Journal entry July 26th
Jill is dead and I don’t know what to do. They came late last night, hidden in the darkness of the blackout curfew that our “liberators” instituted two months ago. Not that their “don’t be out after sundown” rhetoric has kept the most insistent of us from sneaking out to wreak havoc.
That’s why they came for us last night. I’m sure of it. Our neighbors have been part of the fight since their boy was taken away. The regional commanders and their leashed news reporter pets say he was part of an insurgency against the peacekeepers. I don’t buy it. Never did. That kid didn’t have a violent bone in his body. Hell, until we were liberated, he was headed for college and a medical degree. Smart boy. I really hope he’s still alive out there somewhere.
I can’t stop my hands from shaking, and my mind keeps blanking out like a preteen with ADD. I have to get this down on paper before something happens to me, too. She’s gone. My wife is really gone.
Why in Hell are they here?? They told us eight years ago that they were securing our freedom, that we’d been overrun by a corrupt government that usurped control of our democracy. So many of us agreed at the time. And why not? We were livid with our system and agreed that it had to be corrupt.
It began with the presidential election, so close to call that they had to recount votes in three states. Then, using the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court ruling as a precedent, one of the candidates sued to stop the recounts… and won not just the suit, but the presidency. He had the most electoral votes before the recount and he got to keep them. We still don’t know who really won.
But President-elect Williams wasn’t a popular guy, here in the States or abroad. One of his first acts after his inauguration was to declare several of our allies as enemies to the United States, and threatened war against them if they didn’t fall into step behind his national and international agendas.
Spain was the first to retaliate, issuing trade embargos against our country and proposing strict economic sanctions though the UN. France was quick to follow, and then all of our alliances within the European Union caved. Still, it wasn’t until China agreed to end trade with the U.S. that we realized we were on our own.
We spent the next year in an economic depression that made the 1930’s look virile. If that had been the end of it, I suppose we would have been fine in the end. Williams wouldn’t let the issues die, though, and kept escalating the political fervor. We found out later that he went to Congress twice unofficially hoping to get the backing to declare war against Spain and China, but he was rebuffed both times.
Europe caught wind, though. In an address to the UN, the Spanish Presidente declared that the government of the United States of America had been stolen away from the democratic people in the presidential election, and that this new corrupt government had openly threatened war against the nations of the world. And so, to save the people of the USA and re-establish a truly democratic government, Spain and its allies, Great Britain, Canada, France, and Russia, were declaring war on the United States.
Two days later, Canada, Great Britain, and Spain invaded the bankrupted and disheveled United States. With the military support of Russia and China, as well as several other UN nations, the coalition was able to secure Washington DC after several bloody months of fighting.
I suppose you could say that’s when the war officially ended. The President was arrested and carted off to London to stand trial for war crimes. Our military was effectively vitiated. What was left of it now had to answer to Europe and the peacekeeping force that now occupied our country.
And that’s the way it’s been for eight damned years. They say they’ll leave after the country is secured and we civilians are safe from the old government’s retaliation.
They said they would leave when they put their own guy in our White House. But they didn’t.
They said they would leave after they helped us rebuild our war-torn infrastructure. But they didn’t.
Last year, they said they were setting a timetable for withdrawal that our new president and the Europeans could agree to, but we haven’t seen it.
Many of us took to the streets to fight them after the “freed” us. When the outright combat failed and we were slaughtered in the streets, we fell back to more guerilla-style tactics. I couldn’t fight. Despite it all, I couldn’t raise a weapon and take another life. I was raised by hippies to be nonviolent. I’d watch and love action movies like anyone else, but I knew I could never hurt another human. I never had to.
And now my wife is dead. A European task force attacked our neighbors’ house last night. They launched rockets into and obliterated it. I guess Tom was killed in the explosion. Liz made it to our house over the back fence, but she didn’t live much longer than that. There was so much blood. Jill was trying to stop the bleeding. She was screaming for me to get something to hold Liz’s arm back on.
They blew open the front door, and stormed through the house before I knew what hit us. Jill screamed something. There was gunfire. I saw her die in a spray of rounds meant to finish off poor Liz.
They dragged Liz’s body out to their armored vehicles and were away. I was left to stare at my dead wife.
Why didn’t I act? Why didn’t I stop them? They occupy our country and tell us they’re protecting us. But they keep killing us. They call people like Liz and Tom “insurgents” who are fighting against the will of the people of the USA.
They’re wrong. Tom and Liz are fighting for our freedom. Absent a government and military who will fight for us, we have to take the fight to them. They are not peacekeepers. They are invaders, and they need to leave.
Yesterday, I spoke for cooperation with the occupying forces. Today, I'm an insurgent. I have nothing left to lose...
Back here in reality, the United States has occupied the nation of Afghanistan for almost 9 years (and Iraq for more than 7). Here in the U.S., we say we are liberating and securing the freedoms of these nations, but are we really helping? Our very presence is creating our enemy out of the stock of people we are there to protect.
When asked, most Afghans want the foreign occupiers out of their country. Even the U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai, is apparently preparing to set a timetable for withdrawal of all foreign troops.
With the WikiLeaks release of 92,000 documents to open the eyes of the worldwide public, it's about 10 years passed time to take a serious look at what we're doing there. What were our objectives going in, and are they the same now? Are we still fighting a war of vengeance after 9/11, or are there other motives driving us?
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