US deploys 'game-changer' weapon to Afghanistan

"Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your heart. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural!"---Charlie Chaplin in "The Great Dictator"

WASHINGTON (AFP) – It looks and acts like something best left in the hands of Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo," but this latest dream weapon is real -- and the US Army sees it becoming the Taliban's worst nightmare.

The Pentagon has rolled out prototypes of its first-ever programmable "smart" grenade launcher, a shoulder-fired weapon that uses microchipped ammunition to target and kill the enemy, even when the enemy is hidden behind walls or other cover.

Click image to see photos of the XM25 weapon system

AFP/Army Handout

After years of development, the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, about the size of a regular rifle, has now been deployed to US units on the battlefields of Afghanistan, where the Army expects it to be a "game-changer" in its counterinsurgency operations.

"For well over a week, it's been actively on patrols, and in various combat outposts in areas that are hot," said Lieutenant Colonel Chris Lehner, program manager for the XM25.

The gun's stats are formidable: it fires 25mm air-bursting shells up to 2,300 feet (700 meters), well past the range of most rifles used by today's soldiers, and programs them to explode at a precise distance, allowing troops to neutralize insurgents hiding behind walls, rocks or trenches or inside buildings.

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[With Afghan control by 2014, Obama sees combat end]

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NATO, The World's Gendarme, A Military Mafia

Global Research
Granma International


by Fidel Castro Ruz


Havana: Many people feel sickened on hearing the name of that organization.

On Friday, November 19, 2010 in Lisbon, Portugal, the 28 members of that bellicose institution engendered by the United States, decided to create what they cynically describe as "the new NATO."

The institution emerged after World War II as an instrument of the Cold War unleashed by imperialism on the Soviet Union, the country which paid for the victory over Nazism with tens of millions of lives and colossal destruction.

The United States mobilized against the USSR, together with a healthy part of the European population, the extreme right and the Nazi-fascist scum of Europe, full of hatred and prepared to squeeze every advantage out of the errors committed by the very leaders of the USSR after the death of Lenin.

The Soviet people, with great sacrifice, were able to maintain nuclear parity and support the national liberation struggles of many peoples against the efforts of European states to maintain the colonial system imposed by force throughout the centuries; states that were postwar allies of the yankee empire, which assumed command of the counterrevolution worldwide.

In just 10 days – less than two weeks – world opinion has received three great and unforgettable lessons: the G20, APEC and NATO meetings in Seoul, Yokohama and Lisbon, in such a way that all upstanding people who can read and write, and whose minds have not been mutilated by the conditioned reflexes of imperialism’s media apparatus, can have a real idea of the problems currently affecting humanity.

In Lisbon, not one word was uttered that could convey hope to the billions of people enduring poverty, underdevelopment, insufficient food, housing, health, education and employment.

On the contrary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the vain character who figures as secretary general of the NATO military mafia, declared in the tone of a little Nazi fuehrer, that the "new strategic concept" was in order "to act in any part of the world."

It was not for nothing that the government of Turkey was at the point of vetoing his appointment when, in April 2009, Fogh Rasmussen – a neoliberal Dane – in his position as prime minister of Denmark, and using the pretext of freedom of the press, defended the authors of serious offenses to the Prophet Mahoma, a figure respected by all Muslim believers.

More than a few people in the world can recall the close relations of cooperation between the Danish government and the Nazi "invaders" during World War II.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a bird of prey hatched in the skirts of yankee imperialism, and moreover equipped with tactical nuclear weapons many times more destructive than the atom bomb that erased the city of Hiroshima, has been committed by the United States to the genocidal Afghanistan war, even more complex than the Kosovo adventure and the war on Serbia, where its forces massacred the city of Belgrade and were at the point of suffering a disaster if the government of that country had remained firm, instead of trusting in the institutions of European justice in the Hague.

In one of its points, the inglorious Lisbon Declaration affirms in a vague and abstract manner:

"In the strategically important Western Balkans region, democratic values, regional cooperation and good neighborly relations are important for lasting peace and stability."

"KFOR is moving towards a smaller, more flexible, deterrent presence."

Now?

Nor will Russia be able to forget it so easily: the real fact is that when Yeltsin dismembered the USSR, the United States advanced NATO’s borders and its nuclear attack bases to the heart of Russia from Europe and Asia.

