Why So One-Sided?

Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.

Why Are You So One-Sided? : Ann Herron : annherron13@gmail.com : 2012-03-18

The original email arrived in gigantic type. I have formatted it here in normal size.

I am about to join the military, in fact I leave this summer for basic training and I found what you said horribly degrading. I am following my father and his brothers and my grandfather and so on into the military and I am proud of serving and protecting the free country that we have now.

That is a bald lie. In no way does the Afghanistan or Iraq occupation protect your country. The USA attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, not the reverse. The USA has not defended itself in war since WWII (World War II). Your father and brothers killed for other reasons. Perhaps you have not noticed, but the troops are coming home. Nobody in the military is warning about imminent attacks on the USA as a result. If the brass are not worried about an attack, why are you? If you found my website (that you could ignore at any point) degrading, you will be degraded by boot camp at least 1000 times more strongly. The whole ethos of the military is based on hierarchy, bullying and insult. You hope to get approval from your family by enlisting, but you will find you will absolutely hate it.

Don’t you dare accuse soldiers of murder because not all soldiers carry weapons and even then it is not murder it is defense not only for themselves and the others that are with them but the country that they are protecting.

Murder is defined as illegally killing someone or conspiring to kill someone. In the eyes of the law whether you actually pull the trigger is irrelevant. If you hire a hit man, you are still guilty of murder. In a recent case, a woman who lured a child for her boyfriend to rape and kill was convicted of murder. You are apparently ignorant of the law. Please do not take my word for it. Look it up for yourself. I did not make up the law. I am merely reporting it. Consider a bank robbery in which a bank guard is killed. Even the get-away driver is guilty of murder even though he never touched a gun. International war crimes law works the same way. If you aid or abet an aggressive war (one where your country attacked first) you are guilty of a capital (that means hanging) offence. You are guilty, even though you just peeled potatoes to feed the men who did the killing and torturing. This was all hammered out at Nuremberg. Ben Ferencz was one of the lead prosecutors at the time. Remarkably he is still alive and writing. That is how I first became aware of this.

So what you are planning to do is in the eyes of the law, murder, even if you never touch any weapons, even if you imagine you will be exempt from being ordered to kill people and even if you imagine would refuse if so ordered. Read the fine print in your enlistment contract. The military guarantees no such exemptions. The purpose of the military is killing people. They have the right to order you to kill anyone they please without giving a reason once you have signed up and to shoot you on the spot if your refuse.

Don’t you dare say that they kill off unarmed men women and children unless you can prove that they all do.

That is just silly. I don’t claim every soldier did this. Some of them get cold feet . I am just saying I have read many books and newspaper articles that said it is a common occurrence, most notably in Christopher Hedges’ Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.

Yes, there have been instances of this but the news got blown up because it was such a huge scandel. Don’t you dare say that they all will become abusive, have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), become suisidal and whatever else you accuse the people who defend the place you live in.

I did not make this up. Read a veterans’ website, a newspaper, news website (e.g. the CBC or BBC) or listen to the radio (NPR). Dealing with the problems of returning vet is swamping national resources. This is a major problem for the military mainly because extended tours of duty and long hours are burning out the soldiers. Right wingers are calling for a draft to take the pressure off the volunteers. For someone considering enlisting it sounds like you have not talked to any recent vets to find out what you are getting into. All you have exposed yourself to are romantic self-promoting lies from your male relatives who wanted you to think well of them.

My father and all of the miliraty men and women that I have ever met have come back from their tours and have been perfectly fine. They have been shot at, had bombs blow up building right beside them and had a lot of horrible stuff happen to them but they have none of these symptoms.

And you attribute this to some god-magic that will protect you too? Do you get a get a thrill from Russian roulette? Look up the odds of coming back intact, with PTSD, with brain damage, with a missing limb or… dead. You owe it to yourself before it is too late to do anything about it. TSTL (Too Stupid To Live).

If anthing it helps them become better people because they learn how precious life really is.

What a conceited, selfish notion, that killing others is justified to help you learn “how precious life really is“! How would you feel if someone snuck into you bedroom and stabbed you through the heart (Dexter style) for equally trivial reasons?

