From Kevin Tillman on the day before his brother Pat's Birthday...

[cynatnite]

This was posted on another list in response to 'more people need yellow sticker magnets on their cars' in order to show support for the troops. I thought it was compelling.

Please forgive me if this has been posted before. It's powerful and well worth the time to read.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.