Those new military installations also threatened the People’s Republic of China and other Asian countries.

When that took place in 1991, hundreds of SS-19s, SS-20s and other powerful Soviet weapons could reach U.S. and NATO bases in Europe in a matter of seconds. No NATO secretary general would have dared to talk with the arrogance of Rasmussen.

The first agreement on limiting nuclear weapons was signed as early as May 26, 1972, between President Richard Nixon of the United States and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the aim of limiting the number of anti-ballistic missiles (the ABM Treaty) and to defend certain points against nuclear missiles.

In Vienna in 1979, Brezhnev and Carter signed new agreements known as SALT II, but the U.S. Senate refused to ratify those agreements.

The new rearmament promoted by Reagan with the Strategic Defense Initiative put en end to the SALT agreements.

The Siberian gas pipeline had already been blown up by the CIA.

Instead, a new agreement was signed in 1991 between Bush Sr. and Gorbachev, five months before the collapse of the USSR. When that event took place, the socialist bloc no longer existed. The countries that the Red Army had liberated from Nazi occupation were not even capable of maintaining their independence. Right-wing governments that came to power moved into NATO with their arms and equipment and fell into the hands of the United States. The German Democratic Republic, which had made a great effort under the leadership of Erich Honecker, could not overcome the ideological and consumerist offensive launched from the capital itself, occupied by Western troops.

As the virtual master of the world, the United States increased its adventurist and warmongering policy.

Due to a well manipulated process, the USSR disintegrated. The coup de grace was dealt it by Boris Yeltsin on December 8, 1991 when, as president of the Russian Federation, he declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. On the 25th of that month, the red hammer and sickle flag flying over the Kremlin was lowered. 

A third agreement on strategic weapons was subsequently signed between George W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin on January 3, 1993, prohibiting the use of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) with multiple warheads. It was ratified by the U.S. Senate on January 26, 1993, by a margin of 87 votes to 4.

Russia inherited the science and technology of the USSR – which in spite of the war and enormous sacrifice was capable of creating a military power on a level with that of the immense and rich yankee empire – the victory over fascism, the traditions, the culture and the glories of the Russian people.

The war on Serbia, a Slavic nation, sunk its teeth hard into the security of the Russian people, something that no government could afford itself the luxury of ignoring.

The Russian Duma – angered by the first Iraq war and that of Kosovo in which NATO massacred the Serb people – refused to ratify START II and did not sign that agreement until the year 2000 and, in that case, in an attempt to save the ABM treaty which, by that date, the yankees weren’t interested in maintaining.

The United States is trying to use its enormous media resources to maintain, deceive and confuse world public opinion.

The government of that country is going through a difficult stage as a consequence of its military adventures. All the NATO countries without exception are committed to the Afghanistan war, as are various others in the world, whose peoples find odious and repugnant the butchery in which rich and industrialized countries such as Japan and Australia, and other Third World nations are involved in to a greater or lesser degree.

What is the essence of the agreement approved in April of this year by the United States and Russia? Both parties have committed themselves to reducing the number of the strategic nuclear missiles to 1,550. Not one word is being said about the nuclear missiles of France, the United Kingdom and Israel, all of them capable of striking Russia. Not one word has been said either about tactical nuclear weapons, some of them with far more power than that which erased the city of Hiroshima. There is no mention of the destructive and lethal capacity of numerous conventional weapons, the radio-electric and other weapons systems into which the United States is channeling its growing military budget, superior to that of all the other nations of the world put together. Both governments know, as many others meeting there do, that a third world war would be the last.

What kind of illusions can the NATO members create? What is the peace for humanity derived from that meeting? What benefit can possibly be expected for the peoples of the Third World, and even for the international economy?

They cannot even offer the hope that the world economic crisis can be overcome, or how much longer any improvement would last. The total public debt of the United States, not only that of central government, but the rest of the country’s public and private institutions, has already risen to a figure that is equal to the world GDP of 2009, which amounted to $58 trillion. Did those meeting in Lisbon maybe think to ask themselves where those fabulous resources came from? Simply, from the economy of all the other nations in the world, to which the United States handed over pieces of paper converted into dollar bills which, for 40 years now, unilaterally ceased having their backing in gold, and now that the value of that metal is 40 times superior. That country still possesses its veto within the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Why wasn’t that discussed in Portugal?

