Peace, the no.1 War Crime

You know, whenever I leave home, I walk down the street and I see people wearing expensive clothes, counting money for their next shopping frenzy, getting on their fast cars with energy pumping in their veins, stepping hard on gas, basically being happy the way we've learned to be. They wear bright colorful clothes, listen to fist-thrusting pop and rock, and spend hilarious amounts trying to prove they are the happiest. And any man's mind might just wonder; have they forgotten what happened in the last decade? Is this the natural reaction to what we did? To keep our society the way we live it, we ruthlessly invaded countries based on lies others made up for us, and which we coped with. This decade has been one of the darkest ones, and yet our culture does not reflect it. We keep on blaming Iraq on Bush's war policy and on american troops in the region. But why are we angry? Is it because they did it for oil? Just look around you: who isn't using oil? which one of us can claim he's not enjoying this greedy society that needs to brake people from distant countries to prevail?

Some of us know. Some of us are smart enough to know the reasons behind Iraq. They are usually europeans. Many are americans too. It's easier when you're in Europe to hate the war in Iraq because you have another country to blame. We've been taught to point at the other side of the ocean whenever things go wrong. The war in Iraq was a dupe. Americans and europeans as their allies were duped into believing there was something dangerously elusive in Iraq besides oil dollars that, well... still weren't ours. We rushed into that land based on some impressively convincing fiction to make sure we got all the oil we ever needed. And we got it. Of course, now the very companies we sent to make the profit for us are speculating over it, so things aren't as nice as they could be. But we made a lot of money...
This society we live in is based on the fact that money's awesome. Why do you work? For money. Why do you seek profit? to be happier. Why should you be happier? because that increases your productivity. I remember after the war in Iraq started some big company's CEO said 'We invest in Iraq so the lives that were lost were not in vain.' Armed Forces from the Coalition of the Willing liberated Iraq as we witnessed another Vietnam, casualties reaching similar figures. And all because at some point, our money manufacturers eventually pointed in the same direction, and it happened to be buried right smack in the middle of Iraq's soil.

Now a lot of people are aware of this. They go marching in the streets, shouting 'Peace in Iraq'. Actually most people are quite conscious up to a certain level. Most europeans I know are, and I guess over half of the americans too. So these people, who call Bush and his troops murderers, they're getting ready for their sit-in. Let's call one of them Mr. Klean. M. Klean looks at his watch made of PS (polystirene) and shoot! notices he only has half an hour before the protest. So he runs, puts on his shoes with synthetic rubber soles and runs. On his way out he finds that package from Amazon with that book on 'Dirty oil profits in Iraq' shipped by airmail, quicly resolves his joy and resumes his flight. Gets in his car, sits in his seat that was assembled to the rest of the car thanks to its shipping from Kyoto, Japan to Detroit, MI, fires up the engine running on gas, and races fast. When he gets there, he stops the car, opens the door and pulls out a big board on which he wrote: 'DON'T SOIL FOR OIL!'.
Now tell me, where exactly did this man avoid using Iraq's bloody oil? With the plastic, the shippings, the gas... some drop of it must have fallen at some point in the big oil cauldron where his life was prepared.

I do not believe in war crimes. We do our little lives, dealing with our pathetic problems as though they could in any way be compared to the ones that are common in third world countries. But when something starts to threaten those tiny details which make our lives so much easier we have to do something about it. Well, not we of course. But someone. Europeans blame the States, in the States, democrats blame republicans, republicans call for necessity and blame it on Al Qaeda. The truth is we all wanted this. The ones who sent the army to invade Iraq might be the obvious lying scum, however, they will never be as big liers as we are. Our daily actions hire the soldiers who massacred a village in Karbala, they buy the bombs and the napalm that was dropped to rip iraqi faces off their heads, they afford the mines that will blow up cute little kids legs for the next 15 years, and they pay for the pipe-lines, the pumps, the drills, all the gear that will bring the oil to us. Every time you drive your car, every time you burn up your money on unecessary goods, just every smallest second of our consumer's lives. We are worried about a few men who were willing to invade a rightful country for oil profits, yet we support it in every decision we make. The insults tossed at them, our protests, our morality, the very definition of war crime is like a tribunal of crooked murderes judging a fellow murderer. And when we hang them publicly, it's nothing but good old dog eat dog, except that one of the dogs calls himself righteous. We lie. War is no crime. Our ways have squeezed these lost violent souls into Iraq, put them in a situation where aggression is as simple and natural as breathing, and then we dare to point our dirty finger at them when the heat is too much and their actions become devilish. War is never a crime. The concept of War Crime is a lie. In war people are there to kill, pillage and murder. That is what war is all about. Humiliation is nothing there, amongst the cries, the tearful widows and the limbless children. The one and only crime is what led to war, this greedy all-consuming peace of ours that can't sustain it's own combustion.

Telling who took the last shot won't make any difference; the shot has been taken. Many more wars will come as long as we keep on living greedily, and terrorism will keep on as long as we keep showing off our satisfied futile needs, our needless purchases and the short range of our shallow care.

You want war?

good, stop acting like you don't.

You don't want war?

great, don't make it happen then.