Happy Memorial Day America!


My son is about this age.
If I were to die he would have his family around him and live in a country with schools and governments, technology, money and enough to eat.
I feel very bad for this poor kid whose daddy isn't coming home. His dad was brave enough to join the U.S. military for whatever reason -maybe he wanted to save the world, maybe he wanted to shoot some of "them Eyeracki rhagheids whut flew them planes inta 9/11"- It doesn't much matter why now. What matters is that this poor kid is growing up without daddy, because daddy isn't coming home. I feel sick and very, very sad about this.




As bad as I feel for the poor kid in the USA who lost his dad, I feel a whole lot worse for this little girl who is wearing a significant amount of her parents' bodies, because of a "smart" bomb.

Smart bombs are only as good as the guy that aims them where he is told to, and he is only as good as the information given to him by the "security contractor" who interrogated that 17 year old after the kid had been awake and without water or clothing for 75 hours. As the staff of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade know, the guy deciding where to drop the bombs may not have the best information.

"What's that you say? The house the insurgents spent the night in was on the other side of the street? Whoops! Better luck next time!"

She's growing up in a hellhole where bullets are flying and bombs are going off every day. Even if she lives long enough and the orphanage can afford it, she probably won't ever go to school, because even if western democracy takes hold in Iraq tomorrow, it's still gonna be a few years before there's money enough for schools to be built, staffed and ready to teach little girls without burkhas in a democracy dominated by strict Shiite Islamicists. She probably doesn't have clean water or enough food or adequate shelter, nevermind a school or parents. Oh, but at least she's "free" now.

It's unlikely she will ever forgive America, nor will her fifty'leven brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbours. Nor will the families and friends of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been wounded or imprisoned without cause.


Yes, it is tragic that 1844 coalition soldiers have died and more than 12,000 (mostly) young Americans have been wounded, but almost 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the invasion and occupation of their country and the ensuing civil war going on now. But I bet that little girl isn't eating hot dogs at a barbecue after watching the veterans' parade. She's probably going to be watching a different kind of fireworks this Memorial Day.

Print these two pictures.

Carry them around in your pocket and look at them from time to time.

And the next time some right-wing cement-head who thinks the sun shines out of George Walker Bush's ass and posted pictures of smiling young marines blowing shit up on his blog for Memorial Day tells you freedom is on the march , show him these pictures and see what he has to say.

And if he doesn't look at least a little sorry and won't admit that the whole thing has been a horrible, horrible mistake or says something smug about breaking a few eggs to make an omlette, punch the douchebag right in the mouth.

Twice.