I Wonder If …

I wonder if there would ever be another war, if, instead of mass slaughtering civilians, civilian homes, schools, and critical infrastructure… only heads of state would be bombed. If the innocent civilian populations of all countries were strictly off limits in times of war, not to be touched by violence or destruction and instead only those directly responsible for war, those crying out and clamoring for war, would be the only ones targeted by the machines of war… I wonder, would we ever see another war? If only the presidential estates, the war think tanks, the political institutions, the highest seats of governments, parliaments and congresses were the sole targets of cluster bombs and land mines, if only the luxury homes and neighborhoods of the wealthiest and most powerful people were bombed to oblivion, if only the major corporations and major financial institutions and financial districts would be singled out for bunker busting, targeting by drones and D.U. munitions, which is only fair and right because these are the people responsible for war, if this was the way that wars were fought, do you think we would ever see another war?

And what if the nation’s capitol was in flames after being brutally bombed into ruins, after white phosphorous bombs were liberally dropped from the sky, as the guys in thousand dollars suits and ties were burning and screaming in agony, (at least the ones who survived), along with the ladies in high heels wearing those huge Pebbles and Bam Bam pearl necklaces, if these utterly important worldly men and women were trapped and bleeding underneath smoking rubble, skin burning unstoppably, limbs torn off, brains on the walls, instead of sending in help, we sent in heavily armed troops and police, not to assist these people, but to point machine guns at them, at the politicians and heads of state, you know, to prevent looting. I wonder how well that would go?

I wonder if the bombed and injured politicians would applaud us and tell us we did the right thing in looking out for “stuff” in the midst of incalculable human suffering and need, instead of bending over backwards to save lives and help people. I’m sure they’d say it was the right thing to do. They’ve told us such behavior is the exact right thing to do, in Haiti, after Katrina, all over America, they’ve said so over and over again.

And what if we rounded up the filthy criminal bankers and corrupt liars and insiders and all of the cohort of official criminals and we hooded and shackled them, stripped off their clothes, gave them drug filled enemas so they’d pass out and put them on airplanes, headed to points unknown, and 12 hours later we dropped them in a foreign country and left them there to be brutally tortured, anally raped with sticks and bottles and gun barrels, and hung from their wrists in some dark and filthy cell for days at a time without food, without medical attention, where they were beaten daily and their bones were broken and they were injected with drugs against their will and mentally tortured every minute of every day with no contact with the outside world and no hope, how do you suppose that would go over? Do you suppose the self same politicians who enabled the crimes and created these laws in the first place would still stand up for their laws and say, “It is good that you’ve done this to protect us all”. Do you suppose that could ever happen?

And what if any of those banker criminals and their partners in crime in congress and the greater political cesspit began to protest, saying, “You can’t do this to us! We have legal rights! We demand a trial! We demand a lawyer! We demand the right to defend ourselves! We demand to know what we are being charged with!” And we said, “Shut your face, you ain’t getting any of that. You’re guilty because we say you’re guilty. You’re going to be in prison in a shit hole getting tortured for the rest of your life, you ain’t got no rights, you don’t deserve the benefits of our precious American rights”, how do you suppose that would play out? Would the self same politicians who created all of this in the first place say, “Righto! Well done! It’s the best thing for our country! That’s freedom and democracy baby! That’s genuine bona fide National Security!” Or instead, might they mess their own pants in fear and panic that it was all turning around and coming back to them, to the people who created all of these despicable practices in the first place?

How can it be that we are supposed to see no hypocrisy in the way the rules apply to all of the equal beings in our free and democratic country? How can it be that some things are unthinkable wrongs when they are done to some people, but are heroic democratic patriotic goodness when they are done to others? Which is it? It can’t be both. It is either good to do these things or it is bad to do them. Unless of course you believe that some people are better than others so they don’t deserve equal justice, they deserve to elude justice and be rewarded for their crimes while everyone else receives injustice and pays the highest price possible for crimes and misdemeanors, whether they are guilty or not. Is that free and democratic? Is that good and right and National Security and Law Enforcement O-Tastic goodness? Or is it total crap? I think it’s grotesquely obvious total crap but what I think is not the question. The question is, what do you think?