Posted by
Rude One
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: No matter where the
fighting is and no matter the cause, most soldiers will act bravely,
sometimes even heroically, to support their fellow soldiers. In every
bullshit war, there are men and women who fight, get wounded, and die,
and their sacrifice should be honored and respected. They went to war
because the leaders we elected made them go there.
But let's also get another thing straight: We have not fought a war that
wasn't bullshit since World War II. And every death and every wound has
been for nothing (beyond the soldiers protecting each other.) Korea was
bullshit. Vietnam was bullshit. The Persian Gulf was bullshit. Iraq was
bullshit. Afghanistan is bullshit. They are all built on lies.
Sometimes we allow ourselves to believe they weren't lies. But each and
every one was based on lies to advance some policy or ideology that no
Americans should have had to die for.
Which gets us to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general. Yesterday, Kelly
appeared
at the White House press briefing to set the record straight or some
fucking thing about President Trump's callous phone call to the widow of
Sgt. La David Johnson, killed in Niger earlier in this month.
In doing so, Kelly took his career and any respectability he had, which
he had already handed over to Trump when he agreed to work for him in
the first place, and he allowed Trump to fuck it in the ass while he
cheered Trump on.
You can read about the many ways in which Kelly lied about Congresswoman Frederica
Wilson.
You can get confused at Kelly's statement that Wilson "listened in" on a
conversation that was on a fucking speakerphone in the car she was
riding in and therefore she had no fucking choice but to listen in. You
can roll your eyes at Kelly calling Donald Trump "brave" for reaching
out to the family of a fallen soldier, as if Donald Trump has ever done
anything braver than eat one too many Big Macs in a single sitting. You
can even shake your head at Kelly's beyond ignorant invocation of the
past when "Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor."
But I'm saying, "Oh, just fuck off" to John Kelly for a couple of reasons.
First, he should fuck off for talking about how Gold Star families
(those who lost someone in battle) are no longer sacred because "I think
that left in the convention over the summer." He is probably invoking
the Khan family, who criticized Trump at the Democratic Convention, and
not Patricia Smith, who lost her son in the Benghazi attack and called
Hillary a murderer, more or less, at the Republican Convention.
And Kelly should fuck off because in the rest of his fucked-up
appearance he completely politicized Gold Star families - who, it should
be noted, often politicize themselves in honor of their lost loved
ones. He ignored that the president didn't treat those families as
sacred when he attacked the Khans. That didn't fucking crop up in his
obsequious fluffing of Trump. As if to make his point clear about who he
values, Kelly took a couple of questions but only from reporters who
are in Gold Star families or are related to them.
Then he pretty much said that you're an asshole if you don't serve in
the military: "We don't look down upon those of you who that haven't
served. In fact, in a way we're a little bit sorry because you'll have
never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you
do the kinds of things our service men and women do - not for any other
reason than they love this country. So just think of that."
To which one can only say, "Fuck off. There are so many ways to serve
your country and your community that don't involve the military and how
fucking dare you diminish those."
Even more, John Kelly can fuck off because of what I started with here.
Kelly said he was so upset that Rep. Wilson said mean things about
Donald Trump (by, you know, quoting Donald Trump) that he had to take a
walk. So, as one does, he went to Arlington National Cemetery, and "I
went over there for an hour-and-a-half, walked among the stones, some of
whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when
they were killed."
What were they doing under his orders? Fighting in a bullshit war in
Iraq, where Kelly had various commands, up to being in charge of the
whole damn show in 2008. Yeah, Kelly led men to die for nothing. And so
many in the military know that they were it was a war for nothing. Oh,
he could have retired, but he didn't. Which means he believed in the
bullshit war and sent soldiers to die for bullshit. I'm pretty fucking
sure they didn't sign up for that.
But let's go even further here because, you know, if you're gonna tell
someone to "Fuck off," you may as well go all the way. One of Kelly's
sons died in combat. He usually doesn't talk about it because it's
horrific and personal and why should he. But Trump dragged the corpse of
Kelly's son into this shitpool. And Kelly brought him up yesterday.
Kelly's son died in Afghanistan in 2010 in a war that should never have
been started and was fucked up from the start by President Bush and it
wasn't even unfucked by President Obama. Like every other soldier in
this war, he died for nothing because he shouldn't have been there in
the first place. Kelly's younger son is now on his fifth tour of duty in
Afghanistan.
Yeah, John Kelly walked out in front of the world yesterday to announce
that he is just another piss whore in Trump's bed, and he'll willingly
degrade himself and his family in order to stay there.
(Note: I support the troops so much that I don't want them to have to
fight because some politician needs to prove that a think-tank's
position on democracy or terrorism is correct. I want them to defend us
and defend our allies. And, yes, I have family in the military. I don't
want them to die for bullshit.)
