Look's Like They Fucked Uncle Sam Over Too

[izeveryboyin]

[jimboloco]

Don't you be signing up for a comission when you graduate., Chicago lady.
They'll put you in the cockpit of a killing machine, believe you me.

http://studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.p ... &start=165

Hey Wired man,
I thinks we can jam
without a plan,
not like good ol Uncle Sam,
no avuncular momentz from him, man,
he got de plan, but more importantly,
the plan got him an all of us
by the ballz.

one hung lo

Flyin by da seat of ya pants
needle, ball, an rudder,
airman's odysey,



been above the clouds
so high almost
outa sight of th
whole earth
an in th gutter
cursing dreamz of
broken luck.


Airman's Odesey
Antoine de St-Exupéry
from the intro, by Richard Bach,
page x an on,
to page xi,
Quote:

"Never once had the airforce, for all its fixations on classrooms, taught pilots a course in Individual Responsibility for the Murder of Cities. I needed teaching fast. In all my training I had never thought, that's not the general's hand on the bomb release. It's mine!

Antoine, old friend, can a line pilot, can a first lieutenant waiting ready in the cockpit, can he decide by himself to follow other laws than military? Can I choose a different future than sudden noon for my city,can I choose not to arm the bombs, can I fly low and lay the things down in some pasture outside city limits?

A lightning answer. Before you turned fighter pilot, he said, you turned human being. Before you gave allegiance to the military, you gave allegiance to life.

The other pilots out past my wings in the dark, .....are they thinking too? We never talked about it, .....about what our life might be like after we had murdered a city.....(We) were here not because we wanted to kill people but because every one of us loved flying airplanes, and the highest performance airplanes happen to be owned by the military forces of every country in the world. Air forces seduce pilots by shouting, Fly!. If instead they shouted Kill! would there be young men and women in military cockpits today?

"If you are to be," his words echoed that night,
"you must begin by assuming responsibility." And you alone are responsible for every moment of your life, for every one of your acts. Not the general. You.

What would be the penalty, I thought suddenly, if one of us, or three or twelve....what happens if every pilot of every nation just happened to drop bombs that didn't detonate? Could it be worse than the penalty we'd pay if we dropped bombs that did?

I listened, waiting in my airplane for the war to start. I'll never know what I would have done had the order come to incinerate that city.

But I was hearing his words, I was watching myself and I was thinking about it."

unquote

Thanks for the poster, Izzie K, I will definately use it. Don't ferget, whilr yer smashin th state, keep a smile on your face an a song in yer heart.

[jimboloco]

Editor's note: | Camilo Mejia spent more than 7 years in the military and 8 months fighting in Iraq. On a furlough from the war, he applied for Conscientious Objector status, and was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International. He was convicted of desertion by the U.S. military for refusing to return to the war in Iraq and was imprisoned. Mejia was released from prison on February 15th. - to
Regaining My Humanity
By Camilo Mejia
CodePink.org

Thursday 17 February 2005

"I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors-the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.

And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren't helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn't want us there. We weren't preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn't find a single good reason for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me-they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price Humanity has paid for war.

Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don't believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up to the government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.

I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me.

One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.

While I was confined in total segregation, I came across a poem written by a man who refused and resisted the government of Nazi Germany. For doing so he was executed. His name is Albrecht Hanshofer, and he wrote this poem as he awaited execution.

Guilt

The burden of my guilt before the law
weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot
and to conspire was my duty to the people;
I would have been a criminal had I not.

I am guilty, though not the way you think,
I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong,
I should have called evil more clearly by its name
I hesitated to condemn it for far too long.

I now accuse myself within my heart:
I have betrayed my conscience far too long
I have deceived myself and fellow man.

I knew the course of evil from the start
My warning was not loud nor clear enough!
Today I know what I was guilty of...

To those who are still quiet, to those who continue to betray their conscience, to those who are not calling evil more clearly by its name, to those of us who are still not doing enough to refuse and resist, I say "come forward." I say "free your minds." Let us, collectively, free our minds, soften our hearts, comfort the wounded, put down our weapons, and reassert ourselves as human beings by putting an end to war.

© Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org

[izeveryboyin]

that piece was excellent, and don't go worrying about me getting in with the killing machines... I can't wake up before noon, and I'm lazy. *wink*
--K