Current mood:

enraged

[ Black Hawk Down ]
I’m warning you now… this entry contains some ranting and some of my political views. If you do not want what you read to change your opinion of me, I suggest you keep on walking and forget I posted this. I’m pissed, jaded, and outraged, and I think everyone else should be as well.

You’ve been warned…

Yesterday and Tuesday were the 12 year anniversary of the slaughter of 19 U.S Army men and Marines during the Black Hawk Down incursion in Mogadishu, Somalia. It took place in October of 1992… when I was only twelve years old. I didn’t understand then what I know now… and it’s taken me more than a decade to wake up to what really happened, and what long term effect those fourteen hours has had on this nation.

We see death on the news every day. E.v.e.r.y d.a.y. Mostly, we don’t give a shit anymore. Blood and death are less worthy of notice than who Brad Pitt is fucking. Starvation, oppression, and devastation just don’t register on our radar here in the US… because we don’t have to care. It’s not us suffering, so we don’t care. Hell, even when it IS our own people (the homeless, poor, needy) we don’t care. Or maybe if we do, we feel helpless and overwhelmed in the face of the scope and magnitude of the problem. Whatever the case, most people here are more than willing to accept a standard of living for other human beings that they are completely unwilling to accept for themselves. After all, it’s not my blood, I don’t care.

In October of 1992, Bill Clinton had been president for just under a year. Charismatic, he was doing spots playing his sax on Leno and Lettermen. Earlier that year, his choice of the incompetent and grossly negligent Janet Reno led to the death of the Branch Dividians in Wako, TX. Women and children… burned to death because our government mobilized TANKS against our own people. Somehow, and I can’t even begin to fathom why, no one was outraged about this, and Clinton got the pass. After all, who really gives a fuck about a few score crazy Christian white people?

Across the world, the UN peacekeepers found themselves with their hands full. Rival tribes in Africans were doing what humanity does best, killing one another. But really… the world didn’t much care. After all, who the fuck cares about Africa, right? Masses of poor, uneducated, backward black people. They don’t have anything we want, so killing each other off means we have less to feed later. Sudan, anyone? Ruwanda? Hmm… this all sounds so very, hauntingly, familiar.

The UN botched the job, mates. Despite that the Geneva Convention admonishes such wholesale slaughter, they really just sat back and said, “No no, Mr. General, Sir. Play nice and stop killing your neighbors or we’re gonna have to frown at you.” That, as you can imagine was very effective. Just like Iraq, and Iran, and Sudan, and Syria, and China… the list goes on and on. The food convoys they brought in to feed the people were taken by warlords, and 300,000 people starved to death. STARVED. Not shot, not soldiers fighting for their people… starved… which takes quite some time… women and children and noncombatants.

And we watched Bill Clinton play his sax on late night t.v. and thought it was ever so entertaining.

Eventually, the UN asked us for a little muscle. Like we did for the French in Vietnam, we answered the call. Brave, noble, and heroic US Servicemen stood tall and said in one voice, “I will NOT accept for these folks a standard of living that is inhuman. I will lay down my life for them, for what is right, and because my country asked it of me.” The rest of the country just shrugged and mostly changed the channel when the horrific images from Somalia scrolled across their television screens. Friends was on, after all.

Shit went down. Bill Clinton, our Commander and Chief, left our men to die. He refused to send in enough troops to get the job done, and done right. You tell me what you think 300 can do against 100,000. Think those odds are fair? With the vastly superior training and weapons that our military has, there is NO excuse for the death of 19 sons, fathers, and brothers. NONE. It would not have taken much. US Mog Command BEGGED for the green light to send in more troops to get their guys out, BEGGED… and Washington said no. Why? They didn’t want the bad press. That was the official response, by the way. Oh, and the reason our boys were there during the day and not at night when they would have been FAR more successful? Good Mr. Clinton wanted a photo op of all the good work we were doing over there to flash on CNN. Gotta keep the PR war waging, after all.

The bottom line is… good boys died who did not have to. I don’t give a fuck if you wanna argue with me and say that as military they knew what they were getting into. Screw that. The US forces had the men, weapons, and power to get those guys out… and Washington would not let them. Refused. They were left there for 14 hours… in a city held by ungodly superior numbers, exposed, cut off… Left there to die, and die they did.

Now, you may not really care. I can’t make you. But I want you to picture your brother being drug through the streets of some third world hell hole while people celebrate over his desecrated corpse. How about your husband? Your Father? Picture it! Does it seem real to you yet? Do you care NOW? Now… imagine you had to live the rest of your life knowing that the government that he loved so much he was willing to die for it, left him there to do just that. That they didn’t spend his life in a noble cause, they turned their back and told him his life wasn’t worth enough to save.

After the Black Hawk Down events, we pulled out of Somalia. They made us bleed… and so we tucked our tail between our legs and ran. We didn’t finish the job. After all, who wants to die for a bunch of poor black people? A few countries away, a man saw that if you make the US bleed… we run away. He saw our government make victims out of noble and courageous servicemen. He smiled darkly and began planning… Less than a decade later, that man organized his forces to fly to planes into the WTC in New York.

You may be thinking that, honestly, we have no right to be butting into the internal conflicts of other nations. We should cover our own ass and stay out of it. After all, if we stay out of it, none of OUR boys die. And how long do you suppose we’d be safe? A decade? Two? Three? They flew OUR aircraft, on OUR soil, into OUR buildings, folks. Any delusions we had about being safe should be hell and gone from your head by now. Or, have you forgotten? I know, American Idol is life. I’d forget about all those dead people too.

I don’t like war. I don’t like picturing ye soon to be 18 year-old brother, his roguish smile on his face, with a gun in his hand on some foreign field… staring up at the sun watching his life bleed away. But you know what? I also don’t believe it is right, ethical, or human to allow others to live in a way we would never accept for ourselves. Why is it alright for them to starve and die? Because they live a world away? Because of their color? Their religion? Fuck that. Oh, right… Lost is on… no one cares.

We need to be outraged, people. We need to be SO FUCKING ANGRY that we do something. And we need to give our boys the chance to win. You may not agree with our presence in Iraq. You may buy into the we’re only there for oil propaganda. Fine. I can accept that. But you know what? People over there were being murdered by their own government. Young girls raped. Starved to death. You tell me how building schools, hospitals, feeding them, and allowing them a shred of human decency is a bad thing? Whatever the reason we went, whatever you chose to believe… we ARE doing good.

Human suffering knows no political, racial, or religions affiliations. It does not stop for elections. It does not pause for holidays. I do believe, with all that I am, that is given to those with the power to effect change, to do so. It is given to the strong to protect the helpless. Given to the wealthy to aid the poor. It is given to those who serve humanity and freedom to eliminate those who would destroy life and take away freedom.

This is important, people. It’s time to decide what kind of person you are. What is most important to you? Do you really feel like it’s alright to be happy and safe when you are unwilling to support others enjoying the same freedoms? Can you really sit back and accept for someone else, someone who loves, cries, and dreams just like you, a standard of living that you would never accept for yourself?