Various War stuff

I attended a demonstration downtown today, which was far smaller than I had hoped but moving and informative nonetheless. The first speaker was a Vietnam vet who spoke of PTSD, which was not formally recognized but through suicide took the lives of twice as many soldiers killed in battle. Why? In the excellent documentary "Why We Fight" directed by Eugene Jarecki, people were asked this same question, and the answer was invariably, "Freedom." But the speaker today said they did not fight for freedom. He said that no new freedoms were gained by fighting in Vietnam, unlike the Civil War, and neither will we gain freedoms from fighting in Iraq. I would take it one step further and say that with the Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 we are losing freedoms faster than ever before.

Everyone should see "Why We Fight" and I will summarize a few key points here. First, the views expressed on 9/11 were so like my first post I felt like I had plagiarized although I wrote the post before I saw the movie. One misconception most people have is that "Smart Bombs" strike with surgical precision and minimize innocent casualties. The reality is that out of some 53 bombs fired, NONE hit the intended target. Interviews were conducted near the site of one of the blasts that opened the war where the bomb fell short of its target and hit a home instead. The Iraqi man spoke of the hope they had of being liberated from Hussein's rule destroyed as bystanders suffered heavy casualties. The military-industrial complex was also examined, i.e. the link between Congress doling out money for equipment and the business practices of arms producers like Lockheed-Martin. These companies have factories in every state, so that if representatives don't pass huge military budgets, constituents' jobs are lost.