Fear-Mongering and Fiction: Cheney Addresses West Point Grads
With the poise and purpose that has been drilled into them during the past four years, the cadets filed slowly into West Point’s Michie Stadium in crisp lines, standing at attention as they reached their seats. Here stood the graduates of the nation’s premier military academy, nearly a thousand of them, who would soon swear the oath of the United States Army and be commissioned as second lieutenants.
The class of 2007, the first to enter the academy after the invasion of Iraq, has chosen the motto “Always Remember, Never Surrender” and a crest that includes these words emblazoned above a scene that shows the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Before long, it’s likely that many of these men and women will deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan, complex and asymmetric battlefields that have forced the military to rethink its approach to warfare. The nature of the war on terror has caused the staid military academy itself to revisit its curriculum. In Iraq and Afghanistan these soon-to-be officers will lead platoons, where they will be called upon to carry out their missions not just as soldiers, but as diplomats and cops and sometimes a combination of the three.
Vice President Dick Cheney, on hand to deliver this year’s commencement address, acknowledged that this crop of West Point grads is unique. “It is rare in West Point history for a class to have joined during war time and graduate in the midst of that same war,” he said. Addressing the academy’s graduates, the vice president, who drew a crowd of protestors outside one of West Point’s gates, relied on the same brand of doomsday rhetoric that has characterized his remarks since 9/11. “We know,” he told the audience at one point, that Al Qaeda is “working feverishly to obtain even more destructive weapons and using every form of technology they can get their hands on. This makes the business of fighting this war as urgent and time sensitive as any task this nation has ever taken on.”
Not only is the threat real, he warned, it’s immediate. “The timeline is no longer a calendar, it’s a watch,” he said, quoting a line used recently by Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence. Cheney then claimed that the “enemy likely has cells inside our own country.”
As Cheney told the graduates of the enemies they may soon face — terrorists “who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character” — there were moments when it seemed that he had simply recycled an old speech from 2002. Indeed, long after most members of the Bush administration have distanced themselves from some of the more insidious claims that propelled the U.S. into war with Iraq, the vice president continues to repeat them as fact. At one point today he cited the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which has been thoroughly debunked) as the reason why the U.S. invaded Iraq. “America is fighting this enemy in Iraq because that is where they have gathered,” he told the West Point graduates. “We are there because, after 9/11, we decided to deny terrorists any safe haven.”
In a subtle irony, the vice president last addressed graduating West Point cadets the very year the class of 2007 entered the academy, in 2003. It was close to a month after the president declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq and Cheney crowed that “the battle of Iraq was a major victory in the war on terror.” At the time, two West Point graduates had been killed in Iraq. Since then an additional 49 tombstones have risen on West Point’s campus, marking the graves of graduates who were killed in Iraq, fighting a war the vice president had previously assured them they’d already won.
Copyright 2007 Mother Jones
Cheney hasn’t told the truth to the nation, should anyone expect him to tell the truth to the troops he claims to support.
Fortunately West Point cadets tend to be highly intelligent and are instructed by top professors, some of whom invite the likes of Noam Chomsky as guest lecturers.
Fascinating command of “double-speak” and “memory-hole reality” by Cheney though. Hopefully these young men and women have read and remember Orwell’s 1984.
My concern is less with the U.S. Military, (I believe many good generals and admirals are trying to put the crazies back in their box) but more with the rise of corporate mercenary operations such as Blackwater USA and other war profiteering rackets.
The challenge to our generation is to transform our planet killing economy and simultaneously confront our government’s efforts to turn the world into an oil and coal driven police-state in their perpetual war against the terrorism they incite.
Sam, I totally agree. Yesterday the thought occured to me that since the military is lowering its standards in order to meet recruitment quotas, how long from now will it be that some loose screw–a la McVeigh–makes use of his military training to use domestic explosives when he whigs out back home? Or, a few of these get together (hate groups consider it a badge of courage when their members get “free training” from the military) and launch the spark of their much anticipated race war (to turn this into a Christian theocratic nation). If you read the literature produced by the efforts of Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Center, he chronicles the “progress” of hate groups and exposes their hate based agendas. Such a scenario would be another manifestation of blow back.