The hope of extracting U.S. troops, those of NATO and their allies from Afghanistan, is an idyllic one. They will have to abandon that country before the defeated hand over power to the Afghan resistance. The United States’ own allies are beginning to acknowledge that dozens of years could go by before that war is over; is NATO prepared to remain there for all that time? Would the very citizens of each one of the governments meeting there allow that? Not to forget that a country with a very large population, Pakistan, shares a border of colonial origin with Afghanistan and a none-too insignificant percentage of its inhabitants.

I am not criticizing Medvedev, he is acting very well in trying to limit the number of nuclear missiles pointing at his country. Barack Obama cannot invent any justification whatsoever for that. It would be laughable to imagine that that colossal and costly deployment of the anti-missile nuclear shield is to protect Europe and Russia from Iranian missiles proceeding from a country which does not even possess a tactical nuclear weapon. Not even a children’s story book could affirm that.

Obama has already admitted that his promise to withdraw U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan could be delayed and that taxes from the wealthiest contributors are to be immediately suspended. After the Nobel Prize one would have to grant him the prize for the "greatest snake charmer "ever to have existed.

Taking into account the George W. Bush autobiography, which has already become a bestseller, and which some intelligent editor drafted for him, why didn’t they do him the honor of inviting him to Lisbon? The extreme right, the "Tea Party" of Europe, would doubtless have been happy.

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Ron Paul: Korea Conflict May Be Orchestrated Crisis To Boost Dollar

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 23, 2010

Congressman Ron Paul speculated on the Alex Jones Show today that the war footing between North and South Korea could be an orchestrated crisis to boost the dollar and reverse the US economy, paralleling the RAND Corporation’s call two years ago for the United States to become embroiled in a major war as a means of preventing a double dip recession.

South Korea admitted that it fired the first shots prompting a North Korean retaliation that killed two South Korean Marines and set ablaze many homes on the Yellow Sea border island of Yeonpyeong.

Tensions are running dangerously high after North Korea’s military vowed a “merciless military strike” and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak ordered his military to strike North Korea’s missile base around its coastline artillery positions if the North made any further moves. Japan announced that it was preparing for “any eventuality” while Russia said the events represented a “colossal danger” to peace in the region.

Stock markets sank worldwide while the dollar and gold bullion rallied in response to the news.

Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Congressman Paul said it was frightening that people in the Obama administration were advocating war as a means of escaping the economic crisis, saying that North Korea stood no chance whatsoever of successfully defeating South Korea in any conflict.

Paul speculated that the US military-industrial complex was, “Doing it deliberately, and sort of orchestrating this in order to have the military-industrial complex benefit and the dollar temporarily benefit.”

As we highlighted two years ago when the story first broke, the RAND Corporation has been aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to become embroiled in a major new war to jump-start a recovery of the US economy and boost profits for the military-industrial complex after the scaling down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chinese media sources reported that RAND had presented a proposal to the Pentagon that revolved around fostering a conflict with a major foreign power in order to stimulate the American economy and prevent a double dip recession.

Although at the time RAND considered North Korea on its own to be too small a target, any full scale confrontation between the Koreas would embroil the United States on the side of the South and China on the side of the North. If North Korea were to tap its arsenal of nuclear weapons, the entire international community would quickly rubber stamp a US-led military assault on the rogue nation.

Given the fact that North Korea’s nuclear belligerency has its foundations in the best efforts of people like Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration, through the AQ Khan weapons trading network, to provide Communist agitator Kim Jong-Il and his hereditary successor with nuclear weapons, the fact that we are now seeing tensions reach boiling point represents a huge opportunity for the US military-industrial complex to manipulate into being the massive war that they have been seeking for years.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

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North Korea Attack Part Of RAND Plan For Total War?

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 23, 2010

The exchange of artillery fire between North and South Korea, which the North says was started by South Korea firing shells during a military drill, could act as the catalyst for a huge new conflict that the RAND Corporation has been lobbying for over the past two years.

The clash, which took place on the Yellow Sea border island of Yeonpyeong, killed two South Korean soldiers and wounded 18 others. North Korea has reportedly fired some 200 shells, setting numerous buildings on fire on the island. Both countries have elevated their threat status and are preparing for potential full out warfare.

As we warned two years ago, the military-industrial complex has been yearning for a new conflict since the invasion of Iraq some seven and a half years ago.

