For Laura Lee, Wherever You Are

When I was about 5 years old, I had a neighbor friend named Laura Lee.  I don't remember her sister's name, but we all played together often.

Laura Lee had a playhouse in the back yard that her dad built.  It wasn't more than a few sheets of plywood barely held together with 2x4s and some 10-penny nails, but it was a palace to us.

One afternoon, we had, for some long-forgotten reason, decided to put bricks on the roof of the playhouse.  Must have seemed like a good idea at the time.  Laura Lee was up top and I was handing the bricks up to her.  One slipped and caught me square on the left temple.  I was rushed a couple of blocks away to Dr. Bonin's office, who put three stitches on the wound.  To this moment, I have that scar and I often rub it and think about Laura Lee.  I don't remember her face, but I can tell you a lot about her up until she was 5 years old.

One day we were playing out in the street and her mother called her home.  There were two men at the door in Navy uniforms and mother looked upset.  Come to find out, Laura Lee's dad had been killed in action in Vietnam.  He was in the Navy, and I really never knew what happened, but not long after that, Laura Lee and her sister and mother moved away.  I never heard from them again.

My dad owned the house.  In fact, he owned all but one house on the block.  After they moved, I helped him clean out the house and tear down the playhouse in the back.  It was strange going in there.  All I could think of were the times we had played in various rooms, or the nifty scar I had on my temple from loading bricks on the playhouse.  I was terribly conflicted, thinking about the man I barely knew (he had been gone most of the time), a war I vaguely understood, a land I couldn't find on a map if you paid me, and my poor friend Laura Lee who would never see her dad again.  It was an incredible thought for a 5-year-old for whom the world never changed.

After that, I started noticing things.  A stop sign at the end of the block had been spray-painted so that it read, "STOP WAR."  I suddenly noticed Walter Cronkite talking about the men dying in someplace called Vietnam.  Dan Rather was showing me pictures of soldiers running through swamps or diving for cover in rice fields, and other pictures of strange Asian people jabbering in a mystical language with a serious, deep voice speaking English over them.

I heard about other dads in the neighborhood who would never be coming home.  I didn't know them like I knew Laura Lee's dad, but I knew what happened when they died: the families moved away and were never heard from again.

I started paying attention to the heated discussions among the political people my dad was around a lot.  Some were saying we needed to 'increase our presence,' while others were hard-line against it, and wanted to end the war before it 'tore this damn country apart.'  My dad was on the former side, saying if Vietnam fell, it would cause a 'domino effect of commie expansion.'

I thought all commies looked like Asians, because I had little experience with any other kind.  They must have been bad, though, because they killed Laura Lee's dad, and I spent a lot of time under my desk on Friday at noon, with air raid sirens going off.  It was just a drill, but I could only imagine what those Asian commies would do if Vietnam fell.  Just look at Laura Lee's dad.

Eventually, I came to understand that the Vietnam war was a proxy for the US and USSR.  Instead of fighting each other directly, they were using this poor Asian country to hash out their differences.  Even later, I learned that the only reason the US was there was because of a mutual defense treaty with France, who had gotten into the war in the first place.  It wasn't a war about political ideology, it was to protect France's colonial interests in Asia.

I realized that people like Laura Lee lost their dads because of bullshit.  People were just things to throw at imaginary enemies, with little or no regard to the children who would never know their dads.  Governments used people's lives to back up treaties and political ideologies and strategies.  I came to despise governments because of Laura Lee's dad.

No Vietnamese person had ever done anything to me or anyone I knew or anyone I even heard of, except that one of them killed Laura Lee's dad.  But he wasn't there to defend his home.  The Vietnamese weren't marching down the street taking pot shots at us.  In fact, I had never even seen a Vietnamese person except in Dan Rather's pictures.

It wasn't until years later that I finally met some Vietnamese people.  They were refugees that had been resettled in Houston, which was a major center for such things, due to the fact that many Vietnamese made livings growing rice and fishing, and Houston was a major rice center and just miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

When I finally met some Vietnamese, they seemed pretty normal.  They weren't ravenous commies or yellow devils, they were a bunch of Laura Lees with dads who had died in the war.

Governments, on the other hand, were evil faceless machines that sucked up dads and spit out bones, and if you were luck, you got a couple of guys in uniform at your door and maybe a check.  I always imagined that it was hardly compensation to Laura Lee, but I will likely never know for sure.

What makes me angry is that all these wars are not to protect Laura Lee, or me, or you.  They are economic and political.  They are just part of the standard tool box for a government, and all the Laura Lee dads are just tools inside it.

How gross.  How course.  How sad.

When I look at the Middle East, or Israel, or the Ukraine, or any of a number of other wars that people like George Soros and various government agencies have committed, I think of Laura Lee's dad.    When I see all the strife and anguish and refugees in the world, I think of Laura Lee's dad.

