Just what we need to do...

A good friend of mine, Max, wrote this and I felt the need to share...tis important...

hello to you all, (is that so much harder than 'howdy y'all', I mean, I murder then English language on a regular basis, but really... jesus, *wait*; I haven't even finished the salutation and already I'm ranting aimlessly and losing focus... ok, back to business...)

hello my friends,

This is Memorial Day, and to most, it is a day off and a barbecue. To some, it is an opportunity to wax poetic on the ultimate sacrifice paid by our troops killed in war. For me, it sometimes is my birthday, but not this year. But I am using this opportunity to ask you two very important questions:

Do you know anyone in Iraq? and if you do know someone there, are you happy they are over there?

I would say most of my friends and relatives don't, because coming from a middle class to upper class background, as most of you do, we didn't have to join the army. Most of us got to go to college and some of us (ok, you) even graduated...

Who is our army? Without the draft, our Army is a volunteer army. And who volunteers? The lower classes and the extraordinarily noble or misguided. And who controls this army? Our government -- and who is the Government? Elected by the people (mostly) but propped up by big business and usually members of the upper class. This has always been in certain degrees (lower class army vs. upper class government) but it has never been worse than today.

I look at our situation in Iraq, and even rejecting 95% of the propaganda on BOTH sides of the argument, it boils down to this: I keep reading the news and analyzing the situation, mulling everything over in my brain and I just can't believe that after Korea AND Vietnam, we have let our government do this to our Armed Forces AGAIN. We have invaded a country for the wrong reason and we not only have absolutely no business being there, now that we are there, we have no idea how to get out.

I have all the respect in the world for our fighting men and women. I believe that a strong armed force is necessary. I am not some namby-pamby intellectual peacenik who thinks the worlds problems can be talked out over tea and crumpets; solutions to age old problems are never that easy. But I also believe that (I can't believe I am going to say this in this manner, but nothing else is coming to mind, so for all you comic geeks, this one's for you) with great power comes great responsibility. If we build a large, powerful army, we should use it correctly. For defense of our country. Period. Somehow the protection of our interests and righting wrongs (comic book hero style) got into the equation. Now, if we could fight every evil dictator out there, great, we rule. But (and it's a big BUT) we have picked and chosen our enemies only where our economic interests are at stake. In Africa, there are a dozen civil wars, with more atrocities than you can shake an anal-placed cattle prod at, are going on right as you read this. Are we lifting finger one to help? Nope. The oil is in the middle east, not Namibia. Now, am I simplifying this? Damn right. I need to, because I need to get to my point: Who is to blame for this? George W. Bush. That's easy. But who do we blame for GWB?

We have no one to blame but ourselves. We have allowed this charlatan in the White House (illegally, I might add). Then, even worse, allowed him to bend a tragic situation like 9/11 into the justification for the illegal war in Iraq (and Afghanistan, where Halliburton is building a $12.8 billion pipeline at taxpayer expense...where is that on your network news? but that again, is another email). We sit back and 'tsk tsk' and hate our government and yet we do very little to change it. We were all so fascinated by Clinton and his blow job peccadilloes, but when Bush lies to our faces during the State of the Union on a yearly basis, we don't do a thing and rarely talk about it. We look skeptically at the media, try to find holes in the story to piece together the non-bias nonpartisan truth and feel helpless. Yet we do little to understand the corporate ownership of media conglomerates and how that affects what we are told. The FCC changes laws so that the top 6 media companies can own all the news you hear, and then they go on and on about Janet Jackson and Howard Stern and we just take it. The FCC is a board that is appointed, so we have to take great care in who we elect to appoint these people, and this is just one example (don't get me started about the Supreme Court). We seem to go about our lives and hope beyond hope that it will all work itself out. Meanwhile, our energy prices are through the roof, the economy is in shambles and we can't even begin to fathom the reason why? We have our war, like it or not, and even then, things are not improving. When gas prices go up, prices for EVERYTHING go up and it's not like that raise is gonna come through (some of us have even been asked to work without income, but that is also another email). What do we do about it?

Hopefully, we vote. Look, politics is a painful and hypocritically polarized process. And, like Bill Hicks said, the two major parties are just puppets on the hands of a single evil called 'corporate america' but let's face facts: we need change. Now. Right now. I don't even think we can wait until November, but baring a coup, we are gonna have to. I ask that all of you register to vote (if you haven't already) and vote for John Kerry. Or Ralph Nader. Or Mickey Mouse. But not George W. Bush. Anyone but Bush. Please. We need to take america back and while Kerry certainly doesn't seem like the solution, we already know that GWB is not. He has lied about WMD to get his war and he has lied to cut taxes that put more money in the top 1% of america while using tactics like tax 'refunds' to fool the american people that he is making their lives better. He has run on a policy of republican lies (trickle down economics, elimination of the bill of rights through the US PATRIOT act, religious justification for state policy, and small government spending MORE - not less - on corporate -- not public - interests...just to name a few of my favorites) and those policies have failed miserably. To put this in perspective, because of his religious objection to stem cell research, even Nancy Reagan hates GWB.

This all comes back to my question: Do you know anyone in Iraq and are you happy they are there? I would truly like to hear about anyone you do. I do not, so I have no frame of reference. If you know anyone who has given their lives, I am sorry and I hold them in high respect. Plenty of people died defending this country for the wrong ideals, that doesn't make their passing any less tragic. My beef is with Bush, not the members of the Armed Forces.

I have one other request. Please vote on November 2. Vote. It is the only way you can stop the republicans and take our country back. We need change. We need to change ourselves and our attitudes, sure. But first and foremost, we need to change our leadership. And we can't blame the 'process' or the 'supreme court' this time. They already tried that trick. We need to come out in large force and vote GWB out of office. Tell your friends, relatives, coworkers, heck, even your bartender to vote.

Thank you for your time and patience with me on my way to my point.