‘The Dead Can’t Dance And I Refuse To Either Or Why I Insist On Remembering While Others Insist On Drinking To Forget’

 

Posted by Asim Rafriqui

We have invaded two nations because we were told that we must. Both illegally and in violation of all known international law.

We have murdered millions of them. And continue to kill them at will in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We have displaced and dislocated from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan millions, forever ruining their lives and humanity.

We constructed tens of millions of dollars worth of military bases and detention centers in both countries. And now use them for ‘forward projection’ based on our justifications of the war against a noun.

We continue to occupy them and use massive military force to retain our jack boots over their necks.

We invited private militia and gave out contracts worth billions to make it appealing for them.

We have detained them indefinitely and still refuse to give them appropriate justice. President Obama willingly continuing the illegal and unjust policies of his predecessors

We have tortured them relentless and got our civilized courts and bureaucratic apparatchiks to justify our actions.

We have renditioned them and sent them off to our ‘allies’ in other parts of the world to be tortured, maimed and killed. And there is no end to this program.

We have illegally eavesdropped on our citizens, violating our own laws in the process. And it continues.

We sent American men and women into useless wars and watched thousands of them die to cover our lies and greed.

We have curtailed civil rights and liberties all in the name of a war against a proper noun. And there is no turning back.

We have handed over trillions of dollars to the military and to private contractors just as our own economy was going bankrupt and our citizens being thrown out of their homes, jobs and futures.

We have handed over trillions to Wall Street, while the ordinary have been begging for pension handouts and calling it ‘revolutionary’ action.

We are closing down our schools, reducing our welfare programs, cut back public budgets while simultaneously approving more money for security programs, anti-immigration programs, military invasions and wars, and new and improved intelligence programs.

We have been doing this for ten years, and as my nation sinks into economic pointlessness and desperation, I am being told that I should celebrate the killing of a largely if not completely irrelevant ‘Enemy #1?.

I am supposed to forget all this for the sake of a party and a beer. I am supposed to just not ask the hard questions, never look back as Obama so stupidly said Look Forward, Not Backward.

I am supposed to ignore the sheer hideousness of the fact that what actually got this useless trophy took nothing more than a few months of intelligence work (can bribing the Pakistani ISI considered ‘intelligence work’?), a small commando unit, and a raid in the city of Abbotabad – one of Pakistan’s largest military cantonment cities and less than hour away from its capital Islamabad?

Am I to believe that no one bothered to look inside what must have been the strangest and most conspicuous house in the entire town – 12 foot walls, barbed wire, clandestine comings and goings, high security controls, etc. to see who may be there? A house smack in the center of a major Pakistani military town, under the very nose of Pakistani and American intelligence. Am I to believe that we waged drone wars in the mountains, while never bothering to look over the walls of our offices? If not I, then would not the thousands of dead want to know the answer to this question.

Why do I feel that I have just been made a fool of and am now being told to hold the Star Spangled Banner and dance around like a monkey? Why can’t I get over the feeling that I have just been sold a lemon, and the salesman is laughing while counting my cash?

Perhaps its just me but I can’t celebrate or wave this flag. I can’t get past the horrors of these preceding years. I can’t stop hearing the echoes of the arrogant lies, nor the screams of the millions of innocent lives that paved they road of our righteousness with their blood and souls. I can’t help but lament this fraud, since nothing changes, and all paranoid fantasies of ‘invading demons’ continue as before. More wars, more security, more torture, more fear, mor screaming hysteria about the dangers to ‘our way of life’.

I beg for mercy. Please don’t ask this American to dance. I beg for mercy. Please don’t demand that this American forgets. I beg for mercy, please let this American remember. There is still so much more to come. So much more that I will have to remember for future days when I will be told to forget. Please let me sit here….and remember.

A Response by Lydia Wilson:

Dualistic frames “get my goat,” to borrow an expression from my farm-reared father. I am an American who was raised by very conservative parents, who was in NYC on 9/11 and who has spent the past ten years exploring the murky, gray waters of what it means to be an American who believes in both justice and mercy from a secular point of view.

This person’s reflections are powerful and need to be heard amongst a chorus of initial relief and excitement that Osama has been killed. Important questions are asked.

For as insightful as the poster is, I am so saddened to see this person falling into much the same trap that is being criticized. Why, dear friends, do all of us have to frame things in such a dualistic manner?

Osama’s death and how it was carried out was either (forgive me, as I’ll be hyperbolic here since I am so frustrated about it):

a) cause for unexamined jubilation or…

b) a dark conspiracy meant to create the climax in a tightly-controlled narrative manipulated carefully to exploit American emotions. Something about oil. Something about the pending election. Something about revenge against Donald Trump. Only the wisest among us see this development of Osama’s death for what it really is: mind control.

What if the history we’re living through now is absolutely neither of those things? No one is asking that poster to dance or to forget. As one who both lived through that traumatic day and lost family in the war since, I didn’t interpret Obama’s call to move forward as a call to forget. There’s a HUGE difference there. When you move forward, you don’t give up memories. You HAVE to carry them with you. They’re heavy, they strain your shoulders, they inform every decision you ever make thereafter.

We are in several wars that are excruciating and heartbreaking and arguably illegal. I agree with your poster on that. But do I agree that the only available reactions are to a) dance w/ forgetfulness or b) stand up valiantly for truth? No f$^#$ing way.

I am sure I am not the only American who spent hours in stunned, reverential silence, oscillating wildly between grief for all the lives lost to get to this point and goose-bump laden awe that we’d actually killed a man whose has caused so much suffering with intention and glee.

I can only characterize my own reaction, and it was one of tearful hope. Hope that this will be over soon. Hope that the military – a giant complex and complicated unit of many individuals – would find a fast resolution to get our soldiers home.

No dancing. No forgetfulness. Far from it.

No man is an island, dude. Start talking to the people whose reactions you think you have so neatly summed up in your little blog post here, and I bet you’ll find yourself floored by the complexity and richness of thought and emotion that they are actually experiencing. It’s a lovely little trade called journalism. I highly recommend it. It’s under threat from another giant complex called “media,” that loves to think it knows exactly what all those little ants marching out there are thinking.