endless war

i played america’s army yesterday. it’s a good, fun, first person shooter game that the US army created as a recruiting tool (which makes it somewhat evil i suppose, giving kids the impression that the military is fun). i had played an earlier version of the game, and the new one is more pointedly directed at promoting the special forces. in order to unlock better weapons for the soldier you play, you complete training exercises. several of these are good long classroom sessions. at one point, you walk around to some special forces soldiers and they tell you about themselves, their rank and responsibilities to the squad, and the languages that they speak. more than half of the soldiers spoke persian farsi. i found myself hoping the military is teaching farsi to the special forces so they can communicate with afghanis, and not in preparation for war in iran.
speaking of wars, i read this article on the endless war on terrorism and watched this frontline special on al qaeda over the weekend as well. if you want a more sane perspective on the meaning of the london attacks, read and watch. our “civilized” nations have for at least a century been behaving as colonial thugs and killers in the middle east (and great britain for MANY centuries before us), and now the “barbarians” are mounting in effect a global insurgency. am i the only one who cringes when i hear blair using the old language of colonialism in describing the attacks on london? there needs to be a political and economic solution to the problem, because there is NO WAY to kill all the oppressed people around the globe whose lives have been brutalized by western nations or their puppets in their blind pursuit of OIL. and there i just made the mistake that many of us make, i said THEIR, signifying my distance and disapproval for the way WE have behaved. all the “not in my name” pleas to the contrary, this is OUR problem. just like WE created the best possible training ground for insurgents, the bottomless pit that is IRAQ.
i have been thinking over the last few days that i would like to move from here before they install airport-style security checkpoints in the BART.