The Price of Loyalty

M.Y.T.H. is…
Belief in the game controls
that keeps us in a box of fear
We never listen
--Faithful, Pearl Jam

So don't be afraid to let them show
your true colors
true colors are beautiful
like a rainbow
--True Colors, Cyndi Lauper
________________

Is the price of loyalty also the price of liberty? Or is it the other way around? Are you not free if your loyalty is for sale?

Ranger recently went mano a mano with a retired military man who disagreed with Ranger's contention that the U.S. military is more dangerous than the terror threat facing America. More dangerous because, once the military is applied to any equation, people will start dying in rather violent fashion and fancy information officers will apologize and explain how regretful yet necessary the deaths were, since it is all in the name of fighting terrorism.

The U.S. war machine has made great strides since the Vietnam War. In that war, we just killed 'em, counted 'em, stacked 'em and moved on. No need for apologies since they were better dead than red.

Friend Dark Wraith summed up what the U.S. military delivers with eloquence:

"As we endow the arena of our enemies with confusion, we deliver to them a battlefield of chaos over which they have no control, for which they have no training, upon which they have no hope of domination. They are just unwelcome visitors to our home, temporary intruders in our world. We are not the instrument of chaos; we are chaos.

"And as we are chaos, we are more than just the owners of the battlefield: we are the battlefield (I Am Become Battle)."

But this man would have none of it. His opposition to Ranger was that he should shut his trap because he receives monies from Uncle Sam as a result of his military service. What this man was saying is, his loyalty was for sale.

For him to have not toed the party line would be akin to a prostitute taking the money and not fellating the john. For him, to strike an oppositional stance would be akin to bad faith, and he had his standards.

This is the armamentarium of the 30 percenters (as Fixer at Alternate Brain refers to them) -- those who will gallop (figuratively, if not literally) into the maws of death behind the war hawks. Be grateful for what you have; you are an ingrate if you dare to question your handlers. It especially grates when the questioning comes from one who should still be marching in lockstep behind his C in C (not).

But that game is corrosive. Liberty will die when loyalties are for sale. Then, the highest bidder will rule the roost.

Written on the 41st anniversary of his commission in the U.S. Army as a RA, 2 LT, INF., serving as grateful (ingrate?) nation. Well, grateful, as long as he keeps his trap shut.

You're Free if We Say You Are

Every war when it comes, or before it comes,
is represented not as a war but as
an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred,
comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
--George Orwell

They put a parking lot on a piece of land
When the supermarket used to stand.
Before that they put up a bowling alley
On the site that used to be the local palais
--Come Dancing, The Kinks

____________

We here at Ranger took the liberty of exercising our online liberties to avail ourself of the Free Dictionary online to come up with a meaning for the word "liberty." We figured if that is part of what we're fighting for, we ought to know precisely what it means in order to know if we are accomplishing it.

The French motto is liberty, equality, fraternity, and our nation was founded on the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity. The federal government is using their liberty to cover their posteriors, acting more in the posture of libertines. So is liberty absolute, a natural right inherent in democracies? If so, are liberties being bestowed upon the citizens of the newly elected democratic republic of Iraq?

We need to define liberty before we can decide if we have it, or if we can give it, and where its limitations lie. First:

• The condition of being free from restriction or control.

There are approximately 350,000 American troops and armed contractors roaming freely around Iraq that are controlling actions of Iraqis at the neighborhood level. What the definition calls freedom from restriction or controls the U.S. military calls successful COIN.

In fact 28,500 Iraqi citizens, none of whom invited the U.S. to enter their country as armed guests are in U.S.-controlled prisons. These people have not been charged or tried in a civil court of law. They are enjoying liberty, Texas-style.

• The right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one's own choosing.

"Of one's own choosing" implies an internally-generated volition, not an external, state-imposed one. The entire Iraqi endeavor is not of the choosing of the indigenous citizenry. Everything that happens in Iraq is imposed at the whim and discretion of a foreign invading army.

This army is called the Coalition of the Willing, even though it is imposing its will upon the unwilling populous of another country. This willing has a separate meaning from un-coerced and intentional willing, one uprising from the within the population of Iraq itself. It is rather the imposed will of a superior external force upon that of a subjugated one.

My Army has no legitimate right to invade and impose its will upon any country unless that country aggressed upon the U.S. first. The U.S. has historically eschewed the first strike. If we are the only superpower in the world as we are led to believe, why do we need to transgress upon our own policy? Our might should be employed legally only.

• The condition of being physically and legally free from confinement, servitude, or forced labor.

Obviously the aforementioned 28,500 Iraqis imprisoned by U.S. forces are not free, but what about the number of citizens held by the Iraqi national government itself? Iraq has become another dirty little third world prison state financed by hard-earned U.S. tax dollars.

How "physically free" are the two million+ Iraqis forced into physical exile status? These people are living marginalized lives so that George W. Bush can say that he saved them from Saddam. Good deal for the al-Qaeda recruiters; better deal for U.S. military companies and contractors.

• Freedom from unjust or undue governmental control.

Iraqis cannot move without passing through armed checkpoints, subject to being flex-cuffed, hooded and photographed and iris-scanned. The Sunnis fear the government-controlled army and police, and the Shiite government fears the newly armed Sunnis allied with U.S. forces.

The new liberty is based upon paranoia, fear and sectarian violence -- all against all, and all to U.S. benefit, for the governmental control exercised is imposed by the foreign army of occupation.

• A right or immunity to engage in certain actions without control or interference.

What actions of the Iraqi government are out of the control of U.S. forces? Iraq is not a sovereign nation as long as a foreign army occupies its terrain.

You get the idea.