Back in October 2008, we reported on how the RAND Corporation was lobbying for a war to be started with a major foreign power in order to stimulate the American economy and prevent a double dip recession.

The RAND Corporation is a notoriously powerful NGO with deep ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex as well as interlocking connections with the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations.

The RAND proposal, which was reported on by Chinese media sources, brazenly urged that a new war could be launched to benefit the economy, but stressed that the target country would have to be a major influential power, and not a smaller country on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq.

Although at the time RAND considered North Korea on its own to be too small a target, any full scale confrontation between the Koreas would embroil the United States on the side of the South and China on the side of the North. If North Korea were to tap its arsenal of nuclear weapons, the entire international community would quickly rubber stamp a US-led military assault on the rogue nation.

Given the fact that North Korea’s nuclear belligerency has its foundations in the best efforts of people like Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration, through the AQ Khan weapons trading network, to provide Communist agitator Kim Jong-Il and his hereditary successor with nuclear weapons, the fact that we are now seeing tensions reach boiling point represents a huge opportunity for the US military-industrial complex to manipulate into being the massive war that they have been seeking for years.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

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Korean War Crisis: Brought To You By Uncle Sam

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 23, 2010

Despite the fact that South Korea admits it fired the first shots that prompted the North to retaliate, the vast majority of the establishment press are feverishly blaming North Korea for a new escalation in the crisis, while failing completely to acknowledge the fact that the whole fiasco was generated as a direct result of Uncle Sam’s policy through two separate administrations to ensure hereditary dictator Kim Jong-Il and his successors acquired the atom bomb.

As we have exhaustively documented, North Korea’s nuclear belligerency was almost exclusively a creation of the U.S. government in that they armed the Stalinist state both directly and indirectly through global arms dealers under their control, namely Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. While labeling North Korea as part of the “axis of evil,” the U.S. government was enthusiastically funding its nuclear weapons program at every stage.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations played a key role in helping Kim Jong-Il develop North Korea’s nuclear prowess from the mid 1990’s onwards.

Just as with Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons program, it was Donald Rumsfeld who played a key role in arming Kim-Jong-Il.

Rumsfeld was man who presided over a $200 million dollar contract to deliver equipment and services to build two light water reactor stations in North Korea in January 2000 when he was an executive director of ABB (Asea Brown Boveri). Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB confirmed that Rumsfeld was at nearly all the board meetings during his involvement with the company.

Rumsfeld was merely picking up the baton from the Clinton administration, who in 1994 agreed to replace North Korea’s domestically built nuclear reactors with light water nuclear reactors. So-called government-funded ‘experts’ claimed that light water reactors couldn’t be used to make bombs. Not so according to Henry Sokolski, head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, who stated, “LWRs could be used to produce dozens of bombs’ worth of weapons-grade plutonium in both North Korea and Iran. This is true of all LWRs — a depressing fact U.S. policymakers have managed to block out.”

“These reactors are like all reactors, they have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we’re trying to prevent it acquiring,” said Sokolski.

The U.S. State Department claimed that the light water reactors could not be used to produce bomb grade material and yet in 2002 urged Russia to end its nuclear co-operation with Iran for the reason that it didn’t want Iran armed with weapons of mass destruction. At the time, Russia was building light water reactors in Iran.  According to the State Department, light water reactors in Iran can produce nuclear material but somehow the same rule doesn’t apply in North Korea.

In April 2002, the Bush administration announced that it would release $95 million of American taxpayer’s dollars to begin construction of the ‘harmless’ light water reactors in North Korea. Bush argued that arming the megalomaniac dictator Kim Jong-Il with the potential to produce a hundred nukes a year was, “vital to the national security interests of the United States.” Bush released even more money in January 2003, as was reported byBloomberg News.

Bush released the funds despite the startling revelation, reported by South Korean newspapers, that a North Korean missile warhead had been found in Alaska.

Construction of the reactors was eventually suspended, but North Korea had an alternative source through which they could obtain the nuclear secrets vital to building an atom bomb arsenal – CIA asset and international arms smuggler AQ Khan.

In 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb program, admitted sharing nuclear technology via a worldwide smuggling network that included facilities in Malaysia that manufactured key parts for centrifuges.

Khan’s collaborator B.S.A. Tahir ran a front company out of Dubai that shipped centrifuge components to North Korea.

