Friday July 14, 2006 SGN.org |
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Volume 34 Issue 28 |
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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
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COMMENTARY: The guy who's resisting the war, why we should all be registered to vote, and other thoughts |
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| COMMENTARY: The guy who's resisting the war, why we should all be registered to vote, and other thoughts | ||
| by Rajkhet Dirzhud-Rashid
- SGN Staff Writer
With Pride behind me (and the rest of us, I'm sure), I've been letting myself focus on other matters that are close to my heart. The demonization of the Army Sergeant Watada, and how the media is skewed on presenting this as a 'horribly, anti-American' act, that he would refuse to serve in an illegal war. And the connection, in my mind, between the recent evidence that a soldier in Iraq raped, then burned to death a woman, and killed her family, and how the U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration is partially responsible for this and other heinous acts. And of course, what we can do to defeat the rightwing, and how voting in Democrats will make things better for all of us, particularly women and the GBLT community. About the soldier's refusal to serve in a war that is illegal, in that it was never formally approved by the appropriate houses of government, before we stormed into Iraq after 9/11 has been uppermost in my mind. I have a friend in the military, after all, and I'd hate to see him or anyone else put in a position to have to either kill another human being, or defend themselves from certain harm. Remembering the book, 'Khaki Becomes You', which showed the relationship between patriarchal/right wing government policy and societal 'norms', I can't help but hope this young man starts a movement of other, likeminded men and women who refuse to serve in a war that's much more about oil profits than anything to do with 'our freedoms', or 'the war on terror'. But, because he is being held up to be everything from a coward to some kind of whining ninny, I doubt many will follow his example. Too bad, because like the famous banner says: 'What if we gave a war and nobody came'. Yeah, then maybe peace would break out. And after hearing about the atrocities in Haditha and now about the rape, and burning of a woman, then killing of her family by a soldier in Iraq, I've also been thinking about the message being fed those who do serve overseas by our 'cowboy President'. His ideas seem to come from some antiquated idea that the U.S. is 'Dodge City' and we're the 'guys in white hats' who need to clean up the town, or some other such silliness. Unfortunately, the way that plays out in the war zone, is real people break down, fall apart and regress to their darkest, most primitive selves. Put that reality with the message by our current administration of 'dead or alive', and all of the other violent, inherently dominant, imperialist dogma, and you get crimes like we're seeing now. After all, aren't we, as a country raping the whole of Iraq, and haven't we done this so many times before, all over the world, using our fighting forces as an organized phallic symbol to force the submission of those we consider less powerful than ourselves? Spoken in terms of the leather world, 'topping without consent'. All of this, and watching the slow erosion of our planetary resources under this same hind-headed mentality, it occurred to me that this year's primary elections and November elections give us a chance to do some real good, and to change the course of this evil river foisted upon us by the Bush administration's policies in the world. True, I'm a bit cynical about thinking that the Democrats are a whole lot better than the Republicans, but I do think, at this point, voting is better than sitting home. And I'd love to see more 'green' candidates-not necessarily 'Green Party' candidates, but those who have a more world-loving/planet loving ideology than the candidates now in office. Certainly I'd like to see more GBLT candidates, or at least those friendly to our issues get elected this year, and as many Republicans on board with the Bush plan kicked to the curb. So, I'm registered to vote and I will carefully brush up on the platforms of those picked by the Democrats and by progressive parties, and with hope (and a little dread), I'll go to the polls. And I urge everyone of age to do the same. After all, when it's all over, you can't complain if you never left the house. |
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