Looking Back At Our Future? – Elton Tylenda

11/11/09

This is the 40^th Armistice (now called Veterans) Day since my return from the war on Vietnam. It's disheartening to note the similarities between Vietnam and the "quagmires accomplished" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same patterns are being repeated but the numbers and costs are higher:

• psychological trauma is more pervasive and active duty suicides are steadily increasing;
  
• the number of brain injuries are exponentially higher and the cost of treatment will be staggering;
  
• the chemicals and depleted uranium used today will be more devastating to civilians and to US soldiers than was "agent orange" which killed and continues to maim millions;
  
• today's war profiteers are more numerous and getting richer. A KBR mercenary confided to me that he expects to leave Iraq as a millionaire. KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) is a subsidiary of Halliburton, which got "no bid" contracts for sending mercenaries to Vietnam as well. At nearly a quarter million today, mercenaries may soon outnumber our comparatively low paid, barely equipped, "poverty drafted" troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other clandestine venues.
  

I wasn't surprised to hear that KBR mercenaries were being investigated for defrauding the US government, stealing from the Iraqi government and running a prostitution ring there. I witnessed the same pattern in Vietnam. A Halliburton mercenary, paid many times more than I to supervise our engineering unit in Vietnam, never showed up for work. He did, however, stop by to promote one of his business enterprises. The US military ran an open prostitution camp near Ahn Khe called "Sin City" and he wanted us to know his girls were on the left when entering the camp. He assured us they were the best girls money could buy, checked once a week by military doctors and so on. More examples of the fraud, Black Market activities, and payoffs to the enemy that I witnessed in Vietnam are described in the award winning book "Long Shadows: Veterans Paths to Peace" edited by David Giffey – intro by Howard Zinn.

The cost to those we savagely attack increases as well. If we experienced casualties in the US proportional to those in Iraq, it would mean that:

• every person in the cities of Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle would be dead;
  
• every single person in the states of Delaware, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Oregon would be wounded;
  
• the entire populations of Ohio and New Jersey would be homeless; and everyone
  
• in the states of Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky would be refugees in Canada or Mexico.
  

That's what our blood and treasure and nearly eight years of effort have accomplished for Iraq. Recall the military assessment following nearly total destruction in Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village [city, country] in order to save it." Once again the lion's share of hundreds of billions is directed toward killing and destroying. Very little is effectively channeled into reconstruction except for permanent American military bases. Nonetheless, we hear again the idle chatter about "winning the hearts and minds" of the people – people we called gooks and slants back then - people our troops call rag heads and sand niggers today. The working version was/is: "grab 'em by the testicles and their hearts and minds will follow."

Once the masters of war get the gravy train and propaganda machine up to speed, it's hard to stop. Many of the influential power mongers and war profiteers in America are violent Christian fundamentalists. Bush was speaking to them when he called his wars of aggression "a crusade." The founder of Blackwater USA, the world's largest mercenary army, Erik Prince, called his kill-for-profit mercenaries "crusaders for Christ." Watergate felon Chuck Colson and other leaders of the "End Times" movement speak openly about a hundred years war against Islam. Their rhetoric is chillingly similar to that of the German Christians who supported Hitler's "holy war" against Jews. We are given a scapegoat over there to distract us from the enemies at home - those who deceptively start and orchestrate wars of aggression.

A different future will require greater awareness of the "big lies" used to start wars. We need to recognize the pattern and address the right questions to officials before rushing into war. The pattern is plain:

• the "Tonkin Gulf incident" which ignited the Vietnam War, was fabricated by US officials;
  
• the "Polish attack" on Gleiwitz, Germany which Hitler used as pretense for invading Poland and igniting WWII, was staged by SS Chief, Heinrich Himmler, using concentration camp victims;
  
• a declassified archival document lists eight "provocations" secretly initiated against the Japanese. The Pearl Harbor attack could not have been a surprise to those who formulated that list nor to those who implemented those "provocations" prior to 12/7/41. Perhaps they WERE surprised that it took the most extreme provocation listed (cutting off Japan's oil supply – an undeclared act of war) to goad Japan to react to US aggression.
  
• The lies told to us in the lead up to the illegal attack on Iraq are too numerous to list but the biggest lie of all is what we've been told about the "New Pearl Harbor," or, 9/11 attack that started the pre-planned war of aggression against Afghanistan.

Confronting so big a lie will be extremely difficult but absolutely necessary if we are to break the repeating pattern of official deception. The power of the big lie was described by Adolf Hitler: "…in the greatness of the lie there is always a certain potency of believability…they more easily fall victims to the big lie than the small one…Even when faced with the facts in such a case, they will still linger in doubt and waver and continue to suppose that there must be some truth to it."

The official 9/11 Commission Report, spoon fed to us by Bush/Cheney insiders, is replete with lies, misinformation and whopping omissions (e.g., the collapse of tower # 7 that same afternoon is not even mentioned). It claims to be an investigative report but 571 pages later we're left with magic, miracle and mystery. Magically the massive center columns of the towers were made to disappear. Miraculously, the laws of physics were suspended with the claim that near free fall speeds were attained without the aid of explosives. And, we're left with the unexplained mystery of the molten steel and inextinguishable fires that burned for weeks at ground zero. As of this writing, nearly 1,000 architects and engineers have publicly voiced opposition to this particular example of Bush administration pseudo-science.

Reality based science offers a simple but chilling resolution to the magic, miracle and mystery of the official report. Physicist Steven Jones reported finding traces of nanothermite (the US military's most advanced incendiary explosive) on a piece of steel recovered from ground zero. In controlled demolitions, core columns are sliced into sections (no magic needed); a building can attain actual free fall velocity (no miracle needed); and the signature ending includes molten metal and inextinguishable fires which eliminates even the "deepest mystery" reported by the NY Times. Regarding tower # 7, the lease holder of all three collapsed buildings, Larry Silverstein, admitted that # 7 was taken down by controlled demolition (America Rebuilds – PBS 2002). As we all witnessed that day, there were no signs of pancaked layers. Everything was reduced to fragments and swirling dust clouds, no bodies were recovered but bone fragments were found on surrounding building tops – ditto, controlled demolition.

Instead of hiding our heads in the sand, let's take a stand and demand a credible investigation of this horrific crime. Together we can prevent the future becoming a repeat of the past – yes we can!

Elton Tylenda Member – Veterans for Peace

Elton@wisdompeacepath.org

Elton is a member of the Clarence Kailin Chapter of Veterans for Peace.