Justin Raimondo Would Like Some Attention

I was going to defend Chris Hayes, the MSNBC host whose pre-Memorial Day comments [wondering if the word hero when used to describe our troops is really an attempt to justify our foreign policy] provoked the wingnut-osphere into one of its frequent paroxysms of hate.

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I was going to defend him, but he apologized so quickly after the chickenhawk brigade started squawking that he’s taken the fun out of the whole project.

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I’ll defend Hayes anyway, in spite of himself: no doubt his corporate masters at MSNBC forced him to issue his (unconvincing) retraction. And I’ll go him one better: it isn’t just that our troops aren’t heroes, it’s that a good number of them are monsters. Yes, you heard me: monsters.

  Justin Raimondo

Sadly for Justin, he won't get the high profile blowback Chris Hayes encountered, because he's not a TV personality, or even a mainstream media blogger, but he will get some hate mail.  His normal quota, no doubt.

Let’s take an emblematic example: Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who killed 17 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children, in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province. In the early morning hours of March 11, 14-year-old Rafiullah – a mere slip of a boy – woke to the sound of gunfire. He looked outside and saw an American soldier walking to a shed that housed the family’s prized cow: the soldier opened fire, killing the animal, and then approached the house.

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“Terror unfolded in the crowded space, the frightened faces of women and children illuminated only by a light that Rafiullah said appeared to be affixed to an assault rifle. The shooter drove everyone before him, herding and hunting his victims like animals.”

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Bales’ rampage is just the latest in a long series of atrocities carried out by our “heroic” centurions. Remember the “Stryker” gang that went around shooting helpless civilians and collecting fragments of bones as “souvenirs”? Should we give those “heroes” a medal?

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There is growing evidence the [Bales] massacre wasn’t just an isolated incident, but part of a larger pattern of “no knock” retaliatory raids conducted by US troops in Afghanistan. Those who are now coming up with exculpatory rationales for Bales’ murderous rampage – and even those who think Bales is monster – take refuge in the argument that his behavior is the exception, and that most of our soldiers are upstanding examples of All That is Good and True. Yet what Bales did is what is occurring on a nationwide scale in Afghanistan: a “special operations” campaign to sow terror among the Afghan populace so that fear outweighs their natural hatred of an occupying army.

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Instead of defending the United States from attack, military recruits in the 21st century are joining a global Praetorian Guard whose mission is to fight wars of conquest. Rather than standing guard at the border, as they should be, they are busy pushing back the frontiers of the Empire. While not each and every one of them is a war criminal, the conduct of US foreign policy has now reached the point where they are all willing aggressors to some degree or other.

You can read Justin's post for an update on the case of Sgt. Robert Bales, because otherwise, it's being kept very quiet, and move on, there's nothing to see here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.