Re: [Biofuel] Fwd: [vvawnet] Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, I do sympathise, but what I always look for in these stories and so seldom find is this: After Iraq our cities, towns and communities will fill with them. We will live with these powder kegs for a whole generation. Nobody mentions the sheer mayhem and destruction the Iraqis will have to live with for at least a whole generation, or be killed or maimed or have their lives destroyed by, nor the Vietnamese, nor so many others. Mention Iraq war casualties and Americans think of this (from ICH today): Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq: 3,923 This next figure doesn't even occur to them: Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In U.S. War On Iraq: 1,168,058 They also fail to mention all of the non-military people who have been injured or killed over there. The total of the contractors, civilian security personnel, and other non-military people killed or injured isn't know with any real accuracy, but is probably something like twice the number of military personnel. Sad stuff. Indeed. AP ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Fwd: [vvawnet] Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
Hi Gustl, I asked a Vietnam vet for comment on this one. He thought about it for all of ten minutes and came back with the response below. Regards. Bob. The very day after I got off the plane from Vietnam, I had an encounter with a rude and officious local cop over an unsignalled right-hand turn as I pulled into the police station to renew my drivers license. It all seemed such bullshit after the seat of the pants life I'd been leading that I had to smile. This brought another burst of indignation, abuse and indignity from this uppity officious punk with a badge and a gun. I felt my gorge rise. He was standing off balance with one hand on his hip. I could have taken him before he blinked. But, unlike Matt, I was unarmed, and he was armed to the teeth. I just stood there eating his shit. If I'd had a weapon there would have been one less mouthy cop in the US and one more vet on death row. Thinking about it later persuaded me that I should dispose of all the guns I owned, and learn to manage anger before it led me into trouble. There have been trying days with trying assholes but I always came out ahead, did minimal damage, and left no blood or bodies behind. I have not yet fucked up in a big way like Mat, and hope am not about to by acting out violent impulses with weapons at hand, whatever the cause. There are a few who deserve it, but they all live in highly protected political atmospheres, are untouchable, and, frankly have no idea what it is like to be a veteran of any kind of violence or traumatic experience. If you recall your Gibbon and your history, returning veterans have always had problems, many of which became problems for the civil populace back home. We all have our Rubicons but Matt and the others like him crossed theirs. The rest of us didn't. Who the hell knows why. Rome, particularly, had difficulties with returning veterans who were never properly resettled into civilian life, and who suffered not only from war and combat stress but from the anger and disappointment of having been promised benefits and assistance their governments ultimately reneged on when it came time to pay the piper for all of those victories. For most, payment consisted of getting to march through a marble arch while the citizens cheered. We Vietnam vets didn't get even that. It's been the same since the beginning of warfare. Train a civilian to kill, maim, rape and pillage. Turn him into a highly tuned fighting machine with hair-trigger responses. Then, when the job is done, cut him loose without any retraining or reconditioning of lethal responses, and blame him if he fucks up in a new and regulated police world in which he gets no say. Read your Kipling again. Tommy is not a unique figure, he just goes under different names in different countries. The story of Matt Sepi is not the story of an American tragedy - which fortunately for him ended well - it is the universal and eternal story of an army of veterans abandoned and betrayed by their Governors, Administrators, Legislators, Executives. non-combatant fellow soldiers and Officers, and the citizens and civilians of the country they have served. They are walking wounded, dangerously so, cast adrift to fend for themselves. After Iraq our cities, towns and communities will fill with them. We will live with these powder kegs for a whole generation. No one should ask why they sometimes malfunction and go off unexpectedly. All weapons usually do, unless the firing pin, fuse or detonator has been removed, disarmed or reset at safety. No wonder they create such violence. The wonder is that they do not create more! Of course the military and the government are not interested in looking into or discussing these matters. That can of worms is too big, too costly to open and too open-ended. The ramifications could go anywhere. Hell, instead of Hail to the Chief we might decide to Impeach the Chief! - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 9:23 AM Subject: [Biofuel] Fwd: [vvawnet] Across America,Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles Hallo, The mail below is a long, long read but some of you may be interested. It shows what those with control, money, power are willing to do to our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers for the sake of national interest and in the name of peace and stability. This particular article is about the USA but ALL countries have their hands in this kind of mess of one sort or the other. Perhaps not in the same area or to the same extent, some may be better and some worse, but this is what big government/business is about in our throw-away society. Use and discard. Makes one ill. Happy Happy, Gustl This is a forwarded message From: Vietnam Veterans Against the War Date: Tuesday, 15 January, 2008, 14:09:09 Subject: [vvawnet] Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign
[Biofuel] Fwd: [vvawnet] Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
Hallo, The mail below is a long, long read but some of you may be interested. It shows what those with control, money, power are willing to do to our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers for the sake of national interest and in the name of peace and stability. This particular article is about the USA but ALL countries have their hands in this kind of mess of one sort or the other. Perhaps not in the same area or to the same extent, some may be better and some worse, but this is what big government/business is about in our throw-away society. Use and discard. Makes one ill. Happy Happy, Gustl This is a forwarded message From: Vietnam Veterans Against the War Date: Tuesday, 15 January, 2008, 14:09:09 Subject: [vvawnet] Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles ===8==Original message text=== From: Miller, Joseph Thomas [for VVAWNET] The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html?_r=1adxnnl=1oref=sloginadxnnlx=1200244397-kcl91mohT5LLTBowa5Zg4wpagewanted=print January 13, 2008 War Torn Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army. This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, like Falluja. Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame - and tucked an assault rifle inside it. Matthew knew he shouldn't be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven, Detective Laura Andersen said, but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself. Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and just snapped. In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, breaking contact with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him. Who did I take fire from? he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively engaged the targets. He shook. He also cried. I felt very bad for him, Detective Andersen said. Nonetheless, Mr. Sepi was booked, and a local newspaper soon reported: Iraq veteran arrested in killing. Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife. Pierre, S.D.: Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress. Colorado Springs: Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring. Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak. The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment - along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems - appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction. Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving. About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain. A quarter of the