Despite Dutch authorities being deeply suspicious of Khan’s activities as far back as 1975, the CIA prevented them from arresting him on two occasions.

“The man was followed for almost ten years and obviously he was a serious problem. But again I was told that the secret services could handle it more effectively,” former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers said. “The Hague did not have the final say in the matter. Washington did.”

Lubbers stated that Khan was allowed to slip in and out of the Netherlands with the blessing of the CIA, eventually allowing him to become the “primary salesman of an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear technology and know-how,” according to George W. Bush himself, and sell nuclear secrets that allowed North Korea to build nuclear bombs.

“Lubbers suspects that Washington allowed Khan’s activities because Pakistan was a key ally in the fight against the Soviets,” reports CFP. “At the time, the US government funded and armed mujahideen such as Osama bin Laden. They were trained by Pakistani intelligence to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Anwar Iqbal, Washington correspondent for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told ISN Security Watch that Lubbers’ assertions may be correct. “This was part of a long-term foolish strategy. The US knew Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons but couldn’t care less because it was not going to be used against them. It was a deterrent against India and possibly the Soviets.”

In September 2005 it emerged that the Amsterdam court which sentenced Khan to four years imprisonment in 1983 had lost the legal files pertaining to the case. The court’s vice-president, Judge Anita Leeser, accused the CIA of stealing the files. “Something is not right, we just don’t lose things like that,” she told Dutch news show NOVA. “I find it bewildering that people lose files with a political goal, especially if it is on request of the CIA. It is unheard of.”

In 2005, Pakistani President Pervez Musharaf acknowledged that Khan had provided centrifuges and their designs to North Korea.

Through their policies in aiding North Korea to build light water reactors, and via the CIA asset AQ Khan who was protected at every step of the way while he helped provide North Korea with the means to build a nuclear arsenal, the U.S. government itself is directly complicit in providing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il with the nuclear weapons he now threatens to use against U.S. ally South Korea.

North Korea is controlled by a hereditary Stalinist dictatorship that has starved two million of its citizens to death in favor of building a million-man army. Some people put the figure at four million, one-quarter of the population. In the far north of the country there is a network of forced labor gulags where people who have ‘expressed a bland political opinion’ are, along with their entire families, tortured, raped and executed. Horrific bio-chemical experiments are performed on mass numbers of people. Babies are delivered and then stamped to death by the camp guards. If the mother screams while the guards are stamping on the baby’s neck, she is immediately assassinated by a firing squad. These guards are rewarded with bonuses and promotions for ripping out prisoners’ eyeballs.

The North Korean people are enslaved by a government that is using food as a weapon. Perhaps this is why the EU and the United States, via the UN World Food Program, resumed the shipment of hundreds of thousands of tons in food aid at the end of February 2003. This goes directly to the sitting dictatorship, which then decides who gets it by their level of allegiance to the state. Food aid only increases the power of Kim Jong-Il and yet it is veiled by the UN in bleeding heart humanitarian rhetoric. The money goes straight to enabling the North Korean leadership to live in the lap of westernized luxury with casinos and lavish new cars.

President Bush publicly claimed to loathe Kim Jong-Il and yet his administration, like Bill Clinton before him, set the policy to help North Korea obtain nuclear expertise. The U.S. intelligence network also protected AQ Khan and allowed him to provide the means with which North Korea acquired their nuclear capability.

If the tensions between the Koreas were to escalate into all out war, don’t expect the castrated American corporate media to mention how Kim Jong-Il and his successors grew to be such a threat in the first place – with the aid of nuclear weapons enthusiastically supplied by the U.S. government and its surrogates.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

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NATO is 'mafia' and Obama a 'snake charmer': Castro

India Report

HAVANA: NATO is a "military mafia," the war in Afghanistan is "genocidal" and US President Barack Obama deserves the prize for the "best snake charmer" who ever lived, Cuba's Fidel Castro has said. 

In an article published on Tuesday in response to the Western alliance's weekend summit in Portugal, the former Cuban leader called NATO an "aggressive institution" that ignored "billions of persons suffering from poverty, underdevelopment, shortages of food, housing, health, education and jobs." 

Castro, 84, communism's most visible living figure, led Cuba from the 1959 Revolution until he stepped down for health reasons in 2006, handing over the presidency to his brother Raul. 

