THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE BLOODTHIRSTY

How’s this for an utterly black & white, no-compromise, in-your-face statement of breathtaking simplicity: anyone who volunteers to bear arms for the government of the United States of America -- especially, especially, since the catastrophic results of the 2000 “election” -- is, without question, a sickeningly stupid goddamned motherfucking blood-swilling asshole ...

Now that I have your full, unvarnished attention, let me just add that I’m absolutely and completely serious here.

I realize how appallingly offensive these words are, within the debased epoch we find ourselves -- this obscene era of widespread mental illness, where violent militarism is hoisted up onto some unassailable pedestal of respectability. We’re not supposed to criticize the war machine, or the over-worked morons and blood-crazed killers who keep it rolling; we are supposed to slap cheap Chinese-made yellow ribbons on the ass-end of our SUV’s and incessantly regurgitate meaningless, platitudinous bullshit about how we must unreservedly “support our troops,” no matter how many Einsatzgruppen-style atrocities they commit against unarmed civilians. We’re required to believe that the stress and tension of combat, and the calamitous effects of multiple deployments on the psyches of individual Marines and Army grunts, offers up a framework of “understanding” as to why such vicious crimes as the Haditha massacre (and countless others) occur. Our uniformed minions perpetrate mass murder and are slavishly enshrined as “heroes” who, unfortunately, make “mistakes” in the heat of “battle.”

Well, you’ll have to pardon the hell out of me for the severity of my skepticism, but there is no justification -- none, under any circumstance -- for executing unarmed men, women, and children. Children, for fuck’s sake. Only soulless, degenerate Nazis would bother to construct rationalizations and spew apologetics for the gunning down of pregnant women, six-month-old babies, and old people in wheelchairs. But the troops are under monumental stress, they say; some are enduring their second and third tours in Iraq, we’re constantly being reminded; Bush lied us into this war, so the ultimate responsibility is his, the pundits tell us; the Marines in Haditha were understandably reacting to the death of one of their comrades is another common talking point; war is war, and so on and so forth. All of these angles and perspectives are absolutely true enough, as far as they go, but are altogether irrelevant when it comes to ... pointing a machine-gun at a poor woman and her children, and pulling the trigger.

Beyond the fact that these obscenities have taken place -- and continue to occur on a regular basis -- I guess what sickens me the most is that the perpetrators are all volunteers. They’re not conscripts, forcibly compelled to be the hatchet-men for the Neo-Con apparatus of destruction, but free agents willingly participating in this madness. Nobody held a gun to their heads, or jumped out of a helicopter and slaughtered their families in cold blood, to force them to enlist. No extraordinary methods of coercion were required to get these bastards in uniform, other than offering them the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of murdering unarmed Arab civilians with impunity. If these guys really wanted to “serve their country,” or to score money for college, or were motivated by any of the myriad of other reasons why normal people join the military, such impulses can be indulged without the necessity of becoming a bloodthirsty killer. In fact, most modern military occupations are highly technical in nature, and well removed from the desperate exigencies of killing and dying, to greater or lesser degrees. These bastards could have signed up to be, say, Air Force medical technicians, or Navy computer programmers, or who the hell knows what else. But no -- they purposely chose to be rifle-toting ground-pounders, allowing themselves to be thrust into an untenable situation of extreme magnitude ... so they could point their M-16’s at old people, and blast the heads off of women and children. They’re fundamentally no different than suicide bombers or German SS troopers, or any other such example of human scum. If they had even a tiny amount of native intelligence, or at least a modicum of common sense, they would’ve been able to discern what the advent of the Republican/Neo-Con dictatorship had in store, for them and the rest of us. They should have refused to actively participate in this evil scheme of domination and destruction, but they deliberately made the decision to be the praetorian enforcers for the would-be worldwide corporatist empire. So fuck them -- just as is the case with their vile and loathsome Masters, they deserve neither our respect or support.

So, to all those veterans out there (and, just to be clear, I happen to be a veteran myself): if you’re offended by anything you’ve read here, well, that’s just too bad. I simply won’t be an apologist for mass murder -- particularly when it’s committed in “my” name by uniformed ignoramuses under the official sanction of an illegal regime of neo-fascist motherfuckers in DC. If you need torturous justifications for the deliberate slaughter of Iraqi (or Afghan, or Iranian, etc.) civilians, I have no doubt that there are plenty of far-right mush-brained blogs and web sites out there, all ready and eager to stroke your delusions and massage your stupidity. Don’t expect to receive that sort of treatment here.

A QUICK AND DISGUSTING UPDATE: As if all this horrible bullshit wasn't bad enough, check out these photos at Raw Story, and prepare to puke yourself senseless ...