And the Iraqi “minutemen” will likewise remember the tactics of ours in the US revolution against the redcoats. In Iraq, WE Are The REDCOATS! It’s their country and they, too will “Always Remember and Never Surrender” THEIR Homeland.
I wonder if Cheney has ever given it any thought to what it’s going to be like for him in hell….
Cheney has always liked to play war. He never intends to participate in one but playing gives him an erection. I hope that these Cadets take the example of Lt. Watada and ask themselves, does my loyalty go to the president or to the Constitution?
Hoa binh
And as far as West Point cadets being highly intelligent…they are still very young, impressionable…let’s face it, boys… broken down in training, being brainwashed into one way of thinking for the job they signed up for…and that is nothing other than a killing machine. Those boys have become nothing other than weapons for war. A highly intelligent killing machine is not something for anyone to be comfortable with. There is no “fortunately” about it!
And cheers for the one of a kind Watada!
A rare bird!
I didn’t follow my dad into the Royal Navy - for better and for worse - or have had any connection with the armed forces at all. But I am aware that at West Point the cadets who go there (just as at Sandhurst - motto “Serve to Lead”) have a code of honour, which states that:
‘A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal - or tolerate those who do’.
So what’s Cheney doing there, then?
What is the Administration of West Point thinking when they invite someone to speak who has skewered the truth so badly and keeps on doing so?
This man has no shame. You wonder how he can speak at West Point, given that it has been reported that he managed to DODGE any responsibility to the U. S. Military during the Vietnam era.
If you think this is bad…
Cheney addressed the Purple Heart Association national convention in Springfield, Missouri, about two or three years ago.
I could not believe they would ask him, and it’s hard to see how he could accept, after his four or five deferments during the Vietnam era.
ah, the power of the presidency
I too wonder why the Purple heart Association,Veteran’a of Foreing Wars and the American Legion invite a draft dodger like Cheney to speak but I understand why Cheney accepts. Dick Cheney has no feelings for human life, he want’s the United States in a constant war so Halliburton can keep paying him million’s. I believe if Cheney had his way all muddle class and poor people would become extinct just look at the expression on his face when he in speaking it’s pure hate,I do believe that Cheney is evil and should be impeached and put into prison to stop him from further destroying our constitution and our laws.Cheney thinks he is above the law and is trying to make a dictatorship out of the presidency.That shows how sick Cheney is to want to give all power to an inept, uneducated idiot like George Bush.
“It is rare in West Point history for a class to have joined during war time and graduate in the midst of that same war,”
Only because bottom feeders like you, Dickie boy, are in charge of this unholy mess while the “Little General” runs around in circles in the Oval Office.
There is no lower form of life on earth than Dick “IGOR” Cheney.
1,000 young kids willing to sacrifice their lifes in the meatgrinder Cheney helped create.
At least they didn’t tell the Army, like Big Dick did during the Vietnam War that, “He had other priorities.”
Cheney’s next stop–after impeachment–needs to be in the dock at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. After conviction, he should spend the rest of his miserable life in a vet’s hospital, cleaning bed pans.
BTW, Dickie old boy, how much has your Halliburton stock increased since Bushie signed the War against Iraq Bill?
Cheney’s next stop–after impeachment–needs to be in the dock at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. [After conviction, he should spend the rest of his miserable life in a vet’s hospital, cleaning bed pans.]
No, after conviction, he and his cohorts should spend the short time they will remain alive fearing the impending date of executions.
During his speech at West Point, Cheney dismissed the Geneva Convention, a treaty approved by the the Congress. It is a matter of law, not opinion, and for Cheney to tell people to disregard it is high treason. He should be arrested, tried, and, if found guilty, receive the maximum sentence.
“I renounce war. I renounce war because of what it does to our own men…I renounce war because of what it compels us to do to our enemies…I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.”- DICK SHEPPARD
On this Decoration Day perhaps we can find one more friend to share this commitment.
Cheney should be the first person kept alive indefinitely (possibly with medical advances his brain can be kept alive while the rest of his carcass is discarded) so that he can feel pain commensurate with that he has inflicted on others. I would say that maybe about 100,000 years of having electrodes stimulating the pain centers in his brain would be a good start.
