Here Come Those Chickens Again

“Chickens Coming Home to Roost:”

Proverb:

When one has to face the consequences of mistakes or bad deeds.

As soon as I heard that Pakistani-American, Faisal Shahzad, was arrested for the so-called, “Times Square” attempted bombing (where an abandoned SUV filled with potential explosives was found in Times Square last weekend), my first thought was: “Those chickens are coming back to roost, again.”

Then tonight, as I was driving, I heard on the radio news that Shahzad claimed that he did that because he was upset over the CIA drone-bombing program in Northern Pakistan. So, my initial suspicion was confirmed. Let’s, for the time being, take Shahzad’s “confessions” at face value. We really don’t know what torture, lying, or other pressure was put on Shahzad, or why our government is so readily admitting that he was upset about drone bombings.

However, this incident also puts President Obama’s recent remarks about threatening the Jonas Brothers with a Predator drone if they went near his two daughters in a different light, doesn’t it? So many people on the “left” are defending Obama’s joke—rationalizing it as vigorously as they condemned and attacked Bush over his WMD joke at a White House Correspondent’s dinner in 2004.

What if the bomb in Times Square went off and killed dozens of people, like happens frequently in Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq? Would Obama’s joke still seem funny? I never thought joking about bombs that kill babies from the Joker that orders these bombings funny, anyway. But we all know that if Americans were killed, the shoe would be on an entirely different foot.

For example, this past May 4^th was the 40^th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre in Ohio. I spoke at SUNY Cortland at the event that the students put together there to commemorate that awful day.

I was pointing out to the crowd that four students being slaughtered by the US military was horrible 40 years ago, but millions of Vietnamese died at the hands of the same military, and since then millions of more people have been killed, displaced, or economically disadvantaged because of this wicked Empire.

Then, I guess I went too far in some of the young people’s eyes, because I pointed out that on September 11, 2001—almost four thousands Americans tragically died—but on that same day, (and every day since and every day after) tens of thousands of people died of starvation around the world. Then to make matters even worse, I compared the lives of the people who died of starvation favorably with the people who died on 9-11. I think I may have even said that they had the same exact existential right as those Americans! I heard from professors and the students that this caused a pretty big controversy on the campus.

Last December, the suicide bombing in Khost Province in Afghanistan at an American outpost that killed seven CIA agents was a revenge attack by a double agent in revenge for the drone killing of Hakimullah Mehsud and his family and neighbors—but didn’t I just hear that he’s still alive and just released a new video disputing his own recent death?

The one problem I have with 9-11 conspiracy theories is that sometimes the theories and the people who propose them discount one very important fact. Even though I never condone or support violence, Arab-Muslims had legitimate reasons to plan and carry out an attack—if they actually did is another question, though.

There will be a lot of unrighteous indignation over the Shahzad case and no one in power will even give a second thought to his legitimate frustration. The saddest and scariest thing about the entire episode to me is if the bombs did go off and kill innocent Americans, it would have been people who more than likely had no freaking idea that their government is slaughtering other innocent people with these weapons of terror.

Somewhere, sometime, the cycle of violence will have to stop—but who’s going to stop it? We can’t expect occupied peoples to stop resisting occupation. Self-defense and defending ones family and community is not only justified but a primal reaction.

Will the American people finally rise up against our government and demand an end to the U.S. war of military and economic terror against the world, or will we keep electing Jokers thinking, yes even hoping, that anything will change?