The TRUE Cost of War…TRUE LIVES for TRUE LIES

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The TRUE Cost of War…TRUE LIVES for TRUE LIES

by Tina Bell Wright
 
ProfTinaWright-225In April 2007 I was asked to write a commentary for PLAYAHATA.COM..I had to choose a modern day villian or playahater…I chose the corporate interest fueling the Iraq war. Many understood this war was unnecessary, but few were paying the physical, emotional, and mental price…only the Iraqis and our youngest men and women that join the military to serve this country or access better opportunities really understood the cost. Today (Nov 5th 2009) Texas (Fort Hood Massacre) and anyone by their TV got a little glimpse.

It is ironic that veteran’s day is around the corner. The irony has never been lost on me that we say we honor and respect our troops but we allow them to make unlivable wages (where some families must depend on AFDC). They fight on battlefields beside private entities that are often compensated 5 times what our soldiers make (Blackwater). Corporations and capitalists defend a system where banks that rip off consumers can then rob the treasury for bailouts in order to keep their 600 to 1 percent salary rate when compared to an enlisted Marine who puts his/her life and mental health on the line daily. Our GIs can’t get decent health care (Walter Reed) but the Walton family (Walmart) can go anywhere in the world for the best health care their money can buy (Walmart being richer than 160+ countries) with the money they make from outsourcing American jobs to China and paying Chinese workers a couple dollars a day. The irony of it all…we accept this as inevitable. We believe what we are told to be true…we buy the true lies…

But the only inevitable thing is this system is unsustainable…and cracks in the dam (the numerous anecdotal stories that do not get reported of soldiers suffering from PTSD and crimes they commit) will give way to the dam breaking soon enough (today’s massacre).

I went back to the commentary I wrote over two years ago…that day I had a first hand encounter with one of the many anecdotal situations that play out everyday in the lives of our returning soldiers…The writing has been on the wall…and here it is:

my playahater choice is a little more personal because of one person that

crossed my path two weeks ago. I was on a Southwest flight to

Sacramento.Sitting beside me was a young brotha (24). He was a Marine and had

already done 3 tours of duty in Iraq. He was supposed to finishing his time in

June and was getting out, but he was not feeling too secure in that

since the military can now call back discharged soldiers to tour, despite the

fact that they have completed their contracts and done their time.

Slavery is alive and well in 2007.

Back to the plane and the young brotha. He was from a military family;

His father had served as well as his aunt and uncle. He had always wanted

to be a marine. He has two young children. His hope now is that the

military service legacy that defined his family will end with him. He does not

want his children to follow in his footsteps. Why? War is hell and he has

lived it. This brother was real jittery and obviously had seen more

than any human being should. When asked what his job was in the marines, he

answered: “you don’t wanna know what I do” (saying this repeatedly).

Then coming with:”I’m a killer.” He then wanted to share with me the

4000 pictures and 100s of videos he had taken in Iraq. He watched the

slideshow of bodies mangled, children decapitated and blood and guts lining the

streets without any reaction. He wanted to talk about it and said it

helped, so I just listened, trying not to get nauseous from the gore.

And for all that they must bear: being away from their families, killing

men, women and children, living with that nightmare and coming home to

subpar medical facilities and families that can’t afford to live without

food stamps, they get abandoned and random strangers sitting beside them on

a plane must serve as psychiatrist. This war is my Playahater, and the

ITT Corporation embodies what’s wrong with the poor fighting the war for

the rich’s interests. We all deserve better than this, but especially

brothers like this, and the Iraqis with which they now share the dance

of death.

Original Link: http://www.playahata.com/?p=2352

Many believe the TRUE LIES that corporate interests fuel through corporate media…even when our TRUE LIVES…reality…is all we need to know.

TRUE LIES by Taalam Acey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unntwxaF_LQ

 

“We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.”
“Take no one’s word for anything, including mine – but trust your experience” – James Baldwin, The Fire next Time

one final note…

i went to see “This is it” again…and i think MJ really did say it best:

“The time has come. This is It. People are always saying.. ‘Oh they, they’ll take care of it.’ ‘The government will do it. They’ll’ …THEY WHO? It starts with US ..it’s US. Or else it’ll never be done.”
– Michael Jackson

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Comments

  1. Something isn’t adding up with this recent shooting. Of course, I could be in tin-foil territory, but I’ll hold off judgement for now. Good write-up by the way! I decided to look up Iraq War images to refresh the memory…SMH@war!

