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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