Interesting out of print book, Wheel of Rebirth supports contentions made independently by America’s “Sleeping Prophet” Edgar Cayce, which in turn are somewhat backed by independent observations by modern seer Gordon Michael Scallion. Here’s a key convergence point in their books & shared experience, that when a soul is guilty of extreme violence and depravity towards others it is NOT cleared up in one lifetime. It takes MANY. Some times I wonder if some of those in those awful hatchet wars in Rwanda might have been the white slave owners, now experiencing a form of the carnage they were ready to leverage on their darker-skinner brothers and sisters by living/becoming that slaughterhouse themselves. The idea of reincarnation is very logical to me, and I have explored it for over 30 years, read everything I could find on the subject from a variety authors who grew up on different continents with different perspectives. Of course in the wonderful fiction of Superman, there are special cubes of endless times of imprisonment really dark souls are encased in for probable eternities. Either way, there is no human justice fit for Cheney’s sins, and those of his enablers and fellow enemies of mankind, nature, and all things good.
Intelligent beings; military automatons? Like hell. Servants of imperialism and of the Bush, Cheney, John Kennedy types are about as stupid as you get. What self-respecting person would go around saying “sir” to everyone? Stupid people go to stupid wars. If these clowns want to go to Iraq and get killed, that is ok. Their choice. But the monsters kill everything they can without regard to any limits. Thye choose, the Iraqs lose (their lives). We should hold every one of these graduates in as much contempt as we do Cheney. I do. They are monsters.
Rebecca you wrote: “I wonder if Cheney has ever given it any thought to what it’s going to be like for him in hell….”
I think it will be quite comfortable for him, since he’s the guy in charge down there! lol
Kivals: You’ve got the right idea, death is far too good for it (cheney).
does one become a monster, or is one born a monster? if one gradually evolves into a person who is capable of inflicting harm and suffering on another, is it possible to alter the circumstances of their lives to redirect them to a new more positive outcome? are young people who for whatever reason attracted to serve in the armed forces, by their very nature beyond hope? or can that call to serve just as likely mean that the particular role that has been presented to them in the military may, in fact, not be the one that is most appropriate to their nature? i believe most of us are currently serving life in ways antithetical to our nature. or at least not up the the capacities we have to bring about a better world. we can use the example of young impressionable people falling prey to the cult of authority and coersion and violence to look at the ways we ourselves have succumbed to expediancy and compromise of our highest values. and we can change. and we must.
Thanks to Paul McLeary for putting on his hip waders and rummaging through the immense pile of excrement that is any bolviation of our current Vice President (this above anything else ought to keep God-fearing people on their knees praying for the health of the shrub!).
The only thing more disgusting than Cheney speaking before the graduating class at West Point, is the likes of Shrub (or Bill Clinton) laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown solider on Memorial Day.
Wouldn’t it be cool at one of those official type events if instead of playing “Hail to the Chief” the military band struck up “Send in the Clowns”? If I thought it were possible to bribe the musicians to do such a thing, I would contribute to the cause–how about the rest of you?
Interesting thoughts born2bwild. Oddly, I suspect that often the types who wind up drawn to the military have a strong desire to do good, be heroes, bring goodness to the world. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe military service is the way to achieve this, but were those very same people given the opportunity, and leadership they crave, they may well be OUR heroes. Imagine if these same people were trained to be peacekeepers.
Better yet, imagine if our Military actually understood the oath they swear: to defend the CONSTITUTION from enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC. Both a Federal Court and The Supreme Court have ruled this administration has directly and willfully violated our CONSTITUTION. Yet Cheney steps right up and lies to Cadets and walks away without handcuffs.
It’s like Tony Soprano delivering the commencement speech at the New Jersey Police Academy and then heading out to whack a few former “business partners.”
Lewis Carroll would have found endless material for books for children with the characters and with the headlines we are faced with today. Cheney giving a speech about the terrorists at West Point is a very good example of the crazies Alice encounters Through the Looking Glass and Down the Rabbit Hole. Only here we have the crazies around us, not on another plane, or down another hole. And, after a while, we are no longer ‘amazed’ at the nonsensible behavior of the crazies running the country, or the things that they allow; the endless funding of a war, the hyper prices at the gas pumps and the trickle down affect those prices have on everything else. After a while we simple tune it out, as the craziness becomes the norm.
