Toast Soldiers

Pride and joy and greed and sex
That's what makes our town the best
--Shattered, The Rolling Stones

Once upon there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart
--Total Eclipse of the Heart,
Bonnie Tyler

You know you've got a job and a little bitty chick
Six-pack of beer and a television set
Little bitty world goes around and around
Little bit of silence and little bit of sound
--Itty Bitty, Alan Jackson
_________________

Another metaphor for the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) and all it begets comes to mind: Behold -- the paper shredder.

We have fed the Constitution into the hopper and shredded the concepts intrinsic to our national beliefs.

We have fed soldiers into the military, and shredded its ability to address military threats to our nation by turning them into little strips called "warriors" that cannot be glued back together again.

We have fed our economy into this shredder, destroying hopes of a healthy, viable pre-2001 type of economy. We have also fed the U.S. legal code into the shredder, producing little strips called "military tribunals", which are a perversion of U.S. justice.

The shredder's job is one alone: to take the most damning, revealing or incidental materials and turn them into homogenous, inoffensive strips. We are taking the finest aspects of our union and converting them into common dross, content to lose those things that identify the best of us.

In exchange we get itty bitty pieces and parts, the simulacra of a once proud nation.