In Remembrance of Fallen Soldiers and some words for the War-mongers who killed them

War is a business that exists because we have been taught that it is necessary

Today is Memorial Day, and in this country we honor our brothers and sisters who have made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve and protect freedom and democracy.

I respect those who live their lives purposefully. I respect those who live their lives committed to their ideals. I further respect those whose ideals are concerned with the well-being of others. This is why I have the utmost respect for soldiers. They deserve a day and much more.

Do soldiers from other countries deserve respect too? How do we feel about the young men and women who serve in fighting forces we consider our enemies? It’s not something we consider very often or even at all. It’s uncomfortable. Unless we imagine them to be thoughtless agents of terror we are confronted with the reality that they are someone’s children, someone’s parents, someone’s spouses who have also made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, their people and their values.

Perhaps they should be more conveniently thought of as people who have succumbed to ideologies we find anathema or have been forced against their will to take up arms against just countries like ours.

September 11, 2001 was the last time acts of war were conducted on our own soil. I was traumatized by those events. I wasn’t alone. Beyond the horror of the loss of innocent lives that day I also struggled with the sheer senselessness of those acts.

Why would a terrorist organization conduct such a brazen attack on our country? What would be the strategic value of such an act? Didn’t they know that we would surely respond with a “shock and awe” campaign that would destroy the lives of many innocent people with whom they had no issue and at the very least, shared their religion?

I was confused by the fact that nobody was talking about the sheer absurdity of a human being, terrorist or not, training for months to fly jet aircraft so that they could, when the time came, commandeer a commercial plane with innocent passengers and fly it directly into a building, taking their own life and many others with it. Why did they hate us so much?

There’s no way to understand this unless we assume that those 19 hijackers were out of their minds. But they weren’t just crazy, they were crafty, they had steely resolve, and they were extremely loyal to their masters who apparently watched gleefully from afar.

And that’s exactly what we were told. They were terrorists and elite ones at that. They attacked us because they hated us and our freedoms, and were willing to give their lives so that ours would be ruined. That’s what we were told over and over again until we stopped questioning it.

But I never did. It made no sense to me. If you were jealous of other’s liberties why would you take your own life so that they would be condemned to the kind of life you were enduring? People who endeavor to restrict others’ freedoms don’t languish in prisons; they usually hold the keys themselves.

I tried to imagine what might have been going through the head of an Al Qaeda hijacker as he masterfully steered a jet plane with frantic passengers in the cabin directly into a massive building that loomed larger and larger in the cockpit windows as he approached at 500+ miles per hour, surpassing the operational limits of that plane at that altitude. Talk about a steady hand.

Could a human being do such a thing? Perhaps. People are capable of doing extraordinary things, whether diabolical or not. It wouldn’t have been the first time a pilot intentionally crashed a plane into the enemy. But the infamous Kamikaze pilots of the Japanese Empire were attacking warships that were part of an adversarial force that sought to bring their homeland to its knees. They sacrificed themselves for their people, their families, their country. Those were desperate acts of defense, not acts of provocation.

Could a human being be capable of such hate? This is a crucial question which requires deep consideration because once we accept that this is possible there will be no limits to our fear or the sacrifices we will make to protect ourselves from such monsters.

This is another reason why it is so difficult to accept the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job, orchestrated by those who had access to military grade explosives, who controlled security at the WTC complex and who carefully planned these events over months or years.

The level of psychopathy is unimaginable. It’s not just the fact that innocent lives were sacrificed so that the institution of war would be perpetuated for decades. It’s the mind-games they, whoever they are, played on the public. They planted some truly grotesque seeds in our heads. They wanted to teach humanity to fear and hate itself. That is the only way that the insanity of war can be forever preserved.

If the so-called Al Qaeda terrorists were monsters, imagine the monstrosity of those who forced us to believe in them.

Do such people walk this Earth? They do.

The Story of Majid Khan

Last year I wrote about Majid Khan. Briefly, Khan was a Saudi-born Pakistani national who graduated from a Maryland high school and was working at his family's gas station in 2001. He became radicalized against America after the events of 9/11 (I wonder why?).

He went to Pakistan and was vetted by Al Qaeda operatives. He was eventually detained by Pakistani authorities and was handed over to our government who placed him in a CIA “black site” where he endured frequent, unimaginable torture for three years. He was waterboarded in ice baths. He was fed rectally when he refused food on during his hunger strikes.

He eventually ended up at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center where he was held for nearly 17 years awaiting a trial. Khan became the first person to ever be released from Gitmo.

Who is Majid Khan and why is his story so important?

Khan had nothing to do with the events of 9/11. For those 17 years after his three-year-long vacation at a CIA black site, Khan was held only on suspicion of intending to commit terrorist acts against the U.S. These suspicions were based solely on statements coming from Al Qaeda operatives and “testimony” he “offered” to the CIA over many interrogation sessions.

How many other Majid Khans are out there? At what point will we understand that what happened to him was not for our protection. It was to sow seeds of hatred. Can you think of a better way to grow radicalized enemies than to torture and imprison human beings without a trial?

In 2006 extraordinary rendition, torture and unreliable testimony is all that was necessary to incarcerate a person indefinitely prior to a court hearing. 

These powers were granted to our government through the Patriot Act, a 131 page document that we can be sure few people outside academia and organizations like the ACLU have ever read. Among the myriad of provisions afforded our authorities to “protect” us, this is perhaps the most controversial: indefinite detention without trial based on “secret” evidence or on suspicion alone.

This is what happens to a people who have been taught to fear. We shoot first and ask questions later. Certain people are guilty until proven innocent. We attack those who call for lenience and the reinvestigation of pivotal events. We normalize the dehumanization of others.

To the war mongers who sit in legislatures, think-tanks and big offices in “Defense” companies: find a different cause, choose different ideals and get another job. STOP MAKING MORE DEAD SOLDIERS.

I honor those who fought and died for causes they believed in. I suggest that every soldier who gave their life for our country did so so that the rest of us could live in peace, not fear. Why don’t we honor their sacrifice by living that way?