Veteran’s Day – our GI’s were exposed to mustard gas in the Gulf War

drparkRecharge Biomedical

1984

Today is #MondayMusings and Veteran’s Day. Although this is not a political posting, we should check ourselves for logical and moral consistency. You and I ultimately bear responsible for the actions of our nation so I simply wish to point out some recent facts that came to light in the NYT about the presence of WMD in Iraq. How some pundits are using this as a “We told you so” is still a difficult leap for me to make.

WMD were in Iraq

http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/who-was-right-about-w-m-d-s-in-iraq/?_r=0

 

• The reason the US was so certain there were WMD in Iraq was because US Corporations sold them for use in the Iran-Iraq War. Our nation supplied both sides with weapons of all kinds.

• Knowledge of these WMD on the battlefield was suppressed, perhaps to the detriment of some U.S. Army personnel that were exposed to them.

 

So it’s kind of like a police officer saying “we knew those suspects were armed and dangerous because we were the ones who supplied them the guns. That’s why we had to subdue them.”

I call this the George Zimmerman Doctrine of foreign policy. If you perceive a threat, then it would be remiss not to act upon that. Nothing frightening about that thinking, is there?


 

I recently wrote to a friend taking a high post at the VA.  I expressed my hope that she could help honor veterans by helping them educate us about the real costs of war in a popoulace that hasn’t seen it for 150 years.

On this somber day, we should consider the words of one of the recent Nobel Prize winners, Malala Yousafzai who went off script by commenting on her fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s sales of arms to the world.  I guess when you survive a gunshot wound to the head, you feel even more immortal than the average teenager.  I thought she was on our side against the forces of terrorism?  Pass me a Bud Light and the TV Guide. I’m confused.

 

Malala goes off script

http://www.christianpost.com/news/malala-yousafzai-asks-obama-to-send-books-not-guns-and-weapons-to-other-countries-128582/

 

Compassion fatigue, learned helplessness, cognitive dissonance, and deference to authority.  When morality can not coexist with self-identity, then there is not much left to fight for, in my opinion. Your thoughts?

 

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