Soul Evolution- Part IX. Just War Policy

“Soul Evolution” A Sermon to Liberate the Soul of the Self, America, and the World


IX. Just War Policy
Only war veterans are an authority on war. The time has come for old ass so-called Vietnam veterans like Bush (didn't do jack) and McCain (rode around in a plane before he got captured) to keep our troops at war and not risk their own blood. That's right, Bush and McCain should be out on the front lines to experience what they're putting their soldiers through.

Allow me to quote Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which, for a Vietnam veteran author who actually was on the ground, shows a striking parallel to the Iraq "war":
"Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty. Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation, or simple aggression. Who started it, and when, and why?
...What about the Geneva Accords? ...What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. When people are dead, you can't make them undead."

Sound familiar?
William Irwin Thompson has this to say about the people who sent our troops being in Iraq:
“So the neoconservatives of the Bush administration are the mirror-image of al Qaeda; they are also a noetic polity that seeks to deconstruct the modern middle class democratic nation-state and replace it with a metanational corporate cartel – a capitalist al Qaeda. Halliburton, Bechtel, Enron, the Carlyle Group, and Newmount Mining are postnational formations that really care little about the welfare of any particular people or nation. The American soldiers that died in Iraq did not die "defending their country"; they died defending Cheney and Bush's interests in Halliburton and the Carlyle Group. These neocon corporate managers, very much like the privateers and pirates that helped Queen Elizabeth create a postbaronial world of naval power, are offshore pirates that care as little for the entire nation, as Texan Enron cared for the state of California it plundered"

And they have the full support of the Religious Right, who would love to have a Christian version of the Sharia imposed on the United States, especially when they get Chief Justices elected through stone-age conservatives who would not allow gays in the military or to get civil unions and who don't believe evolution never happened (Evolution/Adaptation and Creative/Intelligent Design are synonymous, in my opinion).

Now, back to O'Brien: "If they needed fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the-stone-age hawk? Or some dumb jingo in his hard hat and Bomb Hanoi button, or one of LBJ's pretty daughters, or Westmoreland's whole handsome family--newphews and nieces and baby grandson. There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put our own personal fluids on the line. You have to head for the front line and hook up with an infrantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought."

Extremes aside, he has a point. People who fight in the war do so because they are soldiers- they don't ask questions, they just fight for our security. But something happens to soldiers...if post-traumatic stress is a big-enough umbrella term, than I'll call it that. It puts people in an impossible situation where it's kill or be killed, and then it praises or blames them for fighting for their life. It puts coffins on their conscience, and to cope with that, the soldier has to develop coping mechanisms like dehumanizing talk about the enemy, or twisted humor, or problem drinking and/or drugs to silence the screams of the people they killed, if not sleepless nights. How many cases are there of war veterans from this new war who snap and lose touch with reality? How many more veterans will undergo terrible treatment like the ones at the Virginia hospital? (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/28/health/main3762984.shtml) If you support this war, go put yourself in the situations the soldiers are in, and then tell me if it's worth it. I recommend you read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and listen to what the Iraqi War Veterans Against the War in Iraq have to say.
http://ivaw.org/membersspeak/why-iraq-war-destroying-army-part-i

This is what Aaron McGruder has to say about the current war in Iraq:
Bush and his stay-the-course cabinet “act like he’s [sic: Bush has] done something great. You know, he’s called [the terrorists] ‘evil’. That’s really some childish stuff. They’re bad, we’re good. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. They’re so incredibly stupid. What do you think they do? They call us ‘evil’. I just see so many parallels on both sides in this war, and it’s really uncomfortable. You know, they kill civilians, we kill civilians. They say they’re justified, we say the same thing. This is gang warfare on an international level. That’s all it is. And when gang warfare happens in American cities, we say it’s wrong. When somebody loads a gun, goes 20 blocks and kills the guy who killed his brother, it’s not justifiable homicide or self-defense, it’s murder and we put people in jail for it. Why is it acceptable that we do it now? …”

Does this not hit home? Bush Jr. maybe getting a little revenge for Saddam trying to kill Bush Sr.? Funding Israel and probably funding revenge killings by doing so? A mostly drugged-out (according to Time magazine) Marine squad wiping out fifteen innocents in Haditha, including women and children, as vengeance for their buddy being killed in a roadside bomb?

I’m not even saying I would have acted differently in the situation- I just can't believe we put soldiers this position. God help me, I don't want to understand. Everything is wrong. War against an invisible enemy is nothing a man or woman should experience, and how it screws up everything we've ever believed about right and wrong. We shouldn't put people in the position to become numb to faith. We shouldn't put people in the position to kill. An insurgent becomes a civilian after an American shoots him, then the crowd takes the insurgent's gun when the American isn't looking, and he becomes another dead civilian. How is this a war?

