We ask you both to forgive us for not stopping you from committing yet another series of immeasurably costly acts of insanity. We who are so many millions of men and women stronger than the two of you in our employ are a million times more responsible and stand as first accused before the thousands of our Afghani brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers grieving the loss of so many of their dearest children and countrymen and women of all ages.
We millions knew beyond a shadow of doubt that children would be murdered in your, in our, air strikes and ground operations. In our millions-fold imagination we heard the screams of incoming bombs and wailing of the people that would be bombed already when we were told of General McCrystal's new attack plans for beautiful Helmand Province. It was announced well beforehand, yet inexplicably to our shame, we many millions strong Americans did nothing to hold you back from yet more intentional homicide. Can you both forgive us?
We, the millions of Americans who are beginning to wake up to responsibility for governing ourselves, are mortified to remember witnessing our failure to act as good citizens before this war in Afghanistan. During our wars In Korea, in Laos, in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in the Dominican Republic, in Cuba, in Lebanon, in Grenada, in Panama, in Iran, in Somalia, in the Sudan, in Yemen, in Haiti, in Iraq, in Pakistan, we never thought to apologize to our leaders. Now, perhaps shamefully because our nation is going under, are we moved to apologize.
We millions of long deficient citizens knew that our President and our General and our troops had no right in heaven or hell to be killing anyone in Afghanistan. And we American millions knew from the experience of the civil rights movement how just a few thousands of us going forward with tens of thousands coming behind and hundreds of thousands joining in support - just how powerful and fully capable we millions are to easily take responsibility for our government and the behavior of you our honored public servants. We have failed you and the people in harms way of our military by not stopping you from what you have no right to be doing.
Millions of us, eight years ago, before this Sunday strike that cowardly blew away a line of vans full of women and children, were aware that not one single Afghan had ever attacked the U.S. or any other nation during recent centuries. Millions of us remembered that no Afghan was with the Saudi Arabians who amazingly had the steel resolve to suicide themselves in the name of justice for their people bringing terror and death largely to our civilians in a cruel and horrific act against our America. We remember, to our extreme embarrassment and remorse that no Afghanis were among those who attacked us. And because all life is divinely given, we cringe at the lies about the Tailiban that we millions of Americans failed to confront and expose, failing thereby to protect the Afghani Taliban, so praised by President Reagan for having all but eradicated the poppy production for heroin forbidden in the Holy Qu'ran, for having halted the chaos of bombing, rape and pillage in the years following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops when the forces of war lords previously funded by America fought among themselves over the bodies of innocents caught in-between. We cringe remembering our use of these mostly non Pashtun war lords again in 2001 to butcher Taliban during our hopelessly mistaken bombing, invasion and occupation.
We many millions of Americans, the people of the nation of America, knew both of you were in violation of Article 6 of the Charter of the NÃ ¼rnberg Tribunal regarding Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, under which conviction meant to be hanged as a war criminal. Yet we callously went about our daily lives indifferent to both victims of our U.S. criminal military action and the danger to our own elected and hired officials from eventual indictment for crimes against humanity. We millions of ordinary but knowledgeable people shirked the duties of our citizenship and to live under the laws of of our now violated U.S. Constitution in allowing you, our dear proud leaders, to endanger yourselves in continuing to take lives for lies while we slept in our disgusting and indolent indifference. We have no excuse. We plead guilty and recognize our primary guilt for your (our) massive misery causing misbegotten deeds.