  2. Robert Jr. James McClendon says

    DAVEY D, GIVE ME THE E-MAIL ADDRESS TO THIS “ROBERT JR. JAMES MCCLENDON IS A NIGGER” PERSON. YOU ALL WANT TO SEE BEEF, GIVE ME THIS PUSSY’S E-MAIL ADDRESS. I AIN’T HARD TO FIND, JUST GIVE ME THIS PERSON’S E-MAIL ADDRESS. THAT’S ALL I NEED. I WILL FIND THIS PERSON NO MATTER WHERE THEY ARE ON THIS EARTH.

  3. Robert Jr. James McClendon says

    “True lives for true lies”. Just goes to show that people will do anything for “money”. Got to get this off my chest.- This morning I was watching the “History Channel’ and they were showing about Aldolph Hitler and the Nazi’s in Germany and America. Now, I am not going to say that the narrators of the History Channel were lying, but there is a difference between “history’ and some white guys just having access to video and movie equipment and filming what they honestly feel is important to their race and creed. America History would be about the Native Americans, how Europe came to America, how the African people were captured and brought to America as slaves, how America became the United States, ect. But what I watch for about a hour and fifteen minutes, until I couldn’t stand the crap any more, was these people with movie camera’s documenting what Adolph Hitler and the nazi’s were doing and they were actually trying to pass this crap off as America History. Just because they had film on the nazi’s, authorized to be spied on by Congress, this is being passed off on televsion as history. This is bullshit! That is “not” American history. The people who own the media now, parents owned the media back then and are trying to pass this shit off as history. I am sorry what Hitler did to the Jews and all, and there were plenty of Black people that Hitler killed in Germany and in Africa that ain’t never get a cent of reparations nor any speacial sentiments either. It was kind of like watching, remember the Fred Flintstone episode when Fred was just filming none-sense and he made Wilma, Barney, Betyy, and whoever was around had to watch it. It was like jewish and german people made home videos and the narrator made a documentary out of these people’s home footage. Whoever controls the visual images today has control of tomorrows history. That’s was pure propaganda. What Hitler and the Nazi’s did and still do is wrong, but somebody needs to tell the History Channel and all of the rest of these media outlets to stop trying to passing their home video footage off as “American History”. Yesterday was “veterans Day” and instead of learning about brave America soldiers, they showing that bullshit. “Never forget”, but don’t ever forget the Native Americans, the African Americans and the Middle Passage, the Civil War – American stuff. The media will have you loving them and hating yourselves. Had to get that off my chest – just because Hitler didn’t kill all of people who perhaps owned all of the movie projectors and video film cameras, that don’t now give them the right to now tell America what is their “history”. Shit was like being trapped watching a Fred Flinstone movie, all the while I’m saying these characters are important in American History, these are just people the people with the cameras are showing us and the narrator is telling us “his” “story”. IF YOU ARE GOING TO CALL YOURSELF THE HISTORY CHANNEL, SHOW HISTORY. IF YOU WANT IT TO BE ANOTHER PROPAGANDA SPOT, WELL CHANGED THE NAME, BECAUSE THAT AIN’T OUR HISTORY. My history would have my people collecting reparations from these same people for financing the slave trade in America. It would show how the Indians were annihilated. LOOK AT THE MEDIA, PEOPLE!!! It’s like the Matrix – “what is real?” That bullshit wasn’t “real” history – more like propaganda. Had to get that off my chest, because I feel like this guy named Rodney Roddy Piper, who once played in a movie where he had these glasses and he could see how everyone was being controlled by these people and no one else could see it but him without the glasses. And trust me, I don’t want to see this crap, but its right in our face and we aren’t supposed to say anything. DAVEY D, I STILL NEED THAT GUYS E-MAIL ADDRESS,. THANK YOU!

  4. November does just so happen to be Native America History Month, Bro. Saw the same program on the history channel. My daughter took a class trip to Washington D.C. one year and when she returned she knew more about the Holocaust in Germany than she had learned about what the nations capital “in” the United States of America was all about. They surely aren’t indoctrinating our children with U.S. patriotism and “American history” in school these days, that is for certain. I feel ya.

  5. “Whoever control the visual images today has control of tomorrows history” – Robert Jr. james McClendon. Now I kind of see why they passed that law that even pictures are now copy written and you can’t make copies of them. That wasn’t for our benefit, it was for those who acrtually control the images.

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