And it makes me really, really angry.

Give That Man A Peace Prize!

 Pembaca Indonesia: tidak percaya kepada apa saja dari WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks adalah pelaksanaan CIA. Mereka mau membuat situasi seperti Libia di Indonesia. Kerusuhan dan protes adalah apa yang diinginkan oleh mereka untuk menciptakan karena kekayaan Indonesia bisa diterima kalau tidak stabil. Hati-hatilah informasi yang mana pun yang jelek di negeri Indonesia.

“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."  -Barack H. Obama, Boston Globe, December 20, 2007

This morning, as you ate your Wheaties and sipped your coffee, did you have a twinge of conscience?  Did you visualize all the men, women and children who, in your name, would never enjoy breakfast with the family again? Did it bother you at all that millions have died because of you that never attacked, nor even harbored ill will towards you, your family or your nation?

Did you vote for Obama?  Did you believe the hype about "hope" and "change?"  Were you one of the rabid supporters who castigated anyone who dared speak a cross word about such a great man as Obama?

Obama: the greatest mass murderer to ever win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Not a single Iraqi, Afgani or Libyan have been shown to have attacked the United States, nor has any proof ever been offered that any of those people had intent to do so.  Three wars have been perpetrated on the lone premise that 19 Saudi citizens hi-jacked four commercial aircraft and flew them into civilian and military targets in the mainland US.  Yet, not a single shot has been fired at Saudi Arabia.  Why is that?

And why are a good number of the supposed hi-jackers still alive?  And why are there so many questions surrounding the events of 9/11?  And what, exactly, did Libya do to the United States to deserve being attacked?

In point of fact, the US has perpetrated an act of international terrorism, attacking a sovereign nation without provocation, whose sole crime is that the country has oil and wants to sell it to whoever offers the best price.

To claim that the US is protecting rebel factions inside the sovereign borders of Libya has absolutely no weight under law or reasoned argument.  Especially when there are far more desperate places on Earth, where the citizens suffer deeply, and have done so for decades, without so much as the US batting an eyelash.  The only difference between them and Libya, insofar as the US government is concerned, is that Libya has oil.

That's all.

This fact could not be more obvious now.  Iraq, as an isolated incident, might have been arguable, but combined with Afganistan and now Libya, there can be no other conclusion than lust for the rightful wealth and resources of sovereign nations.

We must also consider the possibility that these events are nothing more than slight-of-hand, as well.  As the world focuses attention on these unprovoked, immoral and unlawful naked aggressions, what is being perpetrated behind the scenes?  Theories abound, but one can speculate that we may never know in our lifetimes, if ever.

In the meantime, global focus has shifted away from Japan and imminent nuclear disaster.  Why hasn't the US mustered its might and resources to aid in the recovery of those poor folks affected by natural disaster, and the subsequent man-made threats?  Why is it we can muster all this effort to kill and destroy, but not for peaceful and humanitarian purposes?

Oh, that's right...Japan doesn't have any oil.

If the same events has occurred in Saudi Arabia, do you think there would be a difference?  Would the global coalition be wringing its hands about cleaning up the mess and getting things back to normal?  Would such a disaster already be shunted to below the fold on the second page?

Do you feel rage?  Do you visualize the victims of your silence?  Does it make you angry that a man was elected, at least partly, on the premise of ending America's naked aggressions, who has since escalated those aggressions?  Have you done anything at all to put an end to it?

Or are you too busy enjoying your Wheaties and wheat toast with a nice latte from your home coffee bar?

Suppose tomorrow, you awoke to the sounds of aircraft and Tomahawk missiles raining down on your neighborhood.  Suppose the world, tired of the illegal criminal acts of America in so many parts of the world, had formed a coalition, rammed a resolution through the UN, and proceeded to attack your home.  Suppose, instead of your morning commute, you were picking your way through dismembered bodies and destroyed homes wondering what in the hell you did to anyone to deserve this.

Inconceivable?  Really?

"As you sow, so shall you reap."

Do you think anyone would weep for you, when you did nothing to stop the terrible death and destruction your government hailed down on so many victims in so many parts of the world?

Or do you think they would simply enjoy their Wheaties and wheat toast while brewing up another latte, and feel justified that you were receiving a just reward?

The US has not prosecuted a lawful and Constitutional war since World War II.  Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Granada, Panama, Haiti, Iraq, Afganistan, and now Libya are all illegal actions unilaterally ordered and operated by an Executive Branch of the federal government, and sanctioned by the American people, who have done nothing to stop it.  Millions have died because of your inaction.

Does your conscience have any say yet?  Have you checked your pulse lately?