Monday, June 16, 2008

Response to questions raised in last blog entry

This short little blog is in response to the person who posted the questions in regards to my last blog entry entitled “Karbala, and what could have been.”

(see the comment post and questions in full here)

Question number one: I assume that you are asking me if I support Obama or McCain and / or whether or not I think that either one of the two will bring about a change. And again, I can only assume here that you mean for the better.

Well, here it goes for whatever it’s worth. If you ask me, the United States hasn’t been a true democracy since who knows when. I am highly uninformed when it comes to politics, the electoral process, etc… But I think that it would be extremely naive to think that the “powers that be” would allow a man to become the president who wasn’t in league with them regarding their plans, agendas, and what not. I mean really, think about it. A lot of planning and manipulations were needed to justify the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the whole so called war on terror in general. It took a tremendous amount of effort into pulling the wool over the eyes of an entire nation as has been done here in the U.S. I hate to give the fuckers any credit, but whoever concocted this whole bullshit fantasy that allows the United States to attack whomever they want, whenever they want, and to do it in a way that even blatant lies later go unchallenged, is damn near a genius in my eyes. And throw on top of that the fact that people, human beings, can be kidnapped from third party nations, held indefinitely without charges, and then rot away in cells without even the right to legal council, it’s enough to make you think that we are back in the dark ages, which honestly, I believe that if we aren’t yet, then we will be soon, and I mean very soon.

So, back to the question, no, I do not support either Obama nor McCain, nor any other candidate for that matter. I believe that whoever is elected will continue to be a figurehead for whoever is really calling the shots back stage. As to who “they” are calling the shots, well, I will leave that for you to decide. There are many more people out there who know a lot more facts than I do. I will leave it up to them to figure out who “they” are. I have my own theories and opinions but until I can prove them I prefer to keep them to myself. But I promise the world this; that the day I can prove who they are, and why they are bent on destroying the world as we know it, I will make it known in a heart beat. Until then…you get the point.

Question number two: I guess that I already answered this one to some extent in the answer to question number one, i.e., the kidnapping of people from third party countries and holding them indefinitely without so much as legal representation. Just the very idea of this is wrong on so many different levels that I don’t even know where to begin. I ask the following question with the utmost sincerity and humility; Does anybody out there really believe that it is right, whether morally, legally, however you want to put it, to simply kidnap a man from a country that isn’t even his, treat him in the most inhuman ways possible, and then lock him up in yet another country, well actually a military base, and hold him indefinitely with no rights whatsoever? Come on now; tell the truth if you are honest with yourself.

First of all, look at it this way. Let’s say that you have a man in Afghanistan who is fighting against coalition soldiers. He is from whatever country, again, let’s just say Egypt. According to the Geneva Convention, if this man was wearing some kind of uniform that made him recognizable as belonging to whatever guerilla formation that he belonged to, and after all, terrorist, terrorist organization, terrorism, these are all semantics used in place of what the man really was, and that’s a guerrilla soldier. Nobody is saying that that makes it right; I am simply clarifying what the man really was by definition of the Geneva Convention, like the Viet Cong in Vietnam. Furthermore, if this man had a commander who ultimately could be held accountable for the mans actions, then under the Geneva Convention this man is considered an enemy soldier and therefore afforded the rights of any prisoner of war, which the people being held in Gitmo are not. What’s more is that if the man was a guerilla soldier fighting in Afghanistan then it seems logical to me for the Afghan authorities to deal with him; as in his arrest, detention, charges, his trial, and ultimately his sentence and punishment if found guilty of specific crimes. Whatever the man is accused of happened on Afghan soil; therefore it is one hundred percent within Afghan jurisdiction.

So how on Gods green earth does this man end up in U.S. custody, transferred (kidnapped) to Gitmo, or any one of the other secret or not so secret detention facilities that we all know exist, like Abu Ghraib, and held “indefinitely?”

