Opinion Editorials, June 2007
June 2007 Opinion Editorial Links
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Flowers in the Attic: GWB's blatant abuse of America's military & why it continues
By Jane Stillwater
ccun.org, June 11, 2007
"Very often children and teens will not talk about their abuse," states the national Center for Victims of Crime. "They will protect their abuser, making excuses for their injuries." Sometimes, in desperation, a severely-abused child will cling tightly to the very parent that is abusing him. Why is that?
Maybe the child has mis-placed bonding issues.
Maybe it is because his or her abusers are the only parents the child knows and are familiar territory to him or her -- a severely abused kid is usually not someone who is ready, willing and able to bounce out into an unknown world all alone.
Maybe it is because the child is so badly traumatized that it no longer knows what is good for him.
What exactly causes an abused child to identify with his or her abusers? It's a mystery -- one of many mysteries regarding how the human psyche behaves. Why do abused wives stay with their husbands? Why do people go insane or kill or torture or do bad things? Why even do people fall in love? You got me there. I've never been able to figure out how people think.
If a severely-abused child was thinking rationally -- and not like a severely-abused child -- then they would get the heck out of the abusive situation. Duh. But abused children rarely do think rationally. Remember that child in Florida who had cracked ribs and burn marks on his back? And yet still loved his abusive parent even though two of his other siblings were already dead? Remember that 1979 Gothic classic Flowers in the Attic? Where the kids were all locked in the attic and slowly poisoned and starved? And how they thought their mother was so beautiful and glamorous and loved them so much while all this time she was slipping the kids arsenic in their donuts? This book sold four million copies!
Has America's military finally gone the way of Flowers in the Attic? Do your research -- I'm not very good at research but, heck, you got Google, do it yourself! -- and you will discover that since Bush and Cheney stole the 2000 election -- you think they didn't? Dream on! -- America's armed forces have been systematically depleted and stretched. How much more abuse can our troops take before they stop identifying with their abuser? Apparently a lot.
According to the New York Times, "The Army has been kept on short rations of troops and equipment for years by a Pentagon more intent on stockpiling futuristic weapons than fighting today’s wars. Now it is pushing up against the limits of hard arithmetic. Senior generals are warning that the Bush administration may have to break its word and again use National Guard units to plug the gap, but no one in Washington is paying serious attention. That was clear last week when Congress recklessly decided to funnel extra money to the Air Force’s irrelevant F-22 stealth fighter."
This sounds like "child" abuse to me!
Another case in point: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, USMC has just been fired! Why? Allegedly because he wouldn't support Bush and Cheney's hare-brained scheme to invade Iran because it would put his troops in harms way for no reason involving the safely of our nation? We may never know. But then again, we're not dumb. If something has feathers, swims and quacks, might it be a duck?
If your neighbor's kid screams in the night, bleeds from the mouth and nose, somehow manages to break bones regularly and is covered with bruises, burns and scars, do you have a right to suspect child abuse?
If the American military is stretched to the point where a tour of duty is 15 months long -- a British tour of duty is only six months -- and spends its life-blood fighting brush fires in Iraq caused by failed policies pouring down on it from the White House like they were flowers in the attic and the soldiers are treated like cannon fodder and Bush/Cheney spend billions of dollars on Star War systems that nobody in Iraq wants or needs and reporters -- yes, such as myself -- who listen to the troops and support their best interests are systematically banned from Iraq by Bush's enforcers in the State Department and generals turn into yes-men for fear of their jobs and war profiteers are encouraged to do whatever they can to steal our troops' lunch money -- and use our soldiers like an abusive parent uses its kids to collect those monthly welfare checks -- is this wrong? Apparently not.
And don't even get me started on slashed veterans' benefits, the widow's mite and exposure to depleted uranium! According to an article in Countercurrents regarding the effects of DU on our troops, "Although blocked by the skin, alpha radiation can be inhaled, ingested, and absorbed into the blood stream through scratches and wounds. It is highly dangerous internally. In addition to being physically radioactive it is also chemically toxic. This explains the "double whammy" effect. Soldiers who are exposed can become immediately ill from the toxicity, recover, and then suffer severe additional symptoms from the radioactivity years or decades later." And Bush is allowing this to happen? Yep. Hey, that's child abuse! I mean troop abuse.
Almost anyone in America would willingly stand up to protect an abused child -- yet will anyone in America stand up to protect our abused military? Apparently not.
Jane Stillwater http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com
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