A star pupil of the infamous Joseph Goebbel’s school of propaganda Cheney keeps repeating the same old set of tired lies again and again. With no one in this country bothering to stand up and point out that they are lies! The sad part about it. To many people in this country still believe those lies! No matter how much they are debunked they keep cropping up to be retold again. No matter how much these people are proven to be liars there are still some good folks out there who refuse to believe it! It’s enough to make a sane person bang their head against the nearest wall in sheer frustration! It makes me wonder how long we will be a free country? When you have people who are sworn to defend the Constitution refusing to open their eyes and look at the evil that exists in this administration. When they seem to have lost their perspective on what’s right and wrong! When they have taken a wrong path from basic principle’s this country was founded on. These people have so sullied this country with there treachery that the stinch is going to be with us for decades to come. We are going to be like Nazi Germany have to live with our war crimes and fascist history for years to come! But, Bush and Cheney will be out of office and won’t have to pay for the mess they have created.
Yes, Cheney lied, and continues to lie; yes, Bush lied, Rice lied, Rumsfeld lied. It is no longer a secret that they lied and this war is based on lies. The real question is–why are these idiots at West Point still joining the military and why do they abdicate their minds and bodies to a corrupt and war criminal president? Makes you wonder what mental state they’re in now!
Treachery is the perfect word to use to describe Cheney’s assertions and actions. He is a traitor to the very core values that America claims to promote - freedom, truth, liberty… Of course, we’re not newbies when it comes to committing mass murder and then convincing ourselves otherwise. I’d say we’re pretty much grizzled veterans at this point, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that millions of people actually believe Dick Cheney when he spins the same tired, completely disproven lie, yet again…
Exactly fedupwithpolitics!
I also have to say that I am so sick and tired of people being oh so politically correct in saying that they support the “troops”. It is an oxymoron to say that one supports the troops, and does not support the war. If one supports the troops, they support the war, period. uummm…the “troops” are the ones that fight the war…Duh!!
He’s five foot-two, and he’s six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He’s all of thirty-one, and he’s only seventeen,
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years.
He’a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn’t kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he’s fighting for Canada,
He’s fighting for France,
He’s fighting for the USA,
And he’s fighting for the Russians,
And he’s fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way.
And he’s fighting for Democracy,
He’s fighting for the Reds,
He says it’s for the peace of all.
He’s the one who must decide,
Who’s to live and who’s to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Labau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He’s the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can’t go on.
He’s the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can’t you see,
This is not the way we put an end to war.
Donovan
Cheney’s statement about the immediacy for the terrorist threat is a repeat of 2003 propaganda. Just use the same sentences and take out “Saddam” or “Iraq” and substitute “terrorists.” Sounds like his senility has reduced his talking points down to a single line. It worked in 2003, so use it again in 2007.
These candidates are the raw material for future military leadership. I sincerely hope they are listening to the many retired generals on the issue of the Bush-Cheney White House micro managing the war in Iraq into a quagmire. Military leadership was been severely disrespected in the process. What we need is a different type of surge, new military leadership challenging this and future administrations to put military missions back into the original design of military missions under military leadership.
The neo con deskwarriors have taken over by usurping power from the military leadership, and the neo con deskwarrior number one is Cheney, the guy with absolutely no military experience at all.
Rebecca,
I believe It was Phil Ochs, not Donavan, who wrote “Universal Solder”.
Also, I would tend to disagree that officers are in any way open-minded. All the ones I’ve met, Army in particular, but also the Navy, up to Colonel and Rear Admiral, (don’t know any air force officers) are pretty bought into the so-called “war on terror”.
“Poise and purpose”?
Poise… I’m willing to accept.
Purpose… yes, undoubtedly.
But these men have done something unconscionable. They have surrendered their moral autonomy, and consented to serve a regime that, had they investigated the matter, they could easily have deterimined to be a deceptive and immoral and anti-democratic government bent on imperial domination of the planet, and hostile to the American Constitution and the American people.