Even if there were a strong case against our hypothetical man here, and there was reason for him to be extradited to the U.S., then the U.S. would have to go through the extradition process like all modern civilized nations do. And this process would start by Afghanistan first deporting the man to his native country, and then there would have to be an extradition treaty between the U.S. and whatever country that the man is from, and then the process would proceed from there. But you can’t just bypass the whole procedure that every other nation on earth would have to abide by just because you are the United States of America. That’s just down right dirty. And we are supposed to be the ones with the moral high ground? Yeah right.

Now, the above statements by no means cover all the cases and circumstances that led every individual into the confines of Gitmo or wherever. Some are far more complicated than others obviously. And I am not saying that the U.S. doesn’t have a right to defend it’s self. Hell, if anything, where others might be against the use of torture I might actually support it, believe it or not, if the end truly justifies the means. As in if lives are going to be lost if a certain individual doesn’t talk, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. But we all know when torture can be justified and when it’s just down right bullshit.

So I guess really that my answer to question number two is that there is a right way to do something, and then there is the wrong way. And Guantanamo Bay isn’t one of the right ways. And for all of you reading this shaking your head saying what a load of shit, I ask you this, why then when we had a chance to infiltrate UBL’s inner circle and possibly do his ass if need be, we DIDN’T! Answer me that first before you shake your head at anything that I say. The problem that is called Usama Bin Laden, if he truly is the source of the problem, could have been dealt with long before people were losing their lives, whether to airplanes flying into buildings, or truck bombs going off behind embassies.

I’m waiting, you geniuses that were shaking your heads, for the answer to that one. If you can provide me with the answer I will be the first one to rethink some of the things that I say. So we’ll see…

Question number three: No, it doesn’t surprise me at all that there are mercs from the places that you mentioned, Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia fighting covert wars in Chechnya, Kashmir, and Iraq.

Serbs are Slavic. They have demonstrated their utter and complete contempt and hatred for the Muslims of the world, much like their Slavic brothers, the Russians, first in Bosnia, then in Kosova, and now as mercenaries in Chechnya (against the Chechens of course), and Kashmir. And here once again is an example of the biased nature of the so-called journalistic world. So-called because a journalist is supposed to be neutral, an unbiased outsider simply reporting the facts as he or she sees them so that the rest of the world can stay informed. Yet time and again this isn’t the case. How many of you reading this remember Sebrenicia? But be quick about it, no cheating and looking it up online. Right now as you read this think to yourself what happened in Sebrenicia. Are you drawing a blank? If you’re not, and you remember, then I commend you. But if you have forgotten, or never knew in the first place, I blame the media for that.

How is it, that in this day and age, up to EIGHT THOUSAND innocent civilians could be slaughtered in the course of 24 hours, and even worse, using the old fashioned way of lining them up and machine gunning them into giant pits? I mean any way that you’re killed is a bad way, but to me it just seems a little different to say that x number of people were killed in a bomb blast, or a rocket attack, or whatever. It’s not that it changes the tragedy any, it just seems easier to ignore I guess. Not for me, but I guess maybe for the average person listening to the news, I don’t know. But to say that eight thousand people, an entire city basically, were rounded up, which must have taken hours, then sorted into groups, and then finally gunned down in rows as the next batch watched, to me that is some really heavy shit to comprehend. Look back to what happened in Azerbaijan in ’91 or ’92, the Russians rolled into downtown Baku with their tanks and gunned down something like three hundred people. To me, that’s even hard to deal with.

Then what about the Kurds that Sadam Hussein killed with the chemical weapons, what was it, like five thousand? And then of course our own tragedy here in the U.S., Sept. 11. But even that was only three thousand plus. What I’m saying here is that it just seems to change the way that you view a tragedy. To me I would think that three thousand people killed all at once instantly is easier to digest for the average person than eight thousand people over the course of a 24 hour saga filled with scenes as if it were the Apocalypse its self. Yet, when the Sebrenicia massacre took place in 1995, I myself hardly remember the media making much of a fuss over it. It was almost as if the incident was one of those back page article type of stories, like, “and by the way, today eight thousand Muslims were slaughtered by Serbian forces in Sebrenicia, and now on to today’s real headlines.”

