Support The Troops -- Unless They Try To Think For Themselves

I woke to the news that Bowe Bergdahl's parents are receiving death threats, presumably for questioning the imperial expansion project in Afghanistan. Or maybe it's for growing a beard? Anyway, it's not for enduring five years of living hell knowing that the child they lovingly raised was being held and tortured by his Taliban captors.

Here's Bowe's release video as published (untranslated) by The Guardian. I have to say that my own death seems preferable to ever seeing a child of mine in this situation.

I think the real reason Bowe's parents are so threatening to warmongers is that his experience and their analysis of it fly in the face of so much carefully crafted, expensively financed propaganda about how nifty it is to serve in the U.S. military. Yes, bad things can happen to you, but if they do you will (allegedly) BE A HERO to your hometown.

That is, unless they cancel your homecoming celebration because you or your family dared to question your mission.

Which was upholding the Constitution, as seasoned veteran Stan Goff eloquently reminds us:

Here are the stats on YouTube yesterday for this video claiming that not a single person in any of the countries where he was deployed was a threat to the U.S. Constitution.


By my calculations, of the hundreds of thousands of viewers to date, 94% gave this message a thumbs up.

And what could be more threatening to the future of U.S. empire building than that?