This blog is in response to a recent event of a Muslim Psychiatrist in the United States Army, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, openly murdering seemingly random troops around him where he was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.
When a Psychiatrist acts out in this way, one has to ask oneself, "What is the message here?"
The people of Afghanistan have been surviving a state of war for over thirty years now. It's hard to get in a harvest under these conditions. Children are hungry.
Early on, in this go-round, about five years ago, an American drone killed a wedding party because one of the members was a tall man. Ben Laudin is thought to be a tall man.
Back when the Afghans were fighting to get the Soviet Union out of their country, we Americans trained Ben Laudin in war tactics here in the American West and sent CIA contract killers over with him to Afghanistan. Our deal was to help the Afghans after they won the war against the USSR and then help them to rebuild their country.
After the Soviet Union retreated, so did the US government. We blatantly did not keep any of our promises to the Afghan people.
Now, we want the Afghans to trust us again. Same old claims/lies. Same old US cronyism with corrupt officials. It's quite like Lucy telling Charlie that she won't pull the football away this year when she holds it for him to kick it. She always pulls it away. And, then she laughs.
Citizens of Afghanistan are intelligent people with an ancient, highly-civilized Culture. Our American troops are going around kicking doors in and then going into homes to check for ... enemies. We Americans are pretending that we are not aware of the deadly situation we are creating for anyone who helps us at all. That person's entire family will be killed, or worse. Unfortunately, as we all know, gang raping a young virgin is a traditional way to teach a family a lesson.
The so-called news is hindering the situation further by mis-representing Afghanistan itself and its people, by only reporting dramatic chaos and only showing photographs of Afghanistan as a barren desert. Au contraire. Afghanistan is famous for its orchards. I'm told the pomegranates are absolute heaven and widely and inexpensively available to all. I'll bet pistachios are too.
The last orchards of wild apples on Earth are in Afghanistan.
There is beautiful architecture from the Middle Ages. Walled gardens. Water-works.
Afghanistan is famous for its weaving and decorating of cloth. People have been weaving and embroidering over hand stamped images for thousands of years. The textures and designs are wonderful.
In the Seventies, I wore a "blouse" from Afghanistan which had been hand printed with a floral design, flowers were embroidered over and around the printing and, also, mirrors had been attached using a type of inverted blanket stitch. The blouse was comfortable and practical. There was a large pocket sewn onto the front of the blouse. All of the seams were covered with beautiful embroidery. There was even a hand-loomed tie at the top of the neck-line made out of embroidery thread with tassels on the ends. I could tie it closed if I wanted to.
I wore this blouse over a leotard that I had embroidered myself with lazy daisies and French knots. And, of course, with Levis. It was comfortable to wear. Beautiful. Well designed. Well constructed. For me, it stands as a metaphor for Afghanistan itself.
So. Against my extremely limited experience of Afghanistan, and, alas, never having been there, I feel so sad that these people are experiencing the horrors and terrors of war generation after generation. And we American citizens are not only paying for it, we are condoning it with our false patriotism and and silence. I guess Mao Tsu Tong was correct in at least one way. People always have their opiate. For us Americans, it's television.
We've become dulled to the inappropriateness of violence through our mass media. Violence and fear have become entertainment for us. We women have gone back to being mindless sex-objects. Breasts are portrayed as male sporting grounds instead of holy vessels with which to feed our children.
So. What was the Psychiatrist saying when he seemingly mindlessly murdered fellow soldiers who happened to randomly be around him? This might be the most important question for all of us to consider deeply and rationally.
This is not a time for taking sides or knee-jerk reactions. This is a time for us all to take a long pause and consider what we are doing here in America.
We've just given hundreds of billions to already wealthy stock brokers; we've just taken away $800 million from Medicaid which provides for our most vulnerable citizens.
We really are not a Christian country any more. Remember that Christ said, What you do to the least of them, you do unto me.
