... Written from a forgotten corner of the old American empire.

By now many people have probably seen the video of American soldiers killing civilians in Bagdad. Yes, this “little” mess in Iraq and Afghanistan is very much still a war. The fact that it is not covered by CNN 24/7, as it was before, does not mean it’s over. The promises to start withdrawing troops this year don’t stop the killing, or make better the brutalizing effect on the lives of the people in these invaded, yes, invaded countries, and the minds and bodies of our soldiers.

The business of being an empire is a lonely one nowadays, and definitely not for the faint of heart. You are required to win, obliterate opposition by all means necessary, save “lesser” peoples from their own undemocratic selves, lie to your own people for “their own good”. Why is everybody shocked and outraged by civilians being killed in a war? Well, because we are a chronically distracted generation, walking in a politically correct haze, shielded by a biased, censored media that chooses for us what should make us panic, indignant, or inspired. The images in that video were not trimmed for easy viewing nor had background comment and/or music. This video came out of left field and we are just not used to this anymore because it shoves us out of our comfortable viewing seats of this conflict and confronts us with what we already know, but don’t want to acknowledge: every life is expendable in a war. Apparently, under the “Rules of Engagement” there is a suspension of disbelief of sorts where it becomes acceptable that two paranoid, delusional youngsters, in a heavily armed helicopter, have absolute power on who lives and who dies, then get to joke and snicker about it.

Unfortunately, what happened in that video is not an isolated incident in the otherwise untarnished record of a peace loving country. It’s time to accept and come to terms with the fact that the United States is, and has been for a long time now, a military state. A country with a long string of wars, crass violations of civil rights and international treaties, conflicts and coups that they have either started, as part of an economic or political agenda, or participated in with the same goal. The excuse though is always the same: spreading democracy and freedom, whether you want it or not. Long gone are the days, however, of the Manifest Destiny when those actions were seen as necessary evils, sacrifices that had to be made to expand the country and make it prosperous.

The U.S. is still being weighed down by their now obsolete, and out of control war machine. It should be painfully obvious now, that the money spent in long haul military campaigns like the one in Iraq, could be used to widen the country’s pool of thinkers by strengthening their public education system. Despite the inexplicable current aversion of the average American for intellectuals (even though the United States was founded by secular ones) these are the kind of people you need to be able to develop new technology. The budget for this war would have financed a hundred research projects to find other sources of sustainable energy that do not require sending our young people to die in what Washington’s relentless war campaign has turned into foreign wastelands.

Nowadays, other countries that used to engage in the same struggle to conquer or be conquered, now look down upon war, as they have learned from past experience how financially draining, and ultimately counterproductive is to stir up trouble outside their borders, hence their reluctance to participate in the Afghanistan/Iraq fiasco (Great Britain is a notable exception). In the current global economy, industrialized countries are more preoccupied with trying to shake off their dependence on fossil fuel and foreign technology, and “wars” are now only being waged by competing corporations.

Americans have to ask themselves if what made their nation powerful up to this point in history is still relevant, or worth the sacrifice. They have to ask themselves if it’s still worth looking the other way for the glory of “the bombs blazing in air”.

Joanne Namerow, a new writer to Axis of Logic, was born and grew up in the beautiful Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico which she describes as, 

"a forgotten corner of the old empire", where we have been a colony of the United States since the end of the Hispanic-American War in 1898. We currently 'enjoy' a second class citizen status, as we are allowed to go to war for the U.S., but not allowed to vote for the president."

"You are required to win, obliterate opposition by all means necessary, save “lesser” peoples from their own undemocratic selves, lie to your own people for “their own good”. Why is everybody shocked and outraged by civilians being killed in a war? Well, because we are a chronically distracted generation, walking in a politically correct haze, shielded by a biased, censored media that chooses for us what should make us panic, indignant, or inspired."

- Joanne Namerow