Sometime in the last year a Kuwait born man decided to kill Americans. Two days ago he succeeded in killing 4 Marines and a Sailor, while seriously injuring another Marine.
The 24 year old murderer, thankfully killed by Police, was born in Kuwait during President H. W. Bush Operation Desert Shield/Storm time frame before moving to the States and ostensibly becoming an American.
The spectre of Iraq hangs over these killings. Kuwait isn't a real country. It was carved out of the area post World War I by the British to be a port for British Petroleum. The Arabic 1920 uprising against the British and they rule prior to World War II and subsequent decades-long American entanglement in the Region can all be traced back the Black Curse of Petroleum.
After Ronnie Raygun buddied up with Saddam Hussein he set the stage for the whole farcical last 25 years of American Foreign Policy on Iraq; A tragedy of Republican buffoons, Democratic wimps, and right-wing ghouls turning the United States into a Worldwide Nincompoop, while utterly destabilizing the region, empowering Iran, making America less safe and getting Americans killed. All the while stealing $5 Trillion from the American People and destroying thousands of American and Iraqi lives, families, and futures.
Now, more lives and families have been destroyed. And the weapon of choice? The Gun, the bloody High-Powered Rifle, which is the True Symbol of These United States.
Welcome to the NRA and The Republicans' Perfect America; A Bloody Wasteland of Bullet-Riddled Bodies. No one is safe in the United States anymore. Not Kindergarten Children. Not United States Marines. America has been consumed by the Gun Cultists. While the foul shade of Saddam Hussein our beloved Ally/Enemy laughs from beyond the grave.
If we can change our transportation system to electric vehicles and get off oil, most of the world will follow. I should actually say if we could follow Norway and some other nations who already have a higher percent of EV's and busses and trollys switched off gas and diesel, if we can do that we will starve the middle east of the money they use to cause the West great harm. We, you, me, we are giving our enemies the money to shoot us. A new energy economy can make a lot of good things happen.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. We live in a gun culture where more and more people grow up believing that if you've got a grievance, the way to solve it is to go out and shoot a few people. Unfortunately, if your grievances are rooted in the stupid foreign policy decisions made by various administrations and you have an Arabic name, you'll get labeled a terrorist whether or not you've ever had an affiliation with a formal terrorist organization. If you've got a nice American name, however, and your roots are in the U.S., it doesn't matter how many white supremacist groups you support or how much time you spend on-line or in the real world affiliating with fellow haters, you can shoot 9 people and still not get labeled a terrorist. All it took for the FBI et al to label Chattanooga terrorism was hearing the shooter's last name. It's such a glib, easy response -- no need to think at all about blowback from U.S. policies or the ease with which the perpetrator got his weapons.
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