WAR IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT

What is wrong with this country? We allow unjust presidents to start unjust wars, watch as the wars blow up into civil wars, and pretend it isn't happening, or that it's in our interest, or that we are fighting Evil. Faux News gives away Israeli positions on live television like war is just a movie rather than reality. We choose one side over the other when conflicts erupt in the Middle East, like we're watching the Red Sox play the Yankees. We put ribbons and flags up like we are ready for a sporting event, like we're root, root, rooting for the home team. And now this:

Army officials say they are considering allowing a private developer to build a 125-acre entertainment, hotel and conference center complex next to a national Army museum at Fort Belvoir...The possibility of adding what county officials call a military theme park arises as about 22,000 employees prepare to be transferred to Fort Belvoir in the next five years because of the federal base realignment and closure recommendations, designed to save $49 billion nationwide..."You can command the latest M-1 tank, feel the rush of a paratrooper freefall, fly a Cobra Gunship or defend your B-17 as a waist gunner"...

My god, war is not something to be taken lightly, to be developed into amusement park rides! People DIE! It's government-sanctioned murder. Is America so far removed from the horrors of war that it has become a form of entertainment? Every time a citizen participates in some sort of war-as-entertainment activity, it trivializes the seriousness of war and the lives of those who died fighting it.

What does this country need to wake it up? Another 9/11? A few of them? Will rivers of blood flooding the streets of Kansas City or Oklahoma or Topeka wake people up? Do we have to force people to watch hot metal slicing up live bodies, ripping off legs, arms, heads? Intermittent electricity, no precious air conditioning, no DVD players, no lights on in every room, sporadic water service, gas and food rations, forget that SUV, sacrifice for the country, sacrifice for the country, sacrifice...The glowing night sky radiant with the flashes of bombs taking out buildings, sounds like fireworks, nothing to celebrate here, no sporting event, no entertainment, just destruction, just death. Oh so much blood, so much reality.

What we need is a good old fashioned draft, get apathetic suburbia involved in a violently bloody war, teach them that war is not entertainment, teach them the value of life. Get a few middle class kids blown up, bring back a few vegetables to disbelieving parents. Wipe out another generation like Rummy's pals did back in the late sixties, early seventies. Sound brutal? Sound utterly heartless, utterly cruel? Of course it does! It's WAR we're talking about, not a goddamn sporting event, not a theme for a freaking amusement park!

This is just another place for rightwing chickenhawks to go and pretend like they're doing something for the country, I suppose. It's disgusting. Why don't you just go and spit on the graves of dead soldiers?