I understand your side and I can see some truth in it but right now you are telling my boyfriend, future spouse and the future spouses of military men and women that we are basically all murderous sociopaths who deserve the death penalty. Do not stay so one sided because reading that artical made me start wanting to even hate myself and I haven’t even done anything.

In the eyes of the law, you are planning to commit a capital crime. Granted the odds of being prosecuted soon are slight, but they increase every year and will go way up when China surpasses the USA as the #1 superpower. Europeans are not big on the death penalty. If you were convicted, your sentence would almost certainly be commuted to life imprisonment. So you have done something evil already. You have plotted to torture and kill people who were no threat to you or your country, only to your fellows to volunteered to go half way around the world to kill them for no reason other than to steal their natural resources and the joys of sadism.

But why kill children or aid others to do so? Surely you need an overwhelming excuse. You keep giving me this BS about defending the USA. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has ever attacked the USA. Further, ask your military family how Afghanistan or Iraq could possibly mount an attack. They have no ships, planes, missiles or even money for plane tickets. Even after torturing them from a decade, they have not attacked even a single US town. Recall that the USA attacked Afghanistan/the Taliban even when Bush claimed it was bin Laden and Al Qaeda who were the culprits. The US military’s own estimate was there are less than 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, hardly enough to justify a war and torturing children. You are nuts, a fruitcake and a sociopath. You want to help kill innocent people because you are deluded about their danger. Indeed, you do deserve to be killed before you cause any more harm, or locked up in a home for the criminally insane. Does your paranoia extend the postman or the bagel lady?

Plotting a capital crime is what you have done so far. That is not innocent.

To answer the question in your title line, Why are you so one sided? There is an essay on the joys of enlistment that you probably overlooked. It is probably not quite what you were looking for though. The military with its trillion dollar budget pumps out a torrent of lies and propaganda. Innocent boobs like you and dittoheads echo chamber them, never doing even the most rudimentary research for yourself. There is no need for me to repeat that crap. Everyone has heard it a million times already. Cheney, like a modern-day Caligula, has convinced Americans that torture is an necessary instrument of foreign policy. I have only a small voice, so I save it for telling the truth. I don’t want to dilute it and I don’t want to echo lies. As Canadian, I feel no obligation to pretend that America can do no wrong any more than I feel constrained to treat Israel, Russia, China or Syria with kid gloves. It is not a matter of considering reasons both for and against war. All those that have been offered for war are outright lies.

Hey! It’s me…U no,,,the Jesus Freak that’s world practically revoles around God and Jrotc… Oh well. HHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! there, now do u remember?? :) Good

Why Are You So One-Sided? II : Ann Herron : annherron13@gmail.com : 2012-03-24

what law??

See the war criminals page. Then continue your research by reading up on The Nuremberg trials at the end of WWII. Then read about the treaty the USA signed when it joined the United Nations. Then read about the Geneva Conventions. Read about the international court in the Hague. You might even read up on the treaty of Westphalia to see how this all got started. You might read up on what Ben Ferencz, one of the lead prosecutors at Nuremberg has to say, or what the various Secretaries General of the U.N. had to say.

do you pay taxes?? that’s aiding and abetting 2. that’s how u pay for your military.

I seem to recall reading that even paying taxes for an illegal war could theoretically be construed as a war crime. I am Canadian, not American. Canada is complicit in Afghanistan. It has behaved not quite as badly as the USA, but every Canadian soldier there has also committed a capital offence by aiding and abetting an aggressive war. Recall Joseph Goebbels was tried to be hanged at the end of WWII even though he never killed anyone directly. He was just the minister of propaganda.

is there anything in your mind that would justify going to war?

If the USA or any other country invaded Canada, I would feel completely justified in slaughtering the invaders. The only excuse international law recognises is self-defence. Worrying that your enemies might someday attack, then pre-emptively attacking them, as Israel likes to do, does not count as self-defence.

