While we were in Fallujah

[conus]

Nearly everything important that's happened in this world withint the hundred years is in some way "our fault." We are, after all, the most powerful country in the history of the world, like it or not. Saying that we supported Saddam at some other time is not a valid argument against ridding the world of him.

It's funny and sad to see so-called "progressives" asserting that a government should never be allowed to change for the good. Hearing this or something like it said tells you a lot about the person allowing it to flop out their mouth: Mostly that their political views are religiously insulated from reality or opposing ideas, which is odd coming from a group generally considered to be comprised of thinkers.

Rather than being “religiously insulated from reality,” my worldviews are rooted in experience. I’m an American citizen of European descent. My parents moved to the Philippines in 1954, where my father worked for around 35 years. I spent my first fifteen years there, then several more years as an adult. I’ve spent years of my life living under American subsidized martial law, during which time several thousand people, including one friend and two acquaintences, died in interrogation cells—slow deaths at the hands of people trained, equiped and funded by American tax dollars.

Regarding progressive assertations that governments should “never be allowed to change for the good,” in my experience these for-the-good changes only happen when when the puppet-dictator is no longer useful. The U.S. government’s motives are never altruistic. If the common good of the citizens of any of these countries happens to coincide with American business/military interests, then fine—they’ll exploit that to the hilt. But, in the end, it doesn’t matter how many civilians have to die, if that is deemed necessary in order for them to achieve their goals.

I love the “crying over spilt milk” remark. That, better than anything I could have dreamed up, typifies American livingroom analysis of situations in which human beings are destroyed on a daily basis. Spilt milk.

I’m not an armchair liberal with views based on information that came from PBS or out of the pages of a book. I’m not a progressive, or a liberal or anything else. I’m just somebody who has lived through the horror America creates. I’m still an American on paper, but that’s where it stops. I retain my citizenship, because in the past it’s been convenient for me to carry an American passport; I have no qualms about using this country for whatever I can get out of it. I know there’s nothing positive about my perspective, but, again, it is a perspective rooted in experience.