Castro called NATO (short for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) "a bird of prey sitting in the lap of the Yankee empire," that was used by the United States to wage "the genocidal Afghanistan war." 

He brushed off ambitious plans unveiled at the Lisbon summit that would have Western leaders press Kabul to take over security by 2014, predicting they would eventually "hand over power to the Afghan resistance, in defeat." 

The United States is "going through a difficult phase as the result of its war exploits" and using its "enormous media resources to maintain, dupe and confuse world public opinion," Castro said. 

"Obama already admitted that his promise to withdraw US soldiers from Afghanistan may be postponed... After the Nobel Prize, we would have to award him with the prize for 'the best snake charmer' that has ever existed."

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Hell is for Children

Keith Johnson
Revolt of the Plebs
November 19, 2010

Somewhere in America, a seventeen-year-old boy is living the last year of his life.

	Goodbye, Son.

He is in the first semester of his senior year.  His grades have been good, and he expects to have enough credits to finish school early.  He feels like he’s been in school his entire life.  But he has no regrets.  Along the way, he has made many friends.  He took up an interest in baseball and found that he had a talent for playing the drums.  He is in his prime.  He’s lean, fit and healthy.  His mind is sharp and he has an insatiable appetite for life.

He has also fallen in love—for the first time.  She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.  He thinks about her all the time, and pines when she is not near.  When they are together, they share wild fantasies about how they’d like to start a family and go into business for themselves selling sporting goods.  He also wants to start a band—just for fun—and perform on the weekends at local venues.

Today, an Army recruitment officer gave an inspirational speech at his high school.  The guy looked sharp in his clean, well-pressed uniform.  He had a shaved head and two full sleeves of colorful tattoos on his bulging, tanned biceps and forearms.  The boy had never considered a career in the military, but he did find a certain romance in it.  Apparently, so did his girlfriend.  As they left the gymnasium, she made a comment that unnerved him.

GIRL: He was kind of cute.

BOY: What?

GIRL: Well, there’s something about a man in uniform.

BOY: Really?

GIRL: Yeah…don’t get mad.

It was the first time he felt angry with her, and the first time they’d ever crossed words.  He was overcome with feelings of jealousy, which caused him to say a few things he would later regret.

The drive on the way to her home was uncomfortable.  When they got there, she leaned over to kiss him.  But he did not reciprocate.  Instead, he clenched tightly to the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.  She stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind her as he screeched away from the curb.  It was their first fight.

When he gets home, he steps through the front door and sees his father—glaring at the television—watching another one of his boring news programs.

BOY: What’s up, Dad?

DAD: Same sh*t.  Goddamn Moozlims want to build a Mosque at Ground Zero.  Can you believe that sh*t?

BOY: What’s a Mosque?

DAD: A place where they train terrorists.

BOY: Well…that’s no good.

DAD: No…it ain’t.  I’m telling you, Son, if we don’t kill every last one of those Moozlims, they’re gonna take over the world.  They breed like rabbits.  Killing them all is the only way to stop them.  If we don’t, they’re gonna institute Sharia law right here in the good old USA.  And that’s no kind of world you want your kids growing up in.

BOY: What’s Sharia law?

DAD: The law of the jungle.  These savages like to cut people’s heads off…especially Christians.

BOY: Yikes.

The boy retires to his room and clicks on the television.  “Inglourious Basterds” is on HBO.  He’s seen it before—many times—it’s one of his favorite movies.  Quentin Tarantino is his favorite director. Brad Pitt is his favorite actor. And this is his favorite scene: where the “Bear Jew” is about to bash in the brains of a Nazi with a baseball bat.

The boy reaches under his bed and grabs the baseball bat that he’s used to hit many home runs.  He looks it over as he works his hand across the wood.  He isn’t thinking about baseball.  He’s thinking about how he’d like to take that bat to the head of that military recruiter.  But he quickly dismisses the idea.  That would be foolish.  But, damn, he sure would like to bash someone’s head in right now.  How about one of them Moozlims?  Dad wouldn’t have a problem with that.

BOY: Yeah, now that’s a good idea.

After the movie, the boy puts “Call of Duty” into his X-Box.  He hasn’t played video games since he started dating.  It was a good distraction.  It kept him from obsessing over his girlfriend.  To his surprise, he found that he was still a pretty good shot.  In fact, it was as if he’d never stopped shooting.  Over the past few months, he’d been regretting all of the hours he wasted playing games.  But today, he wondered if it really was a waste of time?  What if he could put these skills to work in the real world?

