Today's Odds of Going to War...

A funny thing happens when we get older. When we are kids we believe what people tell us, like it was ‘gospel’. We expect people to be consistent with us. If they tell us we are going to Disneyland on Wednesday, we just ‘know’ we are going to go. We expect Christmas to come every year, that we’ll get goodies if we were good and we’d be overlooked if we were bad. I guess, you’d call it ‘secular faith’. At least that’s what I call it.

What happens to that when we grow up?

‘Well, (you nod your head sagely and retort, clearing your throat,) we learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality. That’s what ‘growing up’ means. You just can’t expect things from people, it’s not realistic.’

I say it’s not. I say, that’s bullshit, period.

We lose faith when we are lied to by people or things we trusted. THAT’S what happens. As really young humans, we only expect good from others, unless they prove to us otherwise.

Why am I bringing up this subject? What’s all this navel gazing about?

It is about the state of our lives, that’s what!

Why are so many people up-tight right now? Why do I see anxiety and confusion in internet posts to such benign groups like Purple-Ink on Yahoo (a crafting and paper enthusiast group)? What’s with the weird ass television commercials telling us we need to believe in ‘freedom’ and be patriotic? What about the libraries warning us that the books we check out may be reported to the government? The constant threat of war? The worry about being the next victim of terrorism? The shame so many of us seem to feel that, we Americans are the ‘aggressor’ in an inevitable conflict that seems to be without provocation. There is a general malaise in the air, a kind of March Madness, I’m detecting.

I think it’s because we are being lied to, again.

We all want good things to happen, but, we are being told to be ‘realistic’ again. Suddenly, peace is a dirty word. It’s being replaced by words like ‘coalition of the willing’ and ‘axis of evil’. We are being told that Iraq is harboring weapons of mass destruction, but nobody can show us these weapons, or even the means to manufacture them. We are being told that the horror of September 11th (don’t you just love how a date is now a symbol for an event?) is linked to Iraq but nobody can show us where the link
is?

Look, I’m not saying Saddam Hussein is a decent man, or even a good human being. I’m not pretending that he isn’t a liar or even a sadist. All I’m saying is, at least with the Gulf War the whole world saw he had invaded Kuwait, an innocent neighbor, who figuratively screamed to the world community for help to stop the aggressor. The whole world backed the move to stop the invasion! The situation was clear, there were no doubts, there were no questions about what was happening. We did the right thing in driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait.

But now, now, there are lots of questions and way too much speculation. Now, we are the aggressors, without a clear motive.

I remember another time we were lied to. Several actually.

Does anyone remember a little document called ‘The Pentagon Papers’?

For those of you who weren’t born at the time, let me tell you a little story…

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, there were a group of men, soldiers at a place called ‘The Pentagon’, who believed that the people they served weren’t as smart as they were. These men, thought that the people they served couldn’t handle the ‘truth’ about the world, that they were naive, so these men decided to start a war, because it served them, and not the people who paid them so handsomely to run things. These men were worried that because their country didn’t have any real enemies anymore, that they would end up losing their jobs if there weren’t any wars, so they made one up, that had nothing to do with their country. They said they were worried about, what we in 2003 would call, terrorism. Back then it was called ‘Communism’, and it was a very bad thing to be called a ‘Communist’ back then.

Anyway, these men wrote down everything they did to start, promote and continue this war against a little tiny country half a world away, and they labeled this document ‘Top Secret’. The document told all about the lies these men told the people they worked for, about the number of soldiers that were killed by the enemy, but how the number really was of the civilians our soldiers had killed. It told about how the soldiers decided that the only way to win the war was to send lots more teenagers to go fight, even though they knew they would all die horrible deaths, or at the very least be scarred for life, emotionally, all for nothing. It was so secret, and it revealed so many lies that people in the government, the Senators and Congressmen, weren’t allowed to look at it. These men did show their King, however. In fact they showed it to 4 consecutive kings of the realm, who all realized that they would be better served if they kept this document a secret too. So they went along with the soldiers from the Pentagon and called it National Security. They said that if anyone read this document other than them, that they would be put in jail for life for something they called ‘treason’.

One day, a young man, who believed in what these men told him without question, was asked to read the document, because he was considered smarter than ordinary people, and more than that, he was ‘loyal’. These men wanted him to speculate on certain things, so they could decide what else they could do to drive this war they loved so much.

Then the men made a big mistake. They sent the young man to the war, as an ‘observer’. That changed the man’s mind. He saw how the men back home lied to people and how many soldiers and civilians died hideous deaths because of the men and this document. He decided that he had to do something about it.

So, he went to a town crier, called ‘The New York Times’, who was very good at getting the attention of people. He made copies of the secret document and then gave them to the town crier who began announcing it from the rooftops. The men responsible for the document got very angry and attacked the town crier. They actually stopped the town crier from giving ANY news to the people of the realm. That had never happened before! So many people were upset by this that they had to talk to Judges and ask them to decide if the news could be told to everyone.

Meanwhile, the young man was tired of running away from the men from the Pentagon and he turned himself in for punishment.

Then, a funny thing happened. The King of the Realm of the time had told his political toadies to hire some goons to break into the doctor’s office of the young man, to get some dirt on him. The King was very angry at the young man, because he was exposing the King and his friends the soldiers from the Pentagon for what they were – crooks! Bad King, Bad King.

Anyway, the Judges finally decided that the town crier could tell everyone about the document that hurt so many people. Then, shortly afterward another Judge found out about the bad things the King did and decided that the young man should go free!

And they all lived happily ever after… except the people who died unnecessarily in the war and their families who missed the people who died, and the little children who lost their mommies and daddies and brothers and sisters.

The young man’s name was Daniel Ellsberg. He exposed many, many lies and in my opinion, is a real hero! I wish we had more people like him in the world.

Remember, I said, there were other ‘untruths’ we’ve been told? If you want to see how we’ve continued to be lied to in this country, go here. Before you get all wiggy on me, the article is an excerpt from the book ‘Secret Government’ by Bill Moyers, a pretty credible guy, in my opinion, at least.


It is all ‘noble and stuff’, to go on and on about being lied to by our government, I realize. And yet, I expect some Neanderthal bumpkin out there is reading this and thinking, ‘so what?’

The So What is, we NEVER, as a country, expected the Towers and the Pentagon to be attacked, but they were. What else are we going to allow to happen, in the name of ‘Patriotism’? The people who perpetrated the devastation on September 11th thought they were doing the right thing for a ‘just cause’.

I just don’t think we have to be like them.

I think we are smarter than that.

Don’t you?!