Thursday, February 11, 2016

US sailor shows he's human; Military brass embarrased.



Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

The US Navy brass are extremely upset that Iran has released a “propaganda” video that shows an American sailor crying after their craft was intercepted in Iranian waters. I’m sure glad the Pentagon or US military never engages in propaganda. "We are disgusted by the exploitation of our sailors in Iranian propaganda," says Commander. Kevin Stephens, spokesperson for Naval Forces Central Command, in the Navy Times.

Who knows what the sailor was crying about?  It is quite possible he was distraught about the possibility of a beheading or something along these lines as most Americans would have no clue about the differences between various factions in the region or even countries. Maybe thoughts were going through his head of never seeing his children again or wife and friends. I say to him, it’s ok brother, crying is nothing to be ashamed about.

And while we are talking about propaganda, the official US military line as to why the sailors' craft strayed in to Iranian territory is mechanical failure, "Professional mariners understand that it is a duty and obligation to assist other mariners who suffer mechanical problems or who find themselves off track at sea…", Commander Stephens whines. I’ll let the reader in to a little secret; no one in the world believes that except maybe here in the US.  Remember Pat Tillman? Check out The Tillman Story and see how his death was handled and his family constantly lied to, a family that had given generations to the US military. If the US military and its flunkies in Congress treat Americans in this way we know how others are handled.

A man crying is an embarrassment to the politicians of the 1% that send working class men and women to fight their wars on behalf of the corporations. They don’t fight them and their children don’t fight them, the CEO’s, hedge fund managers and other wasters who profit from them certainly don’t.  They act all tough about colors not running and how our warriors (who are committing suicide at an alarming rate I should add) are defending our freedom when they are defending profits and imperialist plunder.

Maybe this guy was just plain scared, nothing wrong with that.  Hollywood propagenda is not real, war is very real. Any normal person will defend their lives or their friends lives if they have to but killing a human being is not like Hollywood, it makes us sick. We never forget it, especially when we draw the conclusion that the enemy isn’t really an enemy at all and ask yourself “Why are we here?”.

It would be natural that young US workers in the military would have views about the enemy that would make them fear for their lives if captured. In order to invade a country, occupy a region, and the cannon fodder in these ventures are young workers, the people there have to be demonized and there is a massive propaganda war against Muslims, Arabs (Iranians are not Arabs) and anyone of Middle Eastern descent. The English demonized the Irish, the new American ruling class demonized  the Native Americans the plantation bourgeoisie the Africans, and the, the Germans demonized the Jews, Poles and about every other non-Aryan.

Never mind the staggering hypocrisy of US military and Pentagon spokespersons to talk of unfair treatment of personnel given Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and years of torture and imprisonment of innocents. What about the repeated calls and threats of the “military option” in Iran? What’s it like living in Iran and having to listen to all the warmongering cowards in the US Congress call for war on them? They’ve seen what the US did to Iraq, killed a million or so and drove the country in to the stone-age after their friend Saddam Hussein got a bit too cocky. And let's not forget, the US overthrew the Iranian government in 1953, a secular democratic regime.

No, that young American sailor hasn’t shamed anyone.  He’s shown us the warmongers in the US Congress that never fight wars haven’t driven the humanity out of him.

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