bringing the war (closer to) home

Yesterday's Boston Metro (mysteriously not in the Metro PDF archives) induced a smile - not a rare feat for the 24 hours in 24 seconds rag. For those unfamiliar with the Metro corporation, it publishes daily papers in cities across the globe. It's popularity and high circulation are largely due to the fact that it is free, staff are hired to hand out copies to people boarding the T, and the format is a tiny tabloid that has tons of two-inch stories. It's a paper full of wire briefs, and you can read the thing cover to cover on a short train or bus ride.

Today, the lead headline said "20 killed in inside job," referring to the bombing at a army mess tent in Mosul, Iraq. It's not that I'm a sadist, but the only way the U.S. occupation is going to end is by force, and if people on the inside choose the side of the oppressed and occupied peoples, or if infiltrators do the job (or both), then it's going to bring about the end of this clusterfuck sooner. U.S. soldiers should have never invaded Iraq in the first place.

For people who think the U.S. needs to kick some ass and take names and can't understand why people in places such as Fallujah are fighting back, let me try to put it into perspective: If France decided the U.S. (or whatever country you live in) was a threat to its security, and tomorrow French soldiers parachuted into your hometown, rolled in the tanks and started patrolling, setting up checkpoints and generally denying you access to necessary resources, how would you react? If groups of men who speak only another tongue came in with guns, searched you at every major intersection, interrogated you with the assumption you were a terrorist; if they stole your food and bombed your power and water supplies and hospitals (and your home, which was "within range" of the blast [read: an unadmitted target]), would you smile and let them do it? Or would you fight back for the ability to control your own destiny and keep control of your neighborhood? Perhaps you would flee for safety in a neighboring country or state, hoping one day to return to life as you knew it. But even then you probably would know that life as you knew it was being annihilated.