I’m sure the Bush Cheney regime is lucky to have such intelligent, poised and “purposeful” soldiers… soldiers who have adopted its purposes as their own.
The regime’s good fortune is our misfortune, unless something awakes those young men from their slumber.
Yup, Sam up at #2 has the good concerns. Greg Grandin in “Empire’s Workshop” says after Vietnam some special forces types coming home and blaming the loss on the gov’t helped orchestrate the agression on Nicaragua. Ideologs without a doubt. With the congress denying funding for the Contras money came via the back door via the drug trade.(see Dark Alliance by Gary Webb) Iran/Contra, etc… With this stuff they unconsitutionaly hide foreign policy in what is supposed to be a democracy from even the congress. Prez is NOT the decider only. S/he is the implementer and the congress decides, at the behest of the people, what gets implemented, within the contraints of the constitution of course. duh.
So do you think Cheney and co feel trapped? They might get scarier if they feel that. But if we do not impeach and hold a war crimes tribunal, others will think they are free to dictate this stuff to us again.
If I were a West Point grad, I would be insulted by having Dick “Captain Chickenhawk” Cheney giving my commencement address. The draft-dodgers have no shame. It’s funny how the people who start wars never seem to fight in them.
Amen! to the statements about Ehren Watada. A brave young man, and encouraging to see.
The neocons have run our US Army into the ground, for their own selfish purposes.
PJD,
Acutally, I wrote Donovan at the end of Universal Soldier here because he performed it, and so well! But in all truth, Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote it.
Phil Ochs wrote another piece called “The Sad and Silent Song of a Soldier” that some people have sorely mistaken for “The Universal Soldier”, but I can gurantee that Phil Ochs’s piece is very different from The Universal Soldier that Buffy wrote. In fact it would seem to be quite the opposite, as his song delegates the title of hero to a soldier.
Seeing as I was a child of the 60’s, in my life and what I have seen, I have never, nor could I ever think of a soldier as any kind of hero. Although I can say, that I had much more compassion for our guys that were in Vietnam. Many of them never signed up for that deal, they were drafted. Quite the opposite of the boys today that are signing up right and left for the Iraq debacle.
Cheney used all 5 deferrments to AVOID serving during Vietnam and then told reporters years later in reference to the deferrments that he had “other obligations” during the war. Maybe the alumni and cadets might want him to speak to that before we delve into his life of lies and murder.
Rebecca,
Thanks, I could have sworn the male voice singing the most well-known rendition of “Universal Solder” was that of Phil Ochs - but memory is a fallible thing - what I confused it with was “I Ain’t a Marching Anymore” which says almost the same thing in different words:
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
For I’ve killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying I saw many more dying
But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
chorus)
It’s always the old to lead us to the war
It’s always the young to fall
Now look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all
For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers
And so many others But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain’t marchin’ anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning
That I ain’t marchin’ anymore
Now the labor leader’s screamin’
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it “Peace” or call it “Treason,”
Call it “Love” or call it “Reason,”
But I ain’t marchin’ any more,
No I ain’t marchin’ any more
- Phil Ochs
I sure wish Cheney would have encountered these magnificent Westpoint grads:
http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org
“Much of what the Vice said was very serious, and you ignore it at your peril. Don’t let seething hatred blind you to a real threat that will not dissapear on January 22, 2009.”
Seriously evil, you mean? Of course you are correct in that if bushco are not imprisoned, the threats will never end.
Evil, and the liberal vocabulary
If you’re a liberal, you can say that George Bush isn’t very smart, and Dick Cheney isn’t very nice, and that’s about the end of it. A million liberal blogs and columns grind away at synonyms for “not nice” and “not smart” year after year, but the Republicans still control 49 seats in the Senate, and Fox News still has a license to broadcast.
Bush-Cheney chained up a 78 year-old Afghan man in a fetal position at Guantanamo for more than 24 hours, while he pissed and shat all over himself. The New York Times and the Washington Post are still a little fuzzy about what to call this procedure, and the rest of the media is even more obtuse. When John McCain sponsored a very weak bill to restrict this method of “interrogation,” Dick Cheney ran through every office in the Capitol trying to defeat it, and he succeeded. The same sort of thing is happening at this very moment in a secret CIA prison somewhere, and if you don’t know what to call it, I can tell you. It’s torture, Stupid!
