Those who think carnage is new to war, or "collateral
damage" to how our government wages war, don't know much about U.S. proclivity
for air strikes on towns and cities. So
here's an abridged top-hits list: The
United States Army Air Force, Dresden, Germany firestorm, Truman's Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, LBJ's Bay of Tonkin to My Lai Massacre, and more recently GW's oil-exploration bombing of Baghdad and Fallujah -- all cities with civilian
populations, not legitimate military targets; all marketed to inhabitants of American
cities with the same refrain, "National Security," "Protecting American Lives,"
"Saving Democracy." So, if you buy it,
you own it.
Self-evident truths: war
has advanced more technologically than education, gun control, or prison and
immigration reform; Social Media denies Americans the WWII excuse, "we didn't
know;" and Obama's Drones like Bush's Torture do more for Al Qaeda enlistments
than American peace of mind.
Still let's not be as myopic as a media droning on about
Drones. Targeting the details with Drone-like precision is paramount responsibility
for the governed, more patriotic than 2001 "USA Patriot Act" and more supremely
American than 2011 "Citizens United."
In a land of the free where an Equal Rights Amendment can't
get enough public attention, to get enough states signed on, to get the 113th
Congress, to get Constitution amended, to get women full citizenship, we need to
get our home of the brave in order with Drone-like focus on a military that
looks the other way when its female enlisted are raped, bullied, and intimidated
out of service for their country.
In a land where Second Amendment overreach allows a man to
stroll into a Virginia
Kroger's crowded with shoppers, bearing a fully loaded assault weapon, the
safety of our school children and our right to live free from fear is
trumped. Can't you hear Eisenhower
whispering in your ear to droning drum beat; beware, it's corporate profits from clandestine combo with military
technologies that threatens freedoms.
Too many get glazed and dazed, reacting only to where the media
laser beam-dot points. Like the
simmering pot frog, we're boiled over by technology that swings both ways because
both elected and electorate of, by, and for the corporate bottom line have neither
kept pace with needed legislation nor the realities of a changed world bleeding
from changed warfare -- the longer we allow gun violence on foreign battlefields
or inner-city streets, the more we become what we seek to destroy.
Drones come in almost as many different shapes, sizes, and
colors as people, and like atomic nuclear power, are marketed by inventors for peak
sales to those using tax dollars to purchase and remotely target them. Presidential power, in the correct hands and
mindset, can be a godly tool for justice for all, but when Wall Street profit is
priority, true patriots must look through Franklin bifocals to refocus "We the
People," because, like Drones, not all Presidents are created equal.
Personally knowing at least one armed bodyguard, one former
Capital Policeman, and one government assassin, I insist, war is no longer hell,
it's hell on earth.
So instead of being herded down another blind alley by
corporate-owned media flailing away over the latest body overweight, rather
than body count, to hype the distraction d'jour, forget about 'to lip-sync or
not to lip-sync' in winter. Ponder
instead this cold reality: our Drone-targeted Taliban and Al Qaeda hate education equality so much they shot Pakistani
teen Malala Yousafzai, and an American First Lady had to attend the funeral of
American teen, Hadiya
Pendleton, killed in street-gang crossfire just days after she performed
for a Presidential Inaugural, both in the 21st century.
If you don't like the world we live in, haunt the halls of
Congress, for until we're defined by more than our weapons, this is the State of Our
Union.
