“The inbound helicopter -- loaded with 30 U.S. service members, a civilian interpreter and seven Afghan troops -- crashed after being "reportedly fired on by an insurgent rocket-propelled grenade," the statement said.
Twenty-five of those on board were U.S. special operations forces, including 22 Navy SEALs. Five aircrew members were also on board.
We were informed of the deaths of these 30 U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan, the highest number of simultaneous combat fatalities to have occurred since our excursion into Afghanistan began. The fallen, usually anonymous while on duty are being acknowledged and provided with the honors due to those fallen in battle.
The families and comrades-in-arms of the newly dead are still stunned and struggling to cope with the loss of so many soldiers and sailors. The military has its rites and rituals designed to honor their service and to aid those who will carry on the fight in adjusting to the changes in their units and jobs. The families will find less comfort in the brutal formalities of the full military honors funerals that will now take place around them.
There will be a spate of copycat mourning as thousands of people who never knew the fallen suddenly feel the need to join in a drive-by dispersal of flowers, balloons, and stuffed animals that will do little except create a solid waste problem.
With no intent to diminish these deaths, it still bears noting that compared to losses in earlier wars, 30 KIA is a light toll when compared to other battles. Thousands of troops were killed in the D-Day assault; thousands of Marines died storming Japanese-held islands. Naval vessels have been lost with all hands. We, as a nation, are fortunate that the mechanisms of combat have changed so markedly from the masses assaults of earlier wars.
This morning, I’ve heard and/or read numerous comments attacking the poor as the source of our national economic problems. The old canard, “50% of the population pays no taxes.” Is making the rounds as an excuse for attacking the poor. Truthfully, we all pay taxes. Every purchase we make has a tax component. The truth, “that 50% of Americans earn too little to owe income taxes,” is never acknowledged by the GOP/teavangelists. The left wing doesn’t use that statistic effectively. There is an incredible anger directed toward the unemployed, the chronically ill and therefore disabled, the elderly poor, and others who are perceived as somehow “stealing from the “entrepreneurs” and middle class by not earning sufficient income to escape the need for some form of social safety net.
The inability of our elected officials to escape or avoid the damaging polarization that has split the populace has burdened us with a government that is dysfunctional, that is controlled primarily by greed and corporate ownership. The inability to realize that no nation can exist without a funded government, along with the teavangelist ideology that government should be killed so that business can rule the nation has all but destroyed our financial system and is now precipitating the global return to economic depression that was foretold if the U.S. government failed to reach a viable compromise action to deal with our public debt and our economic future.
The predicted consequences of default and gridlock were scoffed at by the GOP and teavangelists. As in previous instances where global panic took hold, markets are racing to the bottom, wiping out retirement accounts and other savings for millions of middle class people, worldwide. There has yet to be, and will not likely be, any acknowledgement by the GOP/teavangelists that they purposefully and knowingly scuttled the economy in an effort to sabotage the Obama presidency.
That is, perhaps the worst anger that is driving the political disaster we face today. Obama’s race, the national origin and religion of his father, his effrontery and “arrogance” displayed in his education, erudition, and successful run for POTUS has unleashed the vipers of racism, fear mongering that is part of the GOP’s “southern strategy”, and have been since Nixon’s campaign. Before that, the Dixiecrats were the salesmen of separation and segregation.
Today we are held hostage by poorly educated politicians, anti-education-communities, fundamentalist Christians, and a populace too poorly prepared to understand what they don’t know and what they should before voting as they are instructed by the civic &/or religious demagogues and radio ideologues delivering their daily dose of lies for millions of dollars of oil and other corporate money.
There’s an anger on the land and we need to harness that anger, to redirect it toward the liars and hypocrites who have all but demolished our nation in the guise of reformers. There’s a justifiable anger in the land and it may need room and time to grow. There’s an anger in the land!
There's grievin' in the country
There's sorrow in the sand.
There's sobbin' in the shanty
And there's anger in the land.
There's sorrow in the sand.
There's sobbin' in the shanty
And there's anger in the land.
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