Yet when an event takes place where Muslims were the perpetrators, not only is it sure to make every front page and headline, the journalists are so quick to remind us how one incident perpetrated by a handful of Muslim bad guys is evidence that the entire religion of Islam is flawed and must be eradicated. Case in point, the infamous Ann Coulter. Her solution for the “war on terror” is to quote ‘invade all of the Muslim countries, kill their leaders, and force the rest of the population to convert to Christianity or face death’ end quote. But again, the Serbian CHRISTIAN forces that slaughtered eight thousand Muslims in Sebrenicia did not reflect on Christianity one iota. Nor did the Orthodox Christian priests riding into battle on the tops of tanks in Chechnya, only to look the other way once a village was entered by the Russian soldiers and the raping and killing began, reflect on Christianity. Nor did individuals like Timothy McVeigh’s actions, who was a Christian, reflect on the religion. Nor do all of the wackos who blow up abortion clinics in the name of God reflect on Christianity. But even when a Palestinian Nationalist, who happens to be Christian by faith, and yes, many Palestinians are Christians, blows something up in the name of Palestine, not the name of Allah, somehow even this is translated into Islamic terrorism by the media.

Point being that everybody has bad guys. Every country, every group, every religion. Muslims by far are no exception to this rule. But you have to call it like you see it. Eight thousand lives lost are not any less tragic just because they are Muslims. But apparently in the medias eyes this is exactly the case.

How is this related to question number three? I’m not sure myself, but I think that the point that I was trying to make is that it doesn’t surprise me that there are Serbian mercenaries working in Chechnya and Kashmir. And it surprises me even less that you don’t hear about this in the media. Yet we have all heard the stories of supposed Chechen mercenaries in Iraq. It’s all about the spin game. Just once I would like to see the events of the world told like they happened, without an agenda and without putting a spin on it. I think that the world might become a much different place, and definitely for the better.

Question number four: As to Australian troops making a difference in the war on terror. That’s one that I can’t really answer. If anything maybe staying out of it would actually help things. Once people wake up and realize that the so-called war on terror is not really a war on terror but a war with an agenda, a big business agenda, and once people realize that this isn’t about “Islam versus the West”, and people will realize that when America loses all of it’s support and is left standing alone still bleating about the war on terror, yet the rest of the “western world” can coincide in peace with Islam and the Muslim people of the world, then, and only then will a “difference” be made.

So, my anonymously posting friend, I hope that I was able to answer your questions. Also, as for the rest of you, please bear with me as a finish writing something that I would like all of you to read regarding the world of prosthetics. Lately, it has been weighing on me the fact that so many young American soldiers are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan missing limbs. The world of prosthetics isn’t one that you want to stumble into alone and unprepared. Yeah, to a certain extent it takes will power and all that stuff to overcome an injury like getting a leg or an arm blown off, but you can also say that missing a limb is one of the injuries where all the will power in the world isn’t going to get you anywhere without the right equipment. It’s kind of like saying that you are determined to win the Indy 500 with a Ford Focus. Dream about it all you want, but it just isn’t going to happen, end of story. Prosthetics are a lot like that. You can have all the will power possible and a positive attitude to boot, but get paired up with a shitty leg or a crappy arm and you are going to loose your determination real quick.

In my next blog I want to talk about the ups and downs of the prosthetic world and how if you don’t inform yourself you are going to have a hard time when you get fitted with a prosthesis that holds you back instead of allowing you to get back to normal life. So keep checking back for my next blog. I also have some pictures of my new leg that totally kicks ass, or at least will kick ass when and if I can walk again. So until then.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just finished reading your book and found this blog. The book is very interesting. I just want to respond to one of the points you made - namely concerning bias in the media. My dad always talks about how the media was biased against the Serbs, and said that they totally overlooked all of the war crimes commited by the KLA. Also, people always talk about how the media is biased towards the conservatives, but I seem to find only bias towards liberals. I'm trying to say that, if you look for bias, you can always find it.

Also, I disagree with you about the war on terror, but that's kind of tangent. It's really stupid how the US turned down both of your offers to help - the result is that (what I consider) two wars that were right have been completly screwed up.

A question: Do you believe that the US should withdraw from Afghanistan?