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You’ll All Pay #7

© Joe Conat 2004

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

-“For What It’s Worth”, Buffalo Springfield

What is that sound? Doors being knocked on in the dead of night? Glass being smashed in the new Americanized version of that German hit classic Kristalnacht? Joe McCarthy laughing and pointing and screaming “See? Commies in the Army! I TOLD YOU!”

Well, not quite. But close.

A recent letter in the OpEd section of the Sumter, South Carolina paper The Item (an online version of the letter can be found here) details the forced separation of a dedicated Marine soldier from the corps because of “liberal views”. Evidently, to briefly recap, this serviceman with a spotless eight-year record wrote a letter to The Item in March criticizing George W. Bush’s leadership.

An Alert Reader (to borrow a phrase from Dave Barry) took it upon himself to not only respond scathingly to the letter, but to clip it out and send a copy to the Department of Defense. The result of which was Sgt. Ferriol being brought up on charges of “Disloyal Statements” a crime under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The charges were cleared, and Sgt. Ferriol’s record remains pristine, but he was barred from working in intelligence and pressured to leave the corps under threats he would not be allowed to reenlist. This all thanks to a “Mr. Simpson”, a true patriot, staunch defender of our country and congenital moron.

This is exactly what we need, kids. Let’s pressure and oust valued intelligence gatherers while we try to continue an occupation of a foreign land filled with citizens that attack and kill our soldiers. “We don’t need his kind gathering much needed field info,” Mr. Simpson must’ve thought. “We can’t trust him, the liberal hippie weirdo.”

In the meantime six soldiers were killed today by a rocket-propelled grenade attack on their Blackhawk helicopter. Sixteen soldiers were killed Sunday by a similar attack on their Chinook helicopter. Soldiers are dying every day in roadside bombings, marketplace attacks and similar. And, you know…we don’t know who’s doing it?

What could help us with that? Let me think. Oh, wait, I know…

Intelligence!

So, congratulations Mr. Simpson of Sumter, North Carolina! You’ve just aided and abetted the enemy.

Put that way, maybe we should send his name to the DoD.

This is what, these days, we call “patriotism”.

Well, not “we”. I call it insanity. I call it rabid jingoism. I call it “reminiscent of Stalinist Russia”, another phrase I’m sure Mr. Simpson would froth at the mouth at. Yes, Mr. Simpson…you are guilty of the same behavior that seemed to embody the Communists.

You remember them, right? And what eventually happened to them?

This is where we are: we are turning on each other like piranha. Terrified of the threat without, frustrated by a complete failure on the part of our leaders to ensure our safety by, I don’t know, catching the bad guys rather than farting around in a country we don’t need to be in while our soldiers die needlessly at the hands of indigenous peoples who don’t want us there anymore (and, golly, didn’t Oliver Stone make a movie or two about a war that sounds like this?), we hide in our homes with duct tape and tarps, hoarding water and screaming “Traitor! Terrorist!” at anyone who voices an opinion that is not “We are winning. George W. Bush is the Messiah. We can do no wrong. We are safe.” It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers wrapped in a flag.

It’s Brownshirts. It’s “good Jews”. It’s reprehensible and un-American and we should wise the hell up right now.

It’s blindness. We are attacking ourselves…removing our soldiers from combat, revealing the identities of undercover operatives for petty revenge, turning on strangers and our friends and loved ones and beating up our teddy bears because we can’t scream for Mommy. It’s self-destructive and morally wrong and just stupid.

It’s mob rule and that makes it feel justified. And “justified” is a sweet sweet word when used in relation to your baser urges.

But it’s reducing the effectiveness of our country. We are supposed to stand up and say “that’s stupid” if we think so, we are supposed to voice our opposition and state our views even if they go against the administration. It makes us stronger as a country, it makes us better at what we do, it makes us stop and think.

Not everybody with an opposing view is a terrorist. Not every criticism of our administration is un-patriotic. In fact, I would argue that criticizing our administration, any administration if you feel it is wrong, is the embodiment of American patriotism. It makes us stronger. It makes us better. It makes us the freest nation in the world and isn’t that what we send our troops to defend?

We must all be wary. It is at times like this, when tensions are high and fear is rampant that we must be extra vigilant. Not just for threats from outside. But from our own tendency to attack anyone in reach, from our own knee-jerk reactions and narrow-mindedness. Those who speak out against our President or against the war may not share your view but that doesn’t make them wrong and it doesn’t make them traitors. To round them up, to force them from their jobs to threaten their lives…That way lies a path that is Un-American.

If this is how it is…maybe the terrorists have already won. Because this…this isn’t the America I grew up in.

“You’ll All Pay” is written by Joe Conat. You can tell him to shut up at conat@martyandgroovechicken.com. He won’t listen, but what the hell, right?