And You Thought Every Life Was Precious

You count Jessica - for now

We all remember Baby Jessica who fell down the well. The thought of that baby dying was simply unbearable. No expense, no amount of manpower was too great to save her. To let that baby die would have been to rob meaning from every life. Who looks upon a single cell in their body and says to themselves: that cell is not precious.

And neither does God say that of a single human soul.

But the eyes of men see things differently if that soul joins the military. In America, we view soldiers as toys. We have airplane toys and tank toys and soldier toys - and it just ain't no fun to get all dressed up for war with no place to fight. "Peace through strength" is nothing more than war undeclared. Peace is a byproduct of trust, not mistrust. But we like to say we're always using our soldiers for good. Yet there's an inherent danger in using people - no matter how strong any conviction to the contrary.

This from CNN

CNN has a heartbreaking report of a U.S. soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was subjected to multiple bombings. Despite serious injuries, he was repeatedly sent back to duty. Doctors now believe that the bombs were slowly destroying his brain. He was eventually sent back to the U.S., but the full extent of his injuries were never treated, and he ended up committing suicide, police believe.

Oh, I know all the false arguments - they are the arguments of children and cowards. He signed his life away. That's the price of war. It's a soldier's duty. He knew what he was getting into. But it's not the voice of responsibility making these arguments, it's those who either from fear or disdain or some other foul motive deem a human life unimportant. Suppose it had been Baby Jessica who had joined up and committed suicide. Suddenly, she's not so precious.

When a firefighter rushes into a house to save a baby and dies, it is an act of true heroism. But it's a different story when we as a people go around deliberately setting fires to houses and then use the desire of firefighters to serve against them. That needless risk of lives from unnecessary fires is a tragic waste of life. We know that is wrong and live in the constant terror of discovery causing an undeclared conspiracy of guilty silence and righteous propaganda to continually reinforce the rightness of what we do. Like you can really fool God in the end.

The difference between a woman and a girl is that a woman knows the difference between a man saying "I love you" and "I love using you". Girls who parade around in women's bodies end up on Oprah talking about what dogs men are and getting wild applause. There's also a difference between those who support our soldiers and those who support using them. You can hear very passionate speeches getting wild applause for "supporting" the troops with the speaker being oh so careful to parse the word "using" from his stated desires. But the proof is in the pudding.

Doesn't he know he's not supposed
to be a person anymore??

We treat our soldiers like shit. For the most part we despise them no matter how many bake sales we hold to assuage our guilt. If we truly supported our troops we wouldn't be wasting their lives in fires we ourselves started halfway around the world. So rather than face up to our own treachery we throw away lives in the name of freedom though it achieves no freedom at all. Like the witch burners in the Crucible, we fear the ending of our insanity, for what will be said of us then? Talk about a case of the truth setting us free.

I know what it's like to be thrown into the trash, to be put into a dark corner of the world and declared of no value - a soldier used up is put in the same hell. I can live die scream or cry - it matters not to the world around me. I'm no Baby Jessica. Just another dead body found in a dumpster on a winter morn. That's when you see your "supporters" in their true light. Threaten them with exposure to the light and they all come scrambling to cover the asses, but it's what you do when no one's looking that truly defines you.

Every soul must fight for its survival and it's the job of everyone to help with that. I've posted before on the high suicide rate of Iraqi veterans - a situation that has not improved over time. Parse it however you like, but our wars are not about making the world a better place. Our soldiers are good people who can't live with the acts they've been asked to commit. We suffocate their feelings with words like freedom and patriotism and duty - words most people have no right to even speak.

Decided suicide is not painless

Some soldiers have decided to fight back. The fearful and the cowardly will call them traitors. I call them uniquely brave and freedom fighters. You can read about them at the Courage To Resist website. These soldiers must fight against peer pressure, a gutless nation's scorn and military law to preserve their souls - which is the only fight that counts.

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