10 January 2010

Why "they" attack us

This is getting tiresome. The idea that "they" attack us because "they hate our freedoms". What a load of crap.
Why am I back on this topic? Well, I saw a video of one of the very few honest journalists left in America. I am talking about Ms. Helen Thomas of course. Over at the web site Common Dreams they have a video of her asking our security folks about the real reasons why "we" keep being attacked. The non-answers she is given are amazing. After trying to get an answer, the "leaders" just move on ignoring her question.
Another thing that comes across in the video, the continuing use of the term "homeland" by "our"(?) government types.
Let me get right to the main point here. "They" attack us for the miserable foreign policies of "our" government. The Jordanian doctor who blew himself up in Afghanistan killing a number of CIA people made his final video where he made it very clear that his suicide attack was a response to "our" previous actions in Pakistan and that region of the world.
Go back to shortly after 9/11, bin Laden sent out a video where he mentioned many reasons for the attacks on America. Our freedoms were never mentioned. What were mentioned were various aspects of US foreign policy. He made mention of our stationing troops on "the land of the holy places", Saudi Arabia. He mentioned the US governments' continued support for the Zionist entity, Israel and our aid in suppressing the Palestinians.
These groups keep attacking us because of the foreign policy of our leaders. They do not attack us for our freedoms. Yes, some of them are very radical and have delusions of some sort of world wide religious rule, but that is not what motivates the vast majority of them. They attack us for the continued US support for the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, our invasion of Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. They object to out attacks against Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in addition to those already mentioned.
Yemen? Somalia? You ask about these countries and wonder. Well, we have launched cruise missiles at both Yemen and Somalia in the recent past. We have had special ops types in Yemen for a number of years already. We send missiles and/or gun ship attacks against various people in Somalia when we feel the need. This is not something new folks. It has been an ongoing thing for many years now. It just doesn't make the news in America very often, if at all.
Another thing about the video I mentioned above, the use of the term "homeland" by the government types. I know this started with the Cheney/Bush gang, but why do we continue this? We never have used that term to describe America before. It would have seemed very out of character for Americans to use such a term to describe our country. To me, it still sounds very odd, very wrong. In fact, it sounds down right like the sort of thing that the Nazis or the Communists would have used to describe Hitlers' Germany or the old Soviet Union. America was never mentioned as our "homeland", and I don't think any of us even thought of it that way. It was America, the United States, or  "our country", but never ever the "homeland".
Call me paranoid, but to me, when this term was first used by the Bush gang an alarm went off in my head. "Homeland"??  Homeland sounds so damn foreign. It sounds very un-American to me. Homeland, it sounds so, Nazi or Soviet.
And yet, the leadership of America keeps using this term to describe America. Why? Is this the new "correct" way to describe the country now?
I would like to ask every reader of this blog to do a big favor to all of us. Please, please do NOT ever call America the "homeland". Call it the United States, the United States of America, or even just plain old America.  But, please do not ever refer to our country as the "homeland".  This may seem like a very small thing, but we need to end this vile use of the term "homeland" in reference to our country.
I finished high school in 1966, I enlisted in the Marines in 1968 and went to Vietnam in 1970. In all that time, nobody ever referred to America as the "homeland". No, not even the Marines. It was America or the United States, but never, ever "homeland".
So, I am asking all who read this blog to never use the term homeland when talking about America. This term was first used by the previous administration and is being continued by the current one. We need to get back to how we used to be. We need to get back to being real Americans, not some subjects of some homeland.
Thank you for your time.
semper fi

10 comments:

Tao Dao Man said...

I could not agree with you more. I despise that term. " home land" "Support our Troops" were both Karl Rove [Goebbels] terminology to help brain wash Americans. I also believe that Americans need an explanation of exactly what "war on terror" means. Also they need to define "insurgent". As far as i am concerned, no "occupation" no "insurgency"

charlie ehlen said...

I agree with you 100% on that. Go back to 1775 and you find the "Americans" were the insurgents. So many of the "insurgents" in Afghanistan in particular just do not want foreign troops in their country.

BigAssBelle said...

I detest the term homeland. When I heard Obama using it the other day, I nearly puked.

""they hate our freedoms" ~ that's another phrase I absolutely despise. "Our freedoms."

We have some freedom that some other countries don't, it's true. But somehow, I don't think those brainwashed lunatic teabaggers are screeching about them.

