Racketeers for Capitalism

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/17-1

"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

Major General Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket (1935)

I remember when the US war dead in Iraq reached 1000 sometime in the summer of 2005. My youngest child and her boyfriend accompanied me to a vigil in Davis, Ca. where we held candles, pictures of Casey, each other, and sobbed-not just for Casey, but for all the rest, also. And not just for the Americans, but for the Iraqis, too.

Then I remember when the needless toll reached 2000 in the fall of 2005-I got arrested with about 25 others in front of the White House-such organizations at MoveOn.org preferred candlelight vigils to direct action. I warned them if we didn't do something, then we would be mourning 3000-that total came in the early spring of 2007. Now the total for Iraq stands at 4415 and I was recently told by the founder of Veterans for Peace Arlington West Memorial on the beach in Santa Barbara (where I first visited five weeks after Casey was killed on Mother's Day) that they would no longer place a cross in the sand for my son, or the other 4414 dead in Iraq because Iraq is "old news."

Today, (August 17) we learn that in Afghanistan, three U.S. troops, three NATO troops and at least seven civilians were killed. This is another grim marker along the Imperial Road to Ruin as Barack Obama's regime has managed to kill as many troops in Afghanistan in 19 months as the Bush stain did in seven years.


More at the link ---