Sometimes the CIA asks agents in training to undergo water-boarding for as long as they can possibly stand it, in order to familiarize themselves with this standard tool of the Agency. They don’t last a minute. If you don’t know what to call water-boarding someone for hour after hour, and then water-boarding him again the next day, and the next, and chaining him up in “stress positions” in the intermissions… if you don’t know what to call it, I can tell you, Stupid! It’s torture.
Fox popularizes torture on its program “24,” and this thing won the Emmy for best drama last year. The clock is always ticking, and nothing can prevent the end of the world except torturing a prisoner. In their most recent debate, all the Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination in 2008 except John McCain endorsed torture under the pretext of this ridiculous scenario. Has such a thing ever occurred in the history of the world? When? Where? Nobody seems to know, or care. Somehow the United States managed to destroy the Nazi juggernaut and outlast the Soviet Empire without torturing prisoners. Roosevelt never endorsed torture, and neither did Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, nor any of the Presidents who came before them, nor any of the Vice-Presidents who served with them. Why now? Any idiot could have alleged the same “ticking clock” scenario for a Nazi counter-attack or Soviet missile launch at any time in the last 60 years. Great armies assaulted us, we were threatened with weapons of apocalyptic power, but torture continued to be condemned as the most contemptible and disgusting of all human actions. What changed?
We lost the concept of evil. Evil… it sounds a little quaint. Who would use such a word except for a few Bible-bangers in some forgotten valley? The word went away, and the concept went away, and we didn’t recognize the thing when it came upon us.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are evil men, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out, but somehow almost none of us have seen it or said it in all these years. The men and women who chain up prisoners like pretzels and suffocate them in sound-proof chambers work for Bush-Cheney, and even if the blood and piss and shit of the prisoners never stains the fingers of Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney, or their supporters in Congress, or the Generals who saved their careers instead of the honor of the United States, all of them are guilty of torture, and more guilty than semi-educated hillbillies who carry out their orders.
All these men must be driven out of every position of trust or authority. Every prisoner who underwent the obscenities of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and all the other nightmare installations must be compensated to the limit of our power to heal and restore them.
But the honor and decency of the United States cannot be reclaimed, and we cannot heal ourselves or our prisoners, until we recognize the thing that entangled us in the most contemptible and disgusting of all human actions, and name it by the ancient name that it wears at all times and among all nations.
Evil.
Rebecca,
“Universal Soldier” was written by Canadian Aboriginal songwriter, Buffy Ste. Marie in Toronto in the early sixties. It was later performed by Donovan who had a hit with it. The song is available on some of Buffy’s earlier albums. It has always been a powerful statement. You gotta hear Buffy sing it! It’ll raise the hair on your neck.
Jacob Freeze: thank you for so passionately and eloquently speaking the words of MY conscience and those of other TRUE patriots who realize this is NOT what America (as opposed to Amerika) would or should do, especially in the “name” of law or under the command of leaders sworn both to our Constitution AND The Geneva Conventions. And for Gonzales to pass it off as quaint, well, makes you want to do a live 24 with HIM in the water boarding seat. Some days I wake up and wonder if I am already MAD just IMAGINING what’s happening to this land of ours, this “home of the free.” I recently attended my niece’s graduation in San Francisco to both hear prayers to Jesus AND the National Anthem with its insidious, “The rockets red glare the BOMBS bursting in air..” I no longer sing this bull shit. Bombing anything is evil, and in the 21st century with population increment challenging climate instability, mankind must work together as a whole for CREATIVE means to survival, and give up its worship of the death machine and the ejaculatory power of weaponry AS IF it simulates homage to any Creator. It is blasphemous worship of THE destroyer, known as MARS (as in Ares/Aryan Race) god of war, to our Ancient ancestors of Greece and Rome.
PJD,
Thanks so much for posting that piece by Phil Ochs…good piece!
c18on,
Yes, I’m familiar with the author of Universal Soldier and no, have not heard her sing it, but would love to.
JacobFreeze,
Thankyou for what you wrote! A poignant piece full of truth! Brilliantly said!