As a country, we here in America have simply lost our minds. It's time to slow the pace and gather information. By information, I mean measurable facts. Then we must get into some sort of a sane solution so that we can find our way back to rational life.
Why should we ask our children to put their lives on the line in order to get an education, have job security, health insurance, housing, and expect a retirement. There are a lot of benefits to life in the American Military.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with our young people. Our troops and highly trained and effective. Loyal. Everyone in our Armed Services are commendable human beings.
Our values are in question. How we perceive reality is in question. How we live is in question.
There are always extremist fear mongers in every society. These either/or, rigid people are usually fairly under-educated, rural people who want to keep the traditions of the generations who have come before them. Right or wrong. Very conservative. Very frightened. Things either are or they are not. The so-called ch***tian wrong in the American Southeast is no less hateful than the rural Pushtans in Afghanistan. Maybe the American wrongs cause more trouble. They have more funding.
It's obvious that our American behaviour has created all of the Terrorists who now hate us enough to want to kill us. This has been building up over decades.
We Americans, generally, don't know much about what our government has been doing in other countries. The revolutions we've caused and paid for so we could have a puppet government at our command. The despots we've kept in power. Not just our lies. Our arrogance. Our destruct ions.
The root of all of this current killing and screaming, is our continuing support of Israel and our turning of our backs on the Palestinian people. It's time to start addressing these issues realistically. Learning the actual history of what happened in 1947. Normal, everyday Palestinians were forced out of their homes under gun fire. Many were killed. Some fled to Jordon, Syria, Western Europe and elsewhere. Those Palestinians who still live in their original homeland...the Palatinate...live in hideous little Cantons where the Israelis have stolen all of their water, cut down all of their orchards, keep produce in check-points until it is rotten, and have repeatedly carpet-bombed the villages of all of the Arab areas around them. At American tax-payers expense.
Schools and libraries, power-plants and sewage facilities have purposely been destroyed by the Israelis. Now they're putting up a wall to "protect" themselves. The wall goes around Palestinian wells and orchards so that those resources are now part of Israel.
Newspaper and other news media in the Western World are under strict directions to never report one good thing about Palestinians. And, they can never, ever criticize Israel.
About six months ago, a group, in a small boat, whose crew included Representatives from the United States Congress, entered Israeli waters with a cargo of teddy bears. They were taken into custody by the Israelis and accused of attempting to deliver terrorist supplies to Palestine. It took several weeks of diplomacy for these innocents to be released from Israeli custody.
Palestinian women have been forced to give birth, in public, without medical care, without the help of their families, in Israeli check-points because the soldiers would not let them through.
Israelis lead wonderful lives. We pay for that. We don't take care of our own citizens yet we send tremendous amounts of money to Israel...which is a nuclear power...thanks to us. As is Pakistan. As is India.
I don't know why the American public are being so passive and ignorant about all of this.
How can we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people if the people don't pay attention?
With any luck at all, there will be those who are able to follow complicated thought. Not necessarily...but...possibly. Not probably...but, as I say, with any luck at all, we haven't become so jaded and corrupted that just a few will educate themselves and speak out. As I am today.
Yes. I've learned things I haven't wanted to know. Yes. It's taken time. Yes, I believe in the delicious, idealized government which our formothers and fathers brought to bear, at great personal expense, a republican democracy. This kind of thing is actual patriotism.
Our unique form of government is the fruit of the Age of Enlightenment.
Maybe this is the message, or something like it, that the Psychiatrist is telling us. Random killing. Check. Killing of innocents. Check. Going crazy because death has become so common in our world. Check.
One would not think that a man so highly trained as a medical doctor and then further trained as a Psychiatrist would thoughtlessly and for a shallow reason, give his life away without some rational reason. Especially since he is a Psychiatrist.
Let's think about the recent murders at Fort Hood thoughtfully, calmly, and find as many of the lessons as we can which will help us to live the way our Great-great-great-great-grandparents thought they were preparing for us.
