Karen Kwiatkowski: War Is Murder

09-21-2010 • LewRockwell.com

But today, we speak of murder. Coldblooded, just for fun, gangland-style, trophy-hunting, punch drunk, hilarious murder. And predictably – the Army cannot explain how the lack of a strategic or even clearly tactical mission in Afghanistan and Iraq has created a stagnant spreading cesspool where soldiering ethics are slowly churned and degraded until our own people don’t know up from down. The Army brass promotes Afghan "democracy" and "voting" and bemoans the fact that this bit of bad news (along with untold murder of Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, and Yemenis as ordered) somehow detracts from Washington’s Overall Successful Occupation. The Army says only that these soldiers were a few bad apples. Rogue, but not like Sarah Palin rogue, not like the character Rogue in the X-Men movies, not like the popular Nissan Rogue, but you know, bad rogues. The ones who get caught and hung out to dry. In the grand scheme of things, these rogue murders have a silver lining. Not for the unlucky sons of bitches who served as target practice, of course. And the reporting of these atrocities by the mainstream media is not likely to improve. Old media can’t see past its dinner at the state table. Alarm, shock, and muted outrage will be dutifully followed by the bad-appleness of it all and a comfortable burial under the twin pillars of "we can’t do anything about it" and "it was for national security." Indeed, can anyone swear – given six degrees of separation – that these recent Afghan victims (and those of the authorized murders conducted by CIA, DoD and contracted teams) were not in some way related to terrorism against the United States? I myself heartily disapprove of the criminally insane US foreign policy, and I hate our modern government, with its unlimited separated powers of bankster, shyster, and huckster. I would applaud loudly the bringing down of such a state. I count myself as a spiritual sister to those the US government has murdered, and I am angry at my powerlessness. I have the budding heart of a terrorist. Thank goodness, I’m part of a much larger group of Americans, young and old, who generally feel the same way. When we become a force to be reckoned with, the state will negotiate, or concede.