Why Are You So One-Sided? III : Ann Herron : annherron13@gmail.com : 2012-03-24

nitwit? how old are you anyway?? 40 or 7?? and 2 call me a bully is so hippocritical when that’s exactly what you are doing to me and the other service men and women. I’m going in the military because I have pride and honor for my country and I realize that freedom isn’t free. Which is a concept you don’t quite seem to understand and take for granted.

I am 70 years and 3 months old. It is not being a bully to attempt to stop a bullies like you and your family of sociopaths from murdering children for delusional reasons. Not even the Pentagon thinks it is necessary. They are withdrawing troops. The brass are not in the least worried Afghans will enslave Americans. Why are you? You are deranged, that’s why. Get treatment! For some reason you are eager to kill strangers who have done you no harm. This is a mental illness. You need to work with a psychiatrist to find out where that hostility in coming from, possibly childhood abuse.

You are a nitwit because:

1. I, a complete stranger, who does not even like you, is expending more effort to keep you from getting your fool head blown off than you are willing to expend on your own behalf. You refuse to do even the tiniest bit of research about what you are getting into. You are as naïve as Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin.
2. You are delusional. You think somehow either killing or helping people kill children, civilians and those resisting the American occupation of Afghanistan will somehow help American freedom. Just what have they done or even could they do to hurt American freedom? There is nothing, yet you are so delusional, so sadistic, such a bully, you are eager to kill them anyway. You are sick in the head. Surely you concede that the USA attacked Afghanistan not the reverse. Surely you concede Afghanistan has nothing more threatening that kitchen-made roadside bombs, no planes, so ships, no submarines, no tanks, no trucks, no drones, no missiles, no computers, no radar, no poison gas, no napalm, no high explosives, no DU (Depleted Uranium), no nukes, no money — nothing useful to invade and occupy the USA.
3. You suffer from magical thinking that Jesus will protect you from harm when you know perfectly well the dreadful things that have happened to much more sincere Christians than you. Do you have any idea would Jesus would think of your sick plans? Hint, it is in the bible. You have read it cover-to-cover haven’t you? Check out Exodus 20:13 and Matthew 5:39. You are not a Christian. You are a crazy Satanist, eager to kill and maim for no reason.
4. You cannot spell or compose a sentence to save your life.
5. You seem to think the activities of the US military, such as invading Afghanistan and Iraq has something to do with defence. You know the USA has a military as big as every other country combined. Other countries don’t need militaries this big to protect themselves. The USA has enough nukes alone to destroy the earth many times over. What then is its purpose? Hint: the USA consumes the lion’s share of the world’s production, far less than it produces itself. Why do other countries send so much tribute to the USA? You have not read a single book or article on the subject, or you would know the motive for the Iraq war was control of oil and Afghanistan and oil pipeline route and control of lithium. Wars are fought for resources. The purpose of the military is intimidation, to ensure a flow of resources to the USA.
6. You have not read the enlistment contract or researched what freedoms you give up when you sign it. You seem unaware that the military can order you to kill anyone for any or no reason and if you refuse, they can shoot you on the spot. For someone who is clinically paranoid of loss of freedom, joining the military seems and extremely odd thing to do. They own your ass once you enlist. You can’t just leave if you don’t like it. They rigidly control every minute of every day. You can’t even go the 7/11 without permission. You have less freedom than a 5 year old child.
7. You claim to be obsessively concerned with personal freedom, but you ignore the biggest threat to it, millions of times bigger than the threat from invasion by any foreign country. (Afghanistan is the country least likely to invade the USA. They just want to get the US out of their backs. After they evicted the Russians, did they attack the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)? Look it up.) I refer to the takeover and corruption of the political process by large corporations like Monsanto that the Roberts Supreme Court gave court blanche to buy politicians with unlimited funds from any source, even hostile foreign nations.

   America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
   ~ Abraham Lincoln (1809-02-12 1865-04-15 age:56)

8. You are about to commit a capital crime, but you are too lazy to research the legality or consequences.
9. So in short, you are a nitwit because you are superstitious, aggressively ignorant and intellectually lazy. You asked why I hold that opinion of you.

Let me put a curse on you, ironically designed to save your life. If you do go to Afghanistan may you die before you have a chance to directly or indirectly injure or kill anyone.

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