Syrial Killers

Dear Sir,

I would like very much to contribute to the purchase of 96 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a cost of 1.2 million dollars each, but oh dear, I’ve already spent that money on something else. And I would like very much to send in Wonder Woman to precisely target the pursed lips of Bashar Hafez al-Assad and those who obey his orders, but we. Just. Can’t. Afford it.

I am enough of an amateur historian to believe something must be done when civilians are gassed, but perhaps the Arab League or United Nations might get off their ass if you weren’t so quick to insist on being the only one who can wipe up any mess…?

The blood and treasure in our account are seriously overdrawn. This is the price you pay for having followed the boy who cried wolf in Iraq, the movie star who did nothing when another regime, an “ally”, used chemical weapons on civilian targets, the glad-hander who still feels awful about Rwanda. So do I. I feel awful I can’t kick in the 96 million, but I just don’t have it; maybe next week?

And how many fucking times will my society have to put up with fucking soldiers signing up for another fucking war to be sent by their commanders to do horrible fucking things with a song in their hearts, because that’s the logic of war (as inevitable as gravity, even for those honestly fighting for a noble fucking cause) and then come back and cry “Boo Hoo, I did horrible things because my mean lieutenant sent me to the wrong fucking house”, hoping their therapy circle will tell them it wasn’t their fault when, God damn you, it is.

It’s not as if there isn’t information out there telling us what war is, what war does, what a baby looks like after a stray bullet and what a woman’s face looks like when contorted by a scream. Your Commander-in-Chief is not Abraham Lincoln or King Arthur and the Enemy of the Week (fill in the blank) is not Adolf fucking Hitler. No, I say no, you don’t get to turn in your conscience like your grandfathers did. It does not dishonor the military to say there is a qualitative difference between Little Round Top or the beaches of Normandy and My Lai or Wounded Knee.

There is no get out of Hell free card because the American public is afraid to call you anything but “heroes”. The engineers who created those weapons for you killer apes because they thought it was a nifty “problem” to solve will be screaming in the cell next to yours. And your dear grandmother, five thousand miles away from your next High Value Target, should take that flag magnet off her car, fold it into corners, and stick it up her ass.