Real role of women in defending America

New IL 8th District Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth sent me an email celebrating the Pentagon announcement that women can fully serve in combat alongside men. While against discrimination of any sort I take issue with her statement, "America’s daughters are just as capable of defending liberty as her sons."

This was my response to Congresswoman Duckworth:

Tammy, it's not great news when women as well as men can defile the countries of the Middle East just as much as the men. Tammy, you fought in a criminal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sent millions scurrying for safety. 4,488 GI's were killed and hundreds of thousands wounded, injured or mentally broken by this monstrous war crime. Don't you feel at least a twinge of guilt for participating in that atrocity? Now that you're in Congress how about dedicating your term to stopping the rush to war against Iran. How about demanding an investigation into the war crimes of the Bush Administration, including the ringleaders in crime: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. Remember Tammy, the guys and now gals fighting our criminal wars are not defending our liberty. They are defending the power and greed of the war party. Stop being their enabler. Start fighting for peace and justice. That, Tammy, would be the best service you could possibly provide your country and your constituents. Its time to stop trading on your participation in a war that has left Iraq a broken, miserable, bleeding, poisoned, rotting hulk of a once proud country. It's time to step up to replace one of the three prominent anti war Congressmen who left us this year: Lynn Woolsey (Dem, CA), Dennis Kucinich (Dem, OH) and Ron Paul (Rep, TX). Lynn Woolsey, for example, gave 444 speeches against these monstrous wars during the last decade, most to an empty House, and most ignored by the war loving mainstream media. That Congresswoman, is a record to emulate. The war party hated her for good reason. She held up a mirror to their evil war mongering. We need more women like Lynn Woolsey, and hopefully Tammy Duckworth fighting for peace instead of waging war.

Congresswoman, you can never really undue all the damage you helped perpetuate in Iraq. But as a member of Congress you can begin to try.

Respectfully,

Walt Zlotow

GI Janes: read Lysistrada, not woman's combat manual

The big military news this week is that the Pentagon has green lighted full combat participation in our senseless, murderous wars of choice for the second sex to rampage around the Middle East with their fellow male canon fodder. Though my wife and I raised our two daughters to be liberated and independent, we also taught them enough common sense that they'd never support, much less go near these monstrous wars promoted by cowards and chicken hawks for power and treasure. The rationale for this move was to give women the full benefits of combat experience so they can literally kill their way up the military chain of command to leadership positions on an equal footing with their male counterparts.

This may be spun as progress for women, the military and America, but its simply another step backward for Uncle Sam as he inches closer, sight unseen, to the abyss of the collapsing American empire, dying from the rot of endless military adventurism while all vestiges of a sane, thriving society; health, education, sustained job growth, alternative energy, world class infrastructure and transportation wither at the altar of endless war.

Every military lady and military wannabe gal should pick up a copy of Aristophanes' 411 BC play Lysistrada and contemplate its message. In it, Lysistrada, persuades the women of Greece to deny sexual privileges to their warrior menfolk to force an end to their interminable Peloponnesian War (431 BC - 404 BC). The Athenian Lysistrada aided by her Sparta colleague Lampito, take over the Acropolis which holds the state treasury used to finance the war. Failing in their efforts to end the sex strike and re-capture the Acropolis, the men initiate a different version of piece talks in which  the women of Athens and Sparta emerge triumphant.

Instead of the women of America talking similar action of selfless denial to achieve peace, they demand equality in adding to the senseless destruction of Afghanistan and quite possibly our newest "bête noir" Iran. They've completely fallen for the monstrous lie that they are defending our freedom and liberty, parroting the propaganda that every warrior nation has used throughout history to con their young men to march into Hell. In the 1960's the best of American womanhood chanted "Make Love, Not War" and "Give Peace a Chance". If anyone thinks today's "Let We Women Slaughter Too", is progress, they're only hastening our demise. They should instead paraphrase early 20th century birth control champion Margaret Sanger and tell the mostly male members of the war party: "Want war...go sleep on the roof".

And Now Commentary From...Our War Criminal

 

Walt Zlotow

 

 

I'm done with CBS News since they've hired former George W. Bush national security advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to provide news commentary.

Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer announced the hiring January 20 while interviewing her. CBS stated Rice will "use her insight and vast experience to explore issues facing America at home and abroad." They should have added that her "vast experience" includes war crimes as chief propagandist helping President Bush launch his criminal war against Iraq which caused millions of deaths, casualties and ethnically cleansed Iraqis, and hundreds of thousands of US casualties including 4,488 deaths. Rice famously issued the most egregious and potent war woop in US history when she promoted the rush to pre-emptive war with this gem: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud", which roughly translates to "Saddam's building a nuke and he's gonna use it on Uncle Sam".

OK, Rice hasn't been convicted of war crimes much less been indicted or even investigated. America only prosecutes war criminals when they do their dastardly deeds for a country we don't like. Here we give folks like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and CBS's newest pundit Rice, millions of dollars to spew their lies in autobiographies and, in the case of Rice, polluting the air waves. If we refuse to follow the Nuremburg War Crime Tribunal edict to bring war criminals to justice than we abrogate our standing as a legitimate actor on the world stage. CBS should look back and determine that Rice sends the worst possible message to American news watchers instead of looking forward to the advertising revenue she can bring their news department.

That's blood money. Till Rice's new gig is rescinded, color the CBS eye red.

High times at the Trib

It was pleasantly surprising to read Steve Chapman's Chicago Tribune op ed, "The war on pot: not a safe bet", in Sunday's Trib. It read as if it might have been penned by the head of the marijuana legalization league. It's hard to gage the influence Chapman and the Trib will have on this debate. Maybe all their efforts will simply go up in smoke. However, it certainly suits our modern times to a tea. One thing for certain: the Trib Editorial Board has finally gone to pot.

Stan still the Man

In baseball today, a lifetime .250 hitter who can sock a few homeruns can hang around for years earning millions per. Batting .300 has become rare and sluggers strike out up to 200 times a season.

One great hitter never struck out more than 46 times in a season and that occurred as a 41 year old Methuselah. He went yard 475 times and wasn't even considered a slugger, just a pure, sweet hitter. Oh yes. He hit safely one outta three....for 22 years.

That was Stan Musial, lifetime Cardinal great who died January 19 at 92. Stan....you still The Man.

License to kill; Part II

On November 15, 2008, I wrote these words concerning President Elect Obama's impending inauguration as 44th US President:
      

"So help me God".

Within minutes, if not seconds of saying those words on January 20, 2009, which inaugurate Barack Obama as President of the US and Commander in Chief of the armed forces, some innocent civilian around the world will die by unnecessary US military action. As the life is snatched from some unsuspecting man, woman or child simply trying to live out the Iraqi or the Afghan or the Pakistani or the Syrian or the Iranian dream, President Obama will have exercised the most awesome power that comes with that solemn oath: his License To Kill.

We don't spend six hundred fifty billion dollars a year on weapons of civilian destruction for nothing. The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex demands that they be used, frequently if possible, to maintain need for endless replenishment. These folks will lobby and propagandize and bully and cajole the American public endlessly until the guy at the helm aggressively gives the order to fire or passively allows the overt and covert operations already in place to continue their murder and mayhem.
 

We now know that many, perhaps, thousands of innocents have been needlessly killed in the President's first term. However, unlike his predecessor, the current Commander In Chief is not the  bloodthirsty and unrepentant warmonger George W. Bush was. Obama ended the criminal Iraq war and has set a deadline to end the criminal Afghanistan war. He has pushed back mightily against the real warmongers who salivate to attack Iran. One of those warmongers is Senator John McCain, who, had he been elected in 2008, may well have kept us in Iraq, put no timetable on exiting Afghanistan and quite possibly led the charge to demolish Iran. McCain was nuts enough to imply we needed to support Georgia militarily in their failed bid grab a province back from Russia.
In re-electing Obama, we told warmonger wannabe Mitt Romney to go back to making millions busting up good companies.

The Military-Industrial Complex still runs this country lock, stock and smart bomb fired by dummies. We need to oppose this leviathan with our words and our votes. As their chief executive, as our chief executive, we must hold the President accountable for all the needless militarism and deaths and destruction our gargantuan military visits upon the world. The drone campaign of murder from the skies must end. New wars must not be started. We should all work to reduce, if not stop this madness. So help us God.