The Above Linkblogs Might Contain "Borrowed" links.
Linkblogs do not substantially contribute traffic to my blog that I can discover. They all go offsite, and are often accessed from my blog. It's possible to access them from the RSS according to my settings. Still, even if I were to get ads clicking on a linkblog from the RSS won't drive more people to my blog than otherwise because they leave my resources. (Note to self, do more posts, less LBs with sources I find). I explain because I sometimes borrow links from people at Twitter, and often forget who put them up. (To fellow Twitterers: If you have a link to your blog, I will point it there, but Twitter, being impermanent, cannot hold your link for people to discover from there. I only 'borrow' them to get news out to as many people as I can who might not have seen the reports and videos found by the smart people I follow at Twitter or find in search rooms.RSS Add-Me
Remember the Civilian Victims of War, Too
We should also remember the civilians who are killed or displaced in war on Veteran's Day.
Our ridiculous war in Iraq killed somewhere between the anemic official number of c. 100k and an estimate of over 1.5 million civilians.
We know that over 1/4 of Iraqi civilians were displaced by the ethnic cleansing that the invasion and regime change unleashed.
And tales of horror for civilians are generated daily both in Afghanistan which we failed to stabilize early because the Bush administration wanted to save resources for the oil grab in Iraq, and in Iraq itself, in which we managed to screw up a simple regime change over one of the world's most inept armies. (Inept because of cronyism at the top and forced conscription of unwilling civilians. Too bad Iraq didn't have an American style news system. Our valiant mainstream news media was hugely successful at getting even celebrities to give away their rights and run off to fight the bad guys, though I notice that few journalists themselves joined up.) (In fact, if anybody knows of one mainstream journalist who went off to fight in the military after 911 please let me know.)
I was rather perplexed with Buffy St Marie's "Universal Soldier" when it came out, blaming the men who were dragged off to war. We had a universal draft of non-deferred healthy young men coming out of high school. Staying out of the service wasn't an option then for anyone who'd been selected by the Civil Service board and who wanted anything but a hiding in mom's sister's basement or a vagabond's life. (I am discounting those whose families could get them to Europe or Canada to live in comfort.)
Today it is an option and the song is very relevant.
If there are no soldiers, there are no wars. No children dying in the streets by your gun or missile and a lot fewer families without a parent who is no more than a mound in the earth now.
If on Memorial and Veteran's Day we remember the civilians whose lives we disrupted and destroyed as well as we do the soldiers lost and returned however badly injured, maybe we will learn to think about the true consequences of war.
Tag Related Neighborhood Posts
"Iraq's Recipe For Civil War"
THE FIRST DRAFT CARE PACKAGE FUND
DEEP WAR & PEACE THOUGHT
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