murdering soldiers and ignoring a lack of freedom...

it seems even the military is convinced that one of it's marine units murdered iraqi civilians, men, women and children after losing one of their own in a roadside bombing. can't write this one off as "collateral damage"...it is a lot easier to ignore civilian casualties when the trigger man is hundreds of miles away staring at a computer screen than it is when the trigger men are surrounding unarmed families in their home for slaughter. but then this is what happens when you throw young kids into horrible environments overridden with death, murder and other horrors...they become "desensitized to civilian casualties" as the military is now saying. what these kids did was wrong (and i emphasize kids...these are kids on the battlefield too quickly asked to become too much man), and they should be punished for it. but i can't help but think a large part of the blame lays on the government and the pentagon for sending these kids in there without a plan, without a hope and helping bring about a culture that leads to this.

and it's funny...suddenly the same people that refuse to examine the root causes of crime in poverty ridden areas, the ones who declare that the criminal is a criminal because he is a bad person, that he should just pull himself up by his bootstraps and make something of himself, are now the same ones loudly proclaiming that it was the "desensitization" of being war that caused these marines to commit these horrible acts. i agree...i doubt any of these kids would have committed murder if left to their lives back in the states, but put them in iraq during a civil war backed by a pentagon that views civilian death (hundreds of thousands) as "collateral damage" and the "price of freedom"...and you get murderers...but why can't these people see that environment effects those that commit horrible crimes on the streets of the united states as well. but no, instead we lock them away for longer and longer sentences and refuse to examine the causes of crime. much the same way we wage more and more war without examining the cause of blowback terrorism against the united states...only to continue the cycle, hastening the united states' fall from it's perch as world hegemon.

which brings me to my second point...gw told graduates at west point that we can no longer ignore the lack of freedom in the middle east. tell me george, is that because the people in the middle east haven't ignored their lack of freedom, nor the fact that european powers had a large hand in supporting tyranny in the region, followed by the soviets and the americans, and now solely the americans? funny that you should say this george, because we haven't exactly ignored the lack of freedom in the middle east for the last 50 years, we have actively attempted to subvert it in order to ensure that vital oil keeps our economy humming. perhaps we should wonder if that lack of freedom has anything to do with our buildup of military bases in the region over the last 15 years...bases which then needed to be used, and 9/11 provided the convenient cause for their use...leading to more bases being built...and we will need a reason for them to be used. is this why there is a permanent base being established near the iranian border? or will we wait and utilize our permanent bases in south korea for the next imperialist campaign?

yes, i am feeling rather pessimistic and preachy today...the state of the world commands it though...

revenge wears no wristwatch...