The next day, he pays a visit to the Army recruitment office.  The same man who gave the speech at his high school gives him a warm welcome as he walks through the door.  He has a strong handshake.  The guy calls him “Brother.”  The boy likes that.  He never had a brother of his own.

The recruiter puts the boy at ease with his quick wit and raunchy sense of humor.  He talks to the boy like a man, and the boy starts to feel like one.  The recruiter tells wild stories about his adventures overseas.  Then he rolls up his sleeves and shows the boy his tattoos.  There’s a wild story behind each one of them too.

Then they got down to business.  The recruiter tells the boy he could make up to $100,000 in his first year.

RECRUITER: Free housing, free food, free travel, lots of vacation time, up to $70,000 in education bonuses and another $20,000 signing bonus.  Plus, you get free health care for life!

The boy is impressed, and then asks what the odds were that he would see any combat?  The recruiter assures him that he would never have to step foot on a battlefield if he didn’t want to.

BOY: But I want to be on a battlefield.  What’s the point of being a soldier if you can’t fight?

The recruiter straightens up in his chair and then rises to his feet.  He gives the boy a stern and solid look.

RECRUITER: Brother…you don’t know how rare it is to find men of your courage.  Most guys who come in here are just looking to make some easy money.  But you’re different.  You’re a different breed altogether.

BOY: I just don’t want Sharia law to come to America.

RECRUITER: That ain’t gonna happen.  Not on my watch.  Not as long as I have brave men like you fighting alongside me.

The boy is hooked.  He was now a man, and about to become a very rich man in a very handsome uniform.  That was sure to impress his girlfriend.

Later that night, the boy drives over to see his girl.  He apologizes to her and presents her with a bouquet of roses.  Then he tells her his plans.  She cries.

GIRL: Is this all because of that stupid thing I said about that Army guy?

BOY: Well, maybe in the beginning.  But if it weren’t for what you said, I would have probably passed up an opportunity of a lifetime.  Jobs are hard to find these days.  A few years in the Army will be good for both of us.  We’ll have plenty of money and all sorts of benefits.  Plus, they’ll pay my college tuition.  I can take business courses, accounting…everything.  I’m going to need to know all that stuff if we ever expect to open a business of our own.

GIRL: But I’ll never get to see you.

BOY: Not true.  The recruiter said I get lots of vacation time and free travel anywhere I want to go.

GIRL: I don’t know.

BOY: Please…I know what I’m doing.  But I need your blessing.

GIRL: Well…I guess you would look cute in a uniform.  Way cuter than that ugly bald guy.

They laugh, and then they embrace.

Months pass.  He is now out of school and has just celebrated his 18th birthday.  He has passed his physical with flying colors and is preparing to be sworn in at the local VFW.

Dad is proud, and has already placed a “Proud Parent of a US Soldier” sticker in the back window of his F-150.  Mom is in tears, but she is proud of her son as well.  His girlfriend is taking pictures with her iphone.

After the ceremony, the boy walks up to the recruiter.  They shake hands.  The boy calls the recruiter by his first name and thanks him for all he’s done.  The recruiter seems different now, as if he’s turned into a whole new person.

RECRUITER: Yeah…don’t mention it.  By the way, you should probably get used to calling me Sergeant.  OK, private?  Now, how’s about you start making yourself useful by helping to fold up these chairs.

The next day, he prepares to board a bus.  He’s on his way to boot camp.  He is no longer a free man.  He is property of the United States Army.  He embraces his parents for the last time.  He gives his girlfriend her last kiss.  Then he boards the bus, never to be seen alive again.

Several months pass.  It’s Thanksgiving Day in Afghanistan.  The boy has learned that real combat is not like the kind waged on an X-Box.  The opponents are a lot harder to kill.  In fact, they’re way better shots than he could ever hope to be.  These guys have never had toys to play with.  They’ve been playing with real guns that they’ve been building from scratch since they were five years old.

There’s no pause button either, and you have to work a lot more body parts than your index finger and thumbs.

It’s hot, and he hasn’t bathed in a week.

