When I was a schoolgirl the villains of the Revolutionary War were the Hessian mercenaries the British hired to fight the colonists. Mercenary accordingly became a detested and much despised concept to Americans. When did we the people decide it is ok to hire them? Do we really want to be a nation that will not draft its own to fight its wars and hires instead paid killers? http://www.nytimes.com/...
If that is in fact what 'we' have decided, then the account in the NYT this morning of the actual events in Iraq when Blackwater opened fire is mandatroy reading for everyone who believes it is ok. And I can only hope then, like me, the reader will put him or her self in the place of those Iraqis who tried to back up or crawl out of harm's way. These were Civilans going about their business who were shot in the face, the back, the neck, the foot. And from above after helicopters were called in. Dozens died and in the end a mother was left cradling her dead son because some hired guns for the Americans opened fire without cause or provocation. This is a lot more than disgusting reading with my morning coffee. It is the consequence of a nation run amuck, absandoning its principles, killing and maiming and swaggering around a catastrophe that no words can ever adequately describe. I no longer know or understand what it will take for us to stop in Iraq. The Republicans have arranged an oil contract for one of their oil buddies in the Kurdish North. Is that what is required? How many more then? Before we can stop? Before any decent American who remembers what the country has stood for can stop cringing at the toll this war is taking on our soul. We are the mercenaries now and we are despised. And rightly so. We have gone from the hope of the world to its scourge. I feel nothing but shame and sorrow and I would give a lot to know how to act to end it. I mean End It!!!!