Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Free Speech

Lately I've noticed some posts on a social media site about a woman who posted a video on youtube where she explains that she doesn't support the troops. At this moment lets put my opinion aside (GASP...I agree with her!) and address the issue of free speech. The people that had made a comment on this video on facebook where either military members or family of military people. I found their comments quite disturbing, not only did they call this woman names a few of them actually called to revoke her right to free speech because she doesn't support what the current U.S. military does. This is quite disturbing...I may not agree with others political opinions but I would never tell them they could not speak their minds, have we come that far as a Nation in the post war on terror age; where we must censor people we don't agree with? I sure as hell hope not, because I enjoy using my CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS to either protest against the wars or speak up about them because I've been to Iraq.

Since 2001 our Nation has been torn apart both by petty politics and fake patriotism, democracy cannot let people take others voices away just because a few disagree with what they say, because then democracy dies. If that was the case most all politicos would be out of jobs and in jail. This was troubling to me because the people who posted the initial comments I had served with or had spent time talking with and I was surprised by their ignorance and lack of ability to protect the first amendment. I wanted to debate more with these people on the issue but to my surprise I was blocked after an initial comment, because my beliefs are you cannot separate supporting the troops from the supporting the so called war on terror.

My argument dives into a historical one because following orders does not mean the soldiers do not have a choice. (This is something I've struggled with since I left the Air Force, because had I looked closer into our missions while I spent 500 days in Iraq I would have objected and made my voice known but that's hindsight.) Two points come to mind when dealing with this subject matter; The Nuremberg Trials after WWII and The Mai Lai Massacre and the U.S. war trials after. In short both of these cases prove that the soldier cannot use orders as a defense from war crimes, in this case killing innocent civilians. So following orders is no excuse when one is ordered to do something that they know is morally wrong, this is where you cannot separate what we have done in the war on terror. We all played a part in these wars, whether we like it or not. Some of us prepared the planes and equipment so other soldiers could go out and complete those missions, those missions could have led to innocent death or the torture of kids. Either way we all have blood on our hands...

I know people like to defend the soldiers and say that we fought for America's freedom, but we know that's bullshit! The only freedoms that were lost after 9/11 were those taken from our own government, the lies that the middle eastern world hates us for our freedoms only stoked the political fire even more. Most of America is too stupid to understand what happened that day, nor did they ask who they people were (Saudi Arabia anyone?) Instead we survived nearly a decade of war and lies through our mainstream media outlets. But of course the American public doesn't want to hear any of this and either do the politicians because that means the wars would end and their pockets would be lighter, because there was a lot of money to be made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because the American Empire is vast and the middle east was a place we needed to keep our eye on, but our actions since WWII have caused these problems and Imperialism is not going to solve them now.

Free speech and the right to protest our government are important to our Democratic Republic, we need to embrace being free and not living in fear and not letting those who seek to use fear to their advantage back in office. Now going back to the woman in the video, I agree with her and have made these types of comments before either on facebook or in person. After WWII the U.S. led by fear, fear of communism and the A-Bomb, the Cold War created the Military Industrial Complex which now our economy depends on. We spend more in defense then something like the next 7 countries combined, and it continues to go up every year. War has become a business, if you happen to be a defense contractor chances are you made a shit ton of money in the last 8 years and it may not all have been legal. My end point is that free speech is too important and just because you do not agree with someone does not mean their rights should be taken away, ignorance is what leads to the death of our democracy. If we were all more involved with what our nation does and actually paid attention instead 30 second news clips our nation would be better off for it.