What DC Stands For

Kohi, Hai

Washington D. C. - What It Stands For

If you do not die in the battlefield as a direct result of enemy action, your death does not count. That is official policy now.

What counts? Being shot or blown up by an enemy. That’s about it.

If you’re shot or blown up by friendly fire, that does not count. Nor does bleeding to death after being wounded. If you live long enough to be declared wounded, your death won’t count. Say it with me now: You’re wounded.

Doesn’t take long, does it?

If you die of illness, dehydration, bleeding, or shock, it won’t count. And don’t even think about dying after being taken to a field hospital or, worse, flown to a regional medical center like the one at Landstuhl, in Ramstein, Germany. Do that, and die, and it won’t count.

Nor do suicides count. Not even a little. And suppose you’re a prick officer straight out of Neo Con Scum training, and you’re fragged by resentful, battle-hardened men sick of being lorded over by know-nothing Tom Clancy Cadets. That won’t count, either.

This is how the Bush administration has so easily kept the official death count artificially low. It’s a despicable form of lying. Same as making it illegal to show flag-draped coffins returning by the plane load. Same as Bush not attending any funerals for the fallen soldiers he and his gang of thugs have killed for Haliburton’s profits.

Ah, but Cheney, Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld, Gates, Rice, and the rest of the Bush League Rogue Gallery got a present this xmas: The official death toll from their debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq has now exceeded the death toll from the 9/11 attacks.

Or more than doubled it, depending how you look at it.

While the real number of American service members killed must be in the tens of thousands, if not more, we’re not allowed to know. Whether we’ll ever know is questionable.

And so another Yuletide has come and gone in a Winter Solstice blink, and the joy never materialized for all too many of us.

Some mourned through the so-called holiday season, wondering what could possibly be considered holy about sacrificing sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, living human beings with lives and families, on the altar of profiteering and exploitation.

Some slogged through the strain of a bleak spate of consumerism, spending themselves like lemmings over the debt cliff, falling free and easy into the pit of owing dug deep by a credit-crazed society that sees its leaders spend tens of trillions of dollars it does not have, robbing future generations and squandering the ecology to enhance quarterly profit margins.

Does no one find this suicidally insane?

Is this economy, in which the single-income ideal is not even a myth anymore; in which two incomes barely covers gas and groceries; in which the gap between poverty and wealth, once called the Middle Class, is now a rivulet of blood a napalmed toddler can step over without tripping; in which pollution is so bad states have begun defying useless federal regulations in order to try to keep breathing and drinking; is this economy even human?

Is this hellish place of greed and excess worth fighting and dying for in foreign lands?

Words like Freedom are bandied. Concepts like Defending Freedom are cited. Talk of Mission Accomplished and Victory is mouthed.

No one sums the cost in lives and, yes, even in money and property. How many Iraqis have died? Do we even ask that about Afghanis? Since we see virtually no coverage of such things in our confabulatory media, we don’t bother thinking about such things. Doesn’t bother anyone if they never hear about it.

That’s the Neo Con scum plan; keep us confused, scared, and in the dark so they can do anything and everything they want, for their own benefit and profit.

And it is working like a bomb because, as this xmas past demonstrates, we’re numb. We’re consumer zombies far more worried about getting the new PS3 or Wii unit than stopping crimes that seem so remote, complex, and beyond our reach.

We are distracted by which celebrity couple broke up, or the latest shooting spree. There is always a spicy, splashy tabloid distraction to toss like bloody chunks to the caged lions.

What cages? How about free speech zones? How about ignorance? Apathy? Disinformation and lies? Endless drumbeats of negative mantras meant to numb and chill and limit and ruin.

And, to keep us anxious through what might have been a healing time, the Bush League began attempting coherent speech about boosting the size of the military. That means a Draft, folks. So people this xmas had to look into their kids' eyes and wonder if they'd be sent to Iraq in the next few weeks or months. Nice little mind-bomb present, Karl. Yes, talk of expanding the military, sure. This despite cutting ranks mercilessly, mindlessly, and mendaciously. This despite a military structure that is broken, overextended, and so ill-supplied that troops in the field have gone without such basics as food, water, and ammunition. This in a country we supposedly control.

Maybe we do. Maybe Katrina is how we treat people now; let them fend for themselves, and grab as much profit and phony photo ops as possible meanwhile. Oh, and slam some new laws into place while everyone’s distracted.

In the movie THE US. vs. JOHN LENNON, Gore Vidal explained the difference between Nixon and Lennon succinctly. Nixon, he said, represented death. Lennon represented life.

It was that simple then, and it’s that simple now.

Washington D.C. stands for Washington Death Cult.

Choose life, light, and love instead.

Turn away from these scum and start a Real Count, not only of the dead, and the crimes, and the stolen money, but of the ways we can set things right again, and the steps it will take to move things back to a place where USA stands for Life and Opportunity.

/// /// ///