1/9 I am one of a tiny handful of Americans who is in Iraq in December 1998, the last time a president tried to bomb another country and start a war to distract from the zone impeachment. I’ve visited the victims In hospitals, their insides shredded from shrapnel.
2/9 I visited the main Children’s Hospital in Baghdad, where women spontaneously aborted their fetuses in the midst of US airstrikes, from terror and the concussive force from nearby US cruise missiles which destroyed an Iraqi Defense Ministry building.
3/9 Most Americans don’t know anything about Iraq and don’t give a shit about the people there, but they have endured 30 years of unrelenting warfare at the hands of and because of the United States, and now face it again, along with their Iranian neighbors.
4/9 Most Americans who are cheering the prospect of US war with Iran will never feel the concussion from bombs exploding nearby, nor face the terror of watching cruise missiles arc across the sky towards them, nor see the victims of such attacks. I have. And I’m sickened.
5/9 The US wages war with no thought to how it looks from the other end of the gun barrel or the bomb or the drone strike. US empire depends on this inability to comprehend the consequences of our actions or to empathize with the victims.
6/9 We have been at it for more than 70 years, from Korea to Iran, to Guatemala, Lebanon, Cuba, the Dominican republic, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Chile, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada, Haiti, East Timor, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc.
7/9 And only once, on 9/11, have we felt the terror, confusion, and despair that countless millions have felt at the hands of US militarism and empire since 1945. We never learn, never regret, never change. Mainstream media will cheer or soberly mark this next big or little war.
8/9 But nothing will change short of real military defeat, or economic collapse, or slow decline marked by countless more victims in other countries, because too many Americans can’t seem to reject the idea that we have the right to bomb and kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason.
9/9 Moving past American empire will require something like a cultural and spiritual revolution in this country. It will require a wholesale reinvention of American identity and I roll in the world. And at this moment I frankly have little idea as to how we get there. Do you? END
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