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Not Hate Mail


Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.

Hi and no, this is not hate mail : L.W. : email and name withheld on request : 2008-04-07

I sent this to your Telus address and there was no response, so I figured this address might work better. But I can understand if you’re really behind with your mail and don’t get the time to respond.

I stumbled across your website just when I thought I would go mad if I read one more article in the newspapers about how returned U.S. soldiers were war heroes. I could not understand logically how they were — to me they seemed like bullies — but the incessant repetition of the same theme was beginning to get to me. I thought I was the one who had to be crazy because everywhere I turned, people were looking at them with respect, welcoming them back home with huge American flags, writing heartfelt stories about their trips to Iraq and about how they would readjust once they came home.

Come back with your shield — or on it.
~ Spartan Mothers Plutarch, was supposed to be the parting cry of mothers to their sons. Mothers whose sons died in battle openly rejoiced, mothers whose sons survived hung their heads in shame.

There are at least three of us pointing out the obvious, you, me and Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor. There is nothing unusual about this mass denial of wrong doing. Nazi soldiers were welcomed home as heroes. Canadians fighting an illegal aggressive war in Afghanistan receive elaborate funerals where citizens all across the country subject themselves to the torment of bagpipe music endlessly playing Amazing Grace to honour the dead serial killers. Part of this is self deception.

It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869-10-02 1948-01-30 age:78)

Most people make their decisions the way herd animals do, by checking out what everyone else is saying and doing. However, solid conviction also persuades. If this were not so, con men and Christians would never be able to sell their nonsense. But you can use this to your advantage, just as Gandhi did. Finally, logic, in the long term, wins out. People almost never admit they were wrong. So don’t expect them to say, You are right. We shouldn’t be killing people in Iraq. The best you can hope for is to set them thinking, to weaken their faith in the righteousness of their evil deeds and racist beliefs.

If your son is a sadist and enjoys setting puppies on fire, then joins the army and gets himself killed, how could you possibly bare to face the painful truth that the world would have been much better off had he never been born? Well-meaning people offer you a comforting lie, that he sacrificed his life to save his country and that God heartily applauded him slaughtering children. Even if you knew in your heart the story was preposterous, you would cling to it anyway to ease your guilt and pain at having created such a monster. The more pointless the deaths of soldiers, the more people are tempted to make up lies to give their deaths significance.

The wars we are waging today are wars of our aggression. We illegally attacked tiny countries unprovoked. We are not defending ourselves as we were in WWII (World War II), so there is nothing honorable about our mayhem. In fact, by the Nuremberg principles, participating in those wars is illegal. Every American politician, out of pragmatic necessity, pretends to ignore this elephant in the room. Everyone aiding and abetting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are brazen international war criminals guilty of a capital crime, namely aiding and abetting an aggressive war. The soldiers know this, but they rest assured the governments of the USA, Canada and Britain will forever protect them from prosecution. I think they are foolhardy. A lot can change politically over the next 70 years. The political will to protect war criminals may evaporate as could the political power to do so. There is no statue of limitations. Recall the astonished Nazis who were kidnapped and finally brought to justice in their 90s.

I tried and tried to see their point of view, but I still could not see what was so heroic about going and killing people in a foreign country who had done the U.S.A. no harm. At the most, all one could say was that the soldier had no choice but to go because those were his orders. But there still seemed something arrogant in joining up to take out a dictator half way across the world, as though Americans have some special duty to take care of the world more than other nations. Most other nations don’t want to think of America as their nanny, no matter what Americans themselves might think.

Very simple, the soldiers are sadists. They like killing and bullying. They are not conscripts. They are not killing children because they were ordered to. They chose to torture, kill and maim. They volunteered to do this, knowing full well what they were getting into. They sacrificed money, comfort and the presence of loved ones so they could have a chance to torment others. They offer the lamest excuses for their perversion. Some claim there were no other possible jobs than killing people. (They could have worked for the Mafia, doing the same thing, for higher pay, granted at higher risk.) They even use Saddam as their excuse for enlisting, who was captured on 2003-12-13 (14 years and 4 months ago)! What is a sadist to do? Confine themselves to sadistic fantasy, that’s what! We expect paedophiles, sexual predators and other serial murderers to totally suppress their urges. Why should sadists be let off the hook entirely? It is revolting and insane that we taxpayers fund their depraved safaris to hunt children in third world countries and fête them as heroes when they return.

But your website — your clear, ringing indictment of American soldiers as neither more nor less than war criminals — was indescribably comforting. It reassured me that the voice in my head that had been stubbornly saying for so long that no, these are not, they cannot be — war heroes, that it didn’t make sense, at last had confirmation. But you know, I don’t think a single person in America — not even the anti-war activists — think this way. For them, the soldiers are all victims of the war. They all talk of the price Americans had to pay in Iraq — 4000 dead. Not even anti-war activists are honest enough to point out that these 4000 volunteered to join an army and go and occupy a small foreign country that was never any threat to them. I have been to most or all of the anti-war websites in the U.S. and not a single one of them points this out. I wonder why this is? Do they fear becoming unpopular with their readers? Or do they themselves not see it as true?

The soldiers fight because they like fighting. Any old excuse will do. They will parrot any bullshit have heard to stop you from throwing a drink in their faces, even something as silly as they are killing the Iraqis to give them the gift of freedom. Democracy is about compromise, not slaughtering those who disagree with you. Therefore you can’t teach democracy to people by killing them. They have no curiosity about why their country is really attacking small third world countries. They read nothing. They just meekly swallow the mindless, idiotic military propaganda shoved down their throats. But that is beside the point because don’t care a fig about why they are killing. They just want to kill someone and anyone will do, though preferably someone of a despised race and religion. Just read some of the mail from these sickos and you will see the malice pouring from every word. The sickest stuff I could not bring myself to post. The Bushes, Cheneys etc. have more complex motives, mostly financial and power based.

I just wanted to thank you for telling what I knew in my heart was true and thus reminding me that the truth is the truth no matter how many times lies are repeated.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869-10-02 1948-01-30 age:78)

It might help to lift your spirits to read some Gandhi.

I don’t want this letter published, but it would be fun if you printed more of your hate mail — the illogical arguments are very entertaining.

It is quite emotionally draining preparing their illiterate posts for publication and dealing with the string of rebuttals. I feel a bit like Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) interacting with Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in Silence of the Lambs. I feel like I need several showers after reading their degenerate thoughts. I usually have to bow out after a few exchanges because I feel so nauseated.

Thank you again.
L.

Hi and no, this is not hate mail, part II : L.W. : email and name withheld on request : 2008-04-07

If you wish to publish anonymously, go right ahead. I want to express my admiration for your website once again and would be honored to be counted as one of your fans.

I’m glad you did let me publish. My opponents claim I am crazy not to root for our side, even when it is in the wrong and behaving clearly illegally. Having even one more voice echoing sanity will help persuade others hiding and afraid to speak up to come forward. It takes a lot of courage to express an unpopular view. The rôle of seconder is the most underrated.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869-10-02 1948-01-30 age:78)

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