What I see going on in this country today...

[nomaco-10]

I see a great many Americans that refuse to come to grips with the fact that we invaded and dessimated an entire country on the pretense we were in "imminent" danger. This translated to them: OMG, the mall might be unsafe, you mean I might have to cancel my flight to Disneyland and what if the electricity were to go out, I'd miss an episode of American Idol. So then we go to war, somebody explain to me, how can you have a war and not see a dead body? Oh yeah, I remember we had embedded journalists under the watch of the military, reporting to the corporate owned mass media, that's right. Oh, and Rumsfeld told us we had "precision bombs" that only killed the bad guys, if there were heavy civilian casualities, wouldn't that have been reported on the news? They have an excuse in the form of an answer for everthing, the economy is Clinton's fault, the WMD were moved, we did the right thing getting rid of Suddamn, yada,yada,yada. Many of these people will never go outside themselves and come to terms with what is really going on in this country, much less the world, that would take them out of their comfort zone and they can't handle that. They continue to wave their flag, clean their guns and get their news from Faux and meanwhile the body count rises in Iraq.

[terryg11]

1. yep, some people like their country just fine

and don't want to worry about anything important or boring. That's why they still live here don't you know, so they don't have to participate.

[maggrwaggr]

2. you're preaching to the choir, but yeah, right on

vent away.

That's what brought me to DU, the need to vent and realize there were a TON of others who felt the way I did.

The American people are appallingly cowardly. It's like stomping on some bum because your house got broken into by someone you don't know. "I'll show them!" as you stomp away. "I'm so scared someone's gonna key my car, I'm gonna just kill anyone who looks suspicious".

It's pathetic.

[Clete]

3. I have to agree with you and even if many Americans

are not bothering their ass about it, there will be many repercussions in the long run. The bodybags coming home will ultimately affect all Americans. We will pay for this too in many other ways. I hope we can turn the tide on this before it becomes a path of no return such as Germany found itself in the final months of WWII.

[khashka]

4. You're right

You know as much as I detest even the idea of conscription.... there is a part of me that believes that if we had to watch our own sons and daughters die, if we had to put our own lives on the line this so called "war" would never have happened. As long as someone else is doing the dying, someone else's child, someone else's loved ones. Someone with a different skin colour, a different language, a different culture - but not me and not you. Then somehow it's not truly real. So it's OK.Yeah, we see a little blood, a couple of bodies. But our favourite TV shows are a lot worse than that.

The military learned their lesson in Vietnam: if the civilians really see what war is what war does what war means - they won't stand for it. So now we get bloodless wars, only the bad guys ever die, nothing truly unforgivable ever happens. We can all watch it on TV and go to bed afterward without any fear that we'll have nightmares. Jesus God! The world's funniest pet videos is more violent than the wars we wage!

We never really get to see the death and destruction - we get names or numbers or something equally unemotive. John Smith age 22, the 56th casualty. He's a name a number, nothing more than part of an equation in a boring math class where you fall asleep and don't remember what came next.

And I think of X and their song I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: "My planes, my bombs, my guns, my money, it's all my fault". And they were right. And it's so damn easy when they won't show you the bodies, the blood, the carnage to forget that WE did it.

And I love all you guys and gals here who see the truth even when they won't show it to you. I don't know the answer, but I know that those of us who insist on facing the truth head on when everyone around denies it are at least the beginning of an answer.