The way the terrorists fight by arming women and children; and the way that our troops are faced with so much doubt and confusion that they have to kill those hostile women, children and innocent people women and children at times like Nisoor Square, too! We shouldn't put this burden on people unless we do it too; it is too unfair for us to know nothing about experiencing the horrors of war and expect other people to carry it out for us because know not what we are asking of them. We are asking them to kill, but it is so much more than that. We are asking for them to be confused and lose a sense of their self and their conscience and their faith. We have to able to put all of that on the line ourselves if we want to ask another person to do so. I swear to God we do. It is only fair.

Would you like to see some more parallels between Bush and his enemy?

McGruder continues:
“In this time of war against Osama bin-Laden and the oppressive Taliban regime, we are thankful that OUR leader isn’t the spoiled son of a powerful politician from a wealthy oil family who is supported by religious fundamentalists, operates through clandestine organizations, has no respect for the democratic electoral process, bombs innocents, and uses war to deny people their civil liberties.”

Whoops!

I believe McGruder justifies his scathing criticism of President Bush and Co. because of the hypocritical manner in which they, and the conservative media, so simple-mindedly termed the war one of “good” versus “evil”. McGruder calls this fifth-grade mentality, where everything is black and white. I agree; war is gray, and that’s what makes it so scary- morals get twisted and vices become virtues. It’s brother against brother, sister against sister, each one fighting for a puppetmaster who knows not what kind of hell they’ve unleashed.

McGruder offers a vague solution, but hey, it’s a start!:
“If there’s a terrorist network or a man responsible [sic: for the terrorist hijackings], yes, we should get them, but when you construct it like a police action or an investigation, and not like a war, then you’re forced to respect the lives of the innocents, even if it’s a pain in the ass. I say it’s not worth innocent people dying, even if it takes years and you have to keep sending SEAL teams or whatever in there. What the hell? That’s what they’re trained to do. That’s why they exist. Drop the out in there to get one guy. F-18s exist to wipe out towns. It may take longer the other way, but that’s too bad”

Our strategy was so messed up in invading Iraq. I mean, if we had done a little research we could have found out a civil war would be the consequence of the power vacuum left by Saddam’s ousting. I can’t even begin to explain the unjust reasons behind invading Iraq, so I’ll let these links do the talking.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/08/wbr.iraq.claims/
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/

I still, and always, believe America should hold the burden of proof upon the accuser, because we are innocent until proven guilty, and that’s one of the beautiful things of freedom in America. There was no proof in 2003. That’s un-American. There’s no balance of power when America, the world police (executive), has no impartial judiciary (Congress, UN) to appeal to and becomes the accuser, the judge, jury and executioner all in the same person. We rushed to action without sustaining reasonable evidence. I’m tired of the Conservative movement wiping their behind with the Constitution with such things as Guantanamo’s prison, secret prisons in other counties, and the PATRIOT ACT. Salvation should not come at the expense of our freedom. The reason we have things like the exclusionary rule in the courts is because it is in accordance with American principle that we get things like JUDGE-ISSUED WARRANTS PRIOR to arresting people and searching their homes. But forget the Constitution, the UN, and the Geneva Conventions- we are above the law, right?

Because all is fair in love and war. Because desperate times call for desperate measures, we call in Blackwater to protect public officials and give them no one to be held accountable to. Because of terrorism that we somewhat brought on ourselves, unintentionally of course, because we supplied the weapons to al-Qaeda and Saddam for during fights against Iran and communism? We should have been less shortsighted; now it is our duty to battle the people behind 9/11, but I’m saying don’t make up ghost stories about terrorists to scare people so you can take advantage of their fear and infringe on their rights! Don’t pretend to be fighting for America when you’re really fighting against it and all that it stands for- law, order, accountability, balance of powers, a fair trial…the reasons we formed the country in the first place! England didn’t cut as any slack; they held Americans in inaccessible prisons for a long time without reading them their rights- sound familiar??

To use the Declaration of Independence as a guideline:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
-Check for Bush- no legal declaration of war, making legal what was once illegal by suspending the Constitution with his PATRIOT Act and wiretapping program; his cabinet fires U.S. Attorneys for political reasons
-He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
-We already have Judiciary powers like the U.S. court system and the U.N. courts established, but I guess we’re too righteous for them right now.
-He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power
-Blackwater
-For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
-Secret prisons
-For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
-Ditto.
-For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
-PATRIOT ACT and unjust war (we had no legitimate proof to invade)
-He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us
-The 2003 protest of the Iraqi war really showed that when the heat is on and pressure the government, we really do live in a police state

So then, a just war is first of all one that fights for freedom, liberty to pursue happiness, and equality. But we need to follow the Constitution- the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Violence should be a last resort, and using tactics that endanger civilian lives should be used as a last resort in terms of use of violence. There shall be no infantry wars against an invisible enemy. We should use our troops as reconstructive workers and have the Navy SEALs do the target-hunting. We should do our homework on the country we’re going to invade before we invade it. And lastly, those who support a war have to give at least one tour of duty.