Ashamed to Be an American

To the disappointment and dismay of many of our close friends, especially
here in South America, the Dowbrigade was a strong supporter of US military
intervention in Iraq. Our primary reasoning was that Saddam Hussein was
a VERY evil man, and needed to be removed from office. To those
who argued that this was the responsibility of the Iraqi people, we
answered
that history shows, as in the cases of Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, that
sometimes a nation’s destiny can he hijacked by a small group of evil
men and held
in thrall through murder, terror and force of arms. To those who maintained
that the United States is not the world’s policeman, we answered, if
not us, who, and if not now, when?

Even then, before the invasion, we found the rationalizations around
the elusive weapons of mass destruction laughably inept.  The arguments
which had turned us in favor of intervention were basically two.  First,
the substantiated stories of Hussein’s egregious mistreatment of his own
people; the gassing of the Kurds, the torture and murder of political opponents,
the rape rooms in the palaces and the systematic disenfranchisement bordering
on slavery of Iraqi women.  Second, and personally most convincing,
was Saddam’s offering of substantial cash rewards for young Palestinian
boys and girls and others willing to turn themselves into human land mines
and misguided missiles, in order to kill Jews.

A committed Pacifist, the Dowbrigade nevertheless finds it eminently
reasonable to support the death or imprisonment of any individual actively
campaigning for his own death, and who, if given half a chance, would snuff
us out, and those of our ilk, without a second thought. Simple, instinctual
self-preservation.

But our initial support of the directed downfall of the Hussein regime
does NOT imply or embrace advocacy for the dismal, destructive and obviously
doomed efforts to occupy the country and force feed them some twisted
and macabre ersatz form of democracy, which is feeling more and more
like crass capitalism disguised in the cynical skin of not-so-compassionate fascism.

The ongoing scandal at Abu Ghraib prison is much more than a case in
point.  It is a watershed event, stripping all legitimacy from our
efforts at "pacification" (now there’s an Orwellian mouthful). It is clearly
the story of the war, so far, and at least in the mind of the Dowbrigade
is once again calling up phantoms and nightmares of the Vietnam war era.

Not since the horrible, harrowing details of the Mai Lai massacre and
Lt. Calleys stomach-turning perfidy, not even during the darkest days
of the Nixon scandal (for after all, Tricky Dick was an engaging scoundrel,
the Dark Side of Camelot’s gleaming City Upon the Hill, and he did get
his comeuppance in the end), not even during the long, dreary Regan regime,
7 years of which we spent in self-imposed exile out of sheer embarrassment,
have we been forced to report that we feel ASHAMED TO BE AN AMERICAN. Not
until now.

Our mind is crowded with dark and depressing possibilities. We truly
cringe to think of the fate of any of the brave and honorable American
servicemen and women who have the unfortunate destiny to fall into enemy
hand from this point on. And we pray and hope that the perpetrators of
the prison disaster, as well as the stuffed uniforms further up the
chain of command who set down the conditions that made this possible or
even imaginable, are losing sleep as well over their responsibility for
this horrible new threat to the Jessica Lynches, the hapless wrong-turn
flunkies and inadequately prepared, gung-ho sons and daughters of the
American prairie, who have no idea of what terrible retribution awaits
them.

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