I don't even think they know what the fuck they're talking about. It just sounds good. And we're the land of the free, right? RIGHT?

Socialism will take away "our freedoms" in the minds of these pea brain teabaggers. But capitalism? It's all about being free, or so the popular theme goes.

I don't feel very free these days. It's true that I'm freely moving to Mexico to escape. There's a freedom. But I'm moving to Mexico in large part because health insurance costs my family $2,000 a month and it goes up every year. Free market, freedom. Ain't it grand?

I don't know how things got so entirely fucked up, but I doubt it will turn around in my lifetime. It's hard to imagine the complete destruction of the US, but I think it's coming. And the very policies that will destroy us are supported by the 24 hour brainwashing network and the idiots who parrot those talking points.

Oh, and right now? Right now I'm wondering when the State owned media is going to get around to discussing US policies that increased the desperate circumstances of Haiti. You know, subsidized rice imports. The decimation of their entire wild hog population. Destroying their sugar export business. Just as in Guatemala, a complete disaster of a country, we look and tsk-tsk and say "ain't it a shame," without admitting that we ~ this land of the free ~ in large part, WE are responsible for what's happened to those countries and so many others.

Whew. Rant. Found you through Joe Bageant. Thanks for listening.

charlie ehlen said...

Belle,
I agree with you. That crap of they "hate us for our freedoms" is total garbage. Bullshit to the max.
What used to be our country has been taken over and made into something my Dad would not recognize.
As to the "media", don't hold your breath waiting for anything even close to the real truth from "our media" as that won't happen.

Orin T said...

The term "homeland" is offensive because it is part of the termonolgy of empire. Empires have a homeland not Republics. There is a line from a Danny Devito film, I can't remember the name, that sums up why we are becoming hated. It sums up what we are doing perfectly: "I'm big, you'r small; I'm strong, you'r weak; I,m right, you'r wrong."

charlie ehlen said...

Orin T,
Yes, the old "might is right" argument.
They have the power and will use it against all who get in the way.

doodahman said...

The other day, I saw a tv commercial about some product-- a credit card, I think-- that promised to give us more "freedom".
Shit, I thought. Now there's a whole 'nother reason for them to attack us.

Peace, bro
doodahman

John Francis Lee said...

Hi Charlie Ehlen,

I saw your take on the "Homeland" at CounterPunch and dropped by to read your complete rant.

What you say resonates deeply and profoundly within me.

It's as though something had been holding fascism in America in check before 9/11 but the "bold" stroke, the gargantuan lie of 9/11, allowed it all to run out. The pols and the MSM just jumped right on the runaway train and we, the "free and the brave", just rolled right over and took it.

It's really up to all of us to take our country back. The entire power structure is corrupt. We must redo it from the bottom up. That's what democracy is. I'm sure we're up to it. It's just a question of rolling up our sleeves and getting to it.

There are just 282 more days to Election Day 2010 in the United States of America, and we need to replace the entire House and 34 Senators at that time.

May I suggest :

http://www.28amen.org, and
http://www.uspvp.org

to you?

I think that we have to move quickly along these lines or the far-right wing, the ones who brought us "homeland" and "security" will "do it for us".

It'd be good if you could sit in the House for Louisiana or, failing that, if you could identify someone in your district who could take the job, join the virtual party, run and be elected.

I'm sixty-too, two. Living in Thailand. Thanks for the blog.

Anonymous said...

This is not our "homeland". In actual fact, it was the homeland of the many tribes of Native Americans until the White Man wrestled almost all of it away from them.
Using the term HOMELAND seems to be an attempt to establish an emotional connection between Americans and the land they inhabit. It reeks of nationalism, which is a dangerous concept because of the implication of WE/THEM. Us against everyone else on the planet.

Tehwombat said...

We, the rest of the world's population dislike you, who used to be our heroes 20 years ago, because all you seem to do is spout on about "The Land of The Free, the Home of the Brave" and American democratic values, when all the time you're invading places for oil and power, using the worlds resources faster than all other countries combined and using the rest of the worlds money to do it! How the hell you can rant on about democracy when your political and financial system is so corrupt is beyond me and hypocrisy. We, The Rest of the World, don't hate you, but at present, there's not a lot about you that we like. Stop with the invading, stop with the support for Israel (if the pricks on Wall Street will allow you), stop living beyond your means. Then you may have a future. I live in Australia but I was raised amongst Americans in the UK airbases. Oh how the mighty have fallen.