghazi Khan were handcuffed and executed by US troops. Presumably, these eight students were sons of Afghan women — and where is the righteous anger in this country over our military executing school children? I guess if Tiger Woods would keep Little Tiger in his pants, our toady media might report these outrages —but probably not. When I hear about our troops raping 14 year-old girls in Iraq, or executing Afghan schoolboys, I want to burn something down—but I would rightfully be considered “crazy” if I gave into that temporary impulse—while some US troops (in not-so-isolated incidents) behave like sociopathic maniacs and we don't consider them crazy at all and, in fact, we are supposed to “support" them.

And what about this Cult of Troop Worship? Even the antiwar movement is so careful to not criticize anything The Troops do. We are constantly admonished to “hate the war, but love the warrior.” I am sorry, but I don’t even like that word, “warrior.” It implies that our children join the military to commit war crimes, but we all know that most of our children join for education benefits, or health insurance. “Warrior” also implies that we live in a War State—which we do—but the antiwar movement does not have to use the nomenclature of The Empire. Most of us teach our children the difference between right and wrong, but when our young people become The Troops they receive a thorough brainwashing and get sent off to murder and rape children and pregnant women. Our kids become hired goons for imperial greed—more like victims of a system that neglects everyone’s essential needs, than heroes.

Continued:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25200.htm