Fort Hood's Nidal Hasan – or – Why Today's Soldiers Go Crazy

Excerpt: “Schizophrenic behavior” is defined as behavior which is motivated by contradictory or conflicting principles, or which results from the co-existence of disparate or antagonistic activities. In other words, when your ideals frequently conflict with each other, and when your actions feel equally conflicted, it can drive you nuts. Fallible human attempts to live up to one’s ethics, values, standards and goals can make even the best soldiers feel schizophrenic.
Excerpt: When soldiers from any nation come home from their wars, of course they have trouble rectifying all they've participated in, with their peacetime ethical, spiritual and religious beliefs about what it means to be humane, caring, good—all the many understandings parents and teachers carefully taught them about what makes relationships work, and what make life worth living. Many returning war veterans basically go insane for years. Others are unstable or crazy for the rest of their lives. Continue reading

Battlefields, Monuments, Graveyards, and the Glorious Call to War!

(Excerpt): We need our many battlefields, our monuments, and our gravesites to some day help us remember, above all else, the monstrous insanity that once was war. One person at a time, one conflict at a time, one battlefield at a time, we are all finally learning to rise above war, and to become builders of peace. Continue reading

Last-Minute Dithering Before I Cast My Ballot

(Excerpt): Alternatively, if we continue to spend $2 billion a week warring on Iraq, we can:
“have our troops come under attack every 15 minutes;
spawn new legions of terrorists who rise up against the overspending;
destroy what was left of the Iraqi infrastructure;
create a civil war for our own amusement and then shake our heads at their violence;
traumatize the lives of innocent Iraqi children;
kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people;
secretly set up state-of-the-art torture chambers;
use lots of toxic chemicals to ensure that the land and water are destroyed;
test our latest weaponry on real live targets;
illegally imprison innocent people for years;
listen to the fear spin that is the Bush administration mantra;
watch our national integrity rapidly erode, and
feel the disintegration of our own humanity as we turn a blind eye to the crimes we commit.
Now is not the time to turn that blind eye or to remain silent. Fear does not have to rule, and peace is a cost-effective and far less deadly alternative.”* Continue reading

Disgusting-Type-of-Liberal Unfairly Spews Appallingly Naive Garbage About Haditha, 'Military Justice', Occupations, Peace, and Other Outrages….

(excerpt): If the two letters could have been republished side-by-side, I would have liked to point out to my responder that, to the twenty-four Haditha slaughterees, and to the rest of the hundreds of thousands of civilian and military victims of the American invasion and occupation–many of whom were innocent of any political involvement, and the rest guilty mostly of harboring opposing political loyalties and beliefs, or of needing to make what seemed like an honest buck soldiering–to all of these victims, if the American soldiers were not terrorists, they must at least have looked like terrorists as they were climbing in windows and breaking down doors, bristling and blazing away with high-tech weaponry on women and children, or raining down indiscriminate bombs from above…. Continue reading

American Politics, Before the Next Terrorist Attack

Our future safety and political freedoms rest upon whether Americans recognize sooner, rather than later, the terrifying truth that our traditional, well-intentioned and well-funded militaristic approaches to national defense and espionage have very limited preventative effects, and cannot keep us safe from the horrors of terrorism or global thermonuclear war during a century of instant communications and easily-accessible lethal weaponry. Furthermore, such anachronistic, adversarial strategies actually provoke increasing threats to our country and our planet. Even as we squander more and more money, energy, and time, they advance the likelihood that our worst nightmares will become realities. Continue reading

Safety in America–and Everywhere Else

Excerpt: Americans are justifiably terrified, not only by the dual threats of terrorism and nuclear war, but also by a dawning recognition that our present violent “defense” measures cannot save us from harm. Indeed, they are inviting greater harm. We’re squandering our national resources—money, energy, and time—on defense strategies that can defend neither our citizenry nor our beloved freedoms…. Excerpt: If throwing money, soldiers, spies, and bombs at terrorists is not going to keep us safe, who or what will? Can any approach keep Americans safe? Is there a more effective way to spend our money on safety? Continue reading

My Father the Terrorist

He was a man who would kill and maim innocent children and civilians if he was told to do so by his leaders … Who would boldly face certain death for his beliefs … Who believed that death and destruction solved problems … Who believed in retaliating violently, and avenging losses … Who would kill anyone he was told was a threat to his safety, home, land, family, traditions and beliefs … Who would kill and die anywhere in the world to further his people's interests, and to spread their ways around the world … He was a man who thought terror a reasonable means of achieving political, social and economic goals … He was also a U.S. Army career officer, a highly decorated war hero, attorney, horseman, poet, woodsman, musician, scratch-handicap golfer, linguist, historian, and gentle, patriotic, idealistic, loving son, husband, brother, friend … father…. My father. Continue reading

Last Night at the Frederick Peace Meeting

An impressive group of Frederick citizens exercised their constitutional rights and civic duties last night in thoughtful, impassioned dialogue concerning the planned Fort Detrick multi-agency expansion (which includes the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security.) Continue reading