Gen. McCrystal, we millions knew that you were only "following orders' and that you sir, our Barack Obama Commander-in-Chief were feeling forced to "follow orders' from the Military-Industrial-Financial-Complex that we millions have known was running and ruining our nation since Presidents Truman and Eisenhower were first forced to follow its criminal orders. Though we knew since Nuremberg that "following orders' was no defense in a court of law, we continued to selfishly indulge in our private lives while our brothers and sisters all the world over suffered from our murderous imperialism and predatory trade practices. We millions inexcusably acquiesced condoned, permitted and participated on the sidelines with so much sad cooperation with our poor leaders giving and following criminal orders while we watched our corporatized national media (for which we have been responsible as well) follow its orders to entertain us into going along with what we knew was not true and wrong, letting ourselves down, our leaders down, our poor managed media celebrities down, our soldiers down, and above all, our responsibility toward our own. We were letting down the multi-millions dying before and under American firepower while other millions were starving as our bankers arranged to take bread from their children's mouths. We millions who Howard Zinn taught have the ultimate people's power were not brave enough to put our millions of shoulders together as the Indians did to overthrow that vicious English superpower imperialism solely with pacific people power.
Hundreds of thousands of us were aware that General Telford Taylor, our Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg had said that he would have been proud to have prosecuted the U.S. airmen that had been shot down for having bombed Hanoi, but we did not pass it on the millions of our brethren, and we now are guilty of being unable to help you two from being visited by the ghost of Chief Prosecutor Telford railing at the operators of the drones and condemning them, condemning their immediate superiors and their superiors superiors right up the chain of command to the millions of us at the top who are reneging on our Jeffersonian duty to bring our President, and everyone else in service to us, to heel. To heel to humanity, common decency, common sense, sanity, common law and kindness. As we beat our breasts we confess not just our complicity but our fundamental failure to govern ourselves as our own Tom Paine exhorted us to do.
We can only apologize to ourselves and get moving. No way to expiate our having turned a blind eye to to our mass murdering for so long. America in abstract will eternally suffer for what it has done, but we can change. We can even change the war praising National Anthem and the flag which has sown fear into the hearts of millions in so many countries as they looked to the sky. Those dear precious Afghani kids - we know how cute children are - we were once children ourselves enjoying each exciting and interesting moment of our childhood - we have dispatched them to eternity so early. Why? We will all be there together soon enough. Who can explain insanity? In intellectual Buddhist thought everything, every event small or large happens within grand universal cause and effect. "Big nations attack little ones" the Vietnamese say in equanimity. In such acceptance of destiny it eventually matters little whether an American Marine shot your brother dead or a tree fell on him. Destiny is easy to recognize, but only in retrospect.
In Islam, Muslims are taught to be calm in the face of God's will, but again, in retrospect, after the fact. This week for first time an Afghani, a young man, will be charged of planning to attack and kill us - in the New York Subway System "in order to draw attention to what Americans are doing in Afghanistan," he said.
If, after a century of exploitative Western (Christian) invasions and occupations of Muslin nations - the French and English after World War I adding Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine to earlier conquests of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan, after all the recent attempts to permanently occupy the oil rich nations and other strategic lands as Afghanistan, we withdraw and be content with our own resource rich United States, the great cultures of Islamic traditions in the arts and sciences will not be sending terrorist blow-back in order to get us off their back. There is something in the wind that the private capital and military power of the Anglo-American-NATO Juggernaut is running out of steam, though not yet killing ability.
In the meantime, we millions must take upon ourselves the mantle government of, and by the people - of our people having leadership in this new world of instant communication between all of us millions.
We stand guilty of allowing a pathetic and desperate wealthy gang among us to mislead themselves and us into a frantic and immoral death causing materialism instead of making sure they were serving the interests of the communities of the millions of us, or seen to having them rehabilitated under lock and key.
We the people, for all the above said, and for thousands and thousands of other things both we and you, Mr. President and General McCrystal were taught, including "Thou shall not kill." and "Thou shall not bear false witness." and "Thou shall not steal," we who deep in our hearts are finally grieving with Afghan brothers and sisters as we once belatedly grieved with our Vietnamese brothers and sisters wish from the bottom of our broken hearts that we were not so sickeningly connected to such wanton insane homicidal brutality - wish we could have nothing to do with your and our atrocities of tomorrow - that we will organize to prevent them as soon as humanly possible.
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