| ABOUT DV | CONTACT | SUBMISSIONS |
Botched or Not, the Joke's On Us
by Mickey Z.
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 4, 2006
Every now and then, a series of events (and the reaction to those events) converge to effectively illustrate just how deeply the indoctrination runs in the home of the brave/land of the free. Senator John F. Kerry was the catalyst for the most recent such convergence. His "botched joke" laid bare the passionate cult of the soldier, America's enduring military fetish. It has been and remains career suicide for any public figure to even hint at criticizing the men and women in uniform. Consider Kerry's apology: "I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform." It's not even an issue of actually being critical of the military. Among a war-loving people, you must be cautious to not even "wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform." Kerry himself said people were "crazy" to think he would denigrate America's military. As profound as this may be, the realities exposed by the "stuck in Iraq" affair go much deeper than that.
With midterm elections looming, it seems
almost every Democrat is being cynically positioned as anti-war (or at
least, anti-this-war). But not one of them will risk being "stuck" with
Kerry. Democrats on the campaign trail stated Kerry was "wrong to say what
he said" and "owes our troops and their families an apology." The
ever-opportunistic Hillary Clinton was crystal clear: "What Senator Kerry
said was inappropriate."
Kerry's rivals, of course, were salivating. House Republican leader John
Boehner said Kerry is "a liberal, a leftist" and declared such a joke to
be "the typical attitude they have towards our military." Which brings us
to the next truth laid bare: Only a heavily conditioned society would be
unable to recognize that Kerry is an incurable warmonger, a man who voted
for-and wrote parts of-the USA PATRIOT Act, a man who declared that the
Vietnam War was merely a "mistake," a man who cast a "yes" vote in October
2002 for George W. Bush's plan to invade Iraq the following year. Kerry
justified that vote with the statement that "according to intelligence,
Iraq has chemical and biological weapons." He later asked "Why is Saddam
Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even
try?" In 2004, he ran on a platform of sending even more troops to Iraq
than Bush was willing to commit. In what universe is Senator John F. Kerry
"anti-soldier" or "soft" on terror?
Then we have the concept of being "stuck" in Iraq. Let's be clear: No one
is more "stuck" in Iraq than the Iraqis. They didn't ask for Saddam
Hussein, but they got him. They didn't ask for the American and British
military to bombard them for 15 years without pause, but they got it. They
didn't ask for depleted uranium shells to poison their land, but they got
it. They didn't ask for foreign armies to invade and brutally occupy their
country, but they got them. They also didn't ask for this manner of
"insurgency," but they got it. The Americans who willingly signed up for
the armed forces, in some ways, are stuck in Iraq. Their hardships,
however, are not even in the same league as the long-suffering Iraqis.
Botched or not, the joke is on us.
Mickey Z. is the author of several books, most recently 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know (Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at: www.mickeyz.net.
Other Recent Articles and
Poems by Mickey Z.
*
The Battle in
Seattle: Looking Back Seven Years
* When
“Anti-War” Doesn't Mean Anti-War
* Nukes: Iran
and North Korea are Not the Problem
* Who Killed
Michael Moore? (Why and What's the Reason For?)
* NBA Says No
to Leather
* US Boots
Step on a Caribbean Flea (Does This Sound Familiar?)
* The High
Cost of Dying
* Those in
Power are Poisoning Children (Mussels Not Flexed?)
* No Innocent
Bystanders in America
* Why Blogs?
* Winning the
War on Terror
* 175 Years
Ago: Nat Turner Puts the South on Notice
* “I Have a
Right to Keep My House Safe”
* Jesus is in
my Computer
* In Defense
of Barry Bonds
* DON'T
Support Our Troops (Inform Them)
* “We should
always remember who makes the rules”: Derrick Jensen Sees the Big Picture
* The 7
Habits of Highly Effective Corporations
* Haditha and
Rumsfeld's Ratio
* Challenging
the Auto-Dependant Lifestyle
* Impeachment
is Just One Tiny Step
* The White
Washing of Muhammad Ali™
* 15 Minutes
of Radical Fame: America Meets Blum and Churchill
* Parenti Does
Culture
* An Interview
with John “Indio” Washington
* Target Iran:
A Day at the Arms Races
* Haiku
* Which Wolf
Will You Feed in 2006?
* GI Joe
Goes to Baghdad