He’s never heard screams like the screams he’s heard here.  He’s never heard women cry the way they do here.  He’s never seen children’s body parts carried away in the mouths of skinny dogs before.  None of these images, or sounds, were ever shown on any of his video games. Nor were the smells…

…the stench…that goddamn stench.  He’ll never be able to shake terrible smell.  War has a unique flavor.  It’s like gasoline mixed with blood, urine and sh*t.  It hangs in the air.  You can see it.  Sometimes your mind plays tricks on you.  You can almost swear that the stench clouds are taking on a life of their own.  You see faces in the smoke, like demons or ghosts.

He came here to kill Muslims.  But now that he’s here, he doesn’t want to kill anybody.  He just wants to stay alive…and go home as soon as he can.

He’s forgotten all about Sharia law.  There is no law here at all.  Right now, he’d welcome any kind of law that would bring order out of all this chaos.

Something just bounced off his chest.  Was it a bug?  It stings.  He feels like he just wet his pants, but her knows he didn’t pee.  Is it sweat?  He feels down around his waist.  He looks at his fingers.  There’s blood.  He refuses to believe that he’s been shot.  There must be another explanation.  Then he feels a shooting pain, as if he’s been run through with a sword.  He feels around his back for evidence of some kind of metal shank.  But there is none.

BOY: Mommy, I need to come home.  Can you come and get me?  What the f#ck am I saying?

He’s tired.  He feels like a million insects are crawling around in his body.  Maybe they’re there to help.  Maybe they’re putting things back together.

BOY: Thanks, guys.  Wake me up when…

He feels detached from his body.  It is moving on its own.  He is cold.  He lies on his back and reaches for a blanket that isn’t there.  He stares into the stench and breathes deeply.  Now he’s urinating…and he’s deficating as well.

As he lays there dying, he isn’t thinking about patriotism, causes, America or any of that sh*t.  This was a big mistake…and he wasn’t prepared to make this sacrifice…ever.

Before the light goes out in his eyes, the last image that flashes through his mind is a crisp vision of the beautiful girl he left behind, and the last word that passes from his lips is…”Why?”

The following week, a 68-year-old Senator in Washington D.C. has just finished his breakfast.  He scolds his maid for putting sugar in his coffee.  He’s on his way to the floor of the Senate to introduce legislation that would increase the troop strength in Afghanistan.  He climbs in to the back of a Lincoln Towncar.  He’s making one stop on the way to the Capitol.  He has an appointment at the spa for a rub down and a manicure.

Across town, a 61-year-old Republican Congressman ducks out the back door of his mistress’s townhouse.  He’s in a hurry to meet with a lobbyist from AIPAC.

In Texas, a 64-year-old former US President, who lied his nation into a war with Iraq, tees up a golf ball at an exclusive country club.

In New York City, an arrogant, 61-year-old political commentator for FOX News prepares to do a demonization piece on Islam.  In the meantime, he lurches over a young female intern at the water cooler and creeps her out with his unsolicited flirtations.

None of these old men have seen a day of combat, but that hasn’t stopped them from causing many deaths.

They all had a nice Thanksgiving.  All the kids were there.  It was a nice break from all that hard work getting these wars in order.

Back home, the parents of the young boy have just learned of his death.  Their lives are over.

Two months later, the parents fly to a special ceremony in honor of fallen soldiers.  At the same time the parents are being seated, the President of the United States is in a back room, watching a game on ESPN as he jokes with Secret Service agents.  An attaché comes in to tell the President that it’s time he made his entrance.

PRESIDENT: Sh*t!  Oh, well…let’s get this thing over with.  Put this game on pause.  I’ll be right back.

The President puts on his “game face” and goes through the motions, offering his condolences to each parent as they take turns shaking the hand of the man who killed their sons.

When it’s over, the President returns to the back room.

PRESIDENT: Turn the game back on.

Before he takes his seat, he uses anti-bacterial soap to wash his hands.  He hates touching strangers.  As he washes his hands, he also washes his mind of the parent’s faces and the names of their dead children.

A year has passed since the boy died.  His girlfriend has moved on.  She’s no longer into guys with uniforms, and she’ll never date a soldier again.  She’s met a much older man.  He’s divorced.  He owns a sporting goods store and plays in a band on weekends.  She lost her virginity on the second date.

Nine months later…another soldier is born.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Senator Lieberman!

Merry Christmas, Congressman Boehner!

Happy New Year, Mr. President!

Goodbye, Son.

War What Is It Good For?

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