When Saving Face Does Nothing To Save Anything

The president will speak to us tonight...

As someone who participated in a campaign to either end an evil regime or nation build or whatever the news agencies called it damn near twenty years ago I have to say, it is time for us to come home.

I understand that our current sitting president has to clean up the mess of the previous administration. I also understand that it makes no sense. I also understand that even folks like Helen Thomas didn't press the press secretary enough a few years back and not one liberal writer came out and explained why the press was so silent...

Wait. Just a handful of years ago a small handful of conservatives (meaning the ones with media influence - figure it out yourselves. Oops, you already know) went McCarthy on us and questioned folks' patriotism, and even the drug dealer on the corner in the hood decided that it was too risky to open his or her mouth and criticize the powers that be, thus letting the administration pump lies to us based on the fear of domestic terrorism.

And no one said anything. And young men and women with us as families and friends continued to die for a country that does not respect us, a democratic state of being and most importantly their women. Why we changed the original lie about hunting Osama Bin Laden and said that we were partnering up with a country trustworthy enough to build a democracy, physically and figuratively seeing the corruption and the ideology opposite of ours while committing additional forces and money to it was and still is the biggest lie.

To ourselves.

Regardless of where you stand with the president, Camp Obama graduate or Tea Party grass roots organizer, you recognize that losing our family members in a pointless campaign is us committing ourselves in destroying our greatest resource. Ourselves. If we continue down this path our security in living in the greatest nation on the planet will be compromised. I remember coming home more than anything else and the two to three years it took for me to adapt. I witnessed some of my peers go through psycological and family related emotional problems. I also visited a couple of folks homes where I either went to school with, served or trained with or lived down the street from someone they loved that never came back.

It has been nine years. It it time to come home.

I read fiction, watch a few sci-fi related TV shows when I get the chance and also dream from time to time. There have been a few authors and TV producers that created the idea that certain disease either was curable and needed an additional element provided by miraculous discovery or gifted to us by some alien race. I have had dreams that sicknesses were cured. I have diabetes and I have a strong interest in controlling and curing this disease at the molecular level. I fast, have given up eating and drinking certain things and do things daily to control my disease and I am healthier for it but it is nothing compared to what three of my friends and a cousin have to live with on the daily. They either live with HIV or have full blown AIDS.

Just like these paragraphs are way the hell down here on the page, the fact that World Aids Day is today has taken a back seat. Our press corps and the largest handful of our brightest have focused on the war and a presidential speech telling us what we already know: If we don't unilaterally pull out of Afghanistan, we have already lost like the British, the Russians and other nations. We have no business there. We should not partner with nations that do not see women with equal stance. Children should not live in fear. If we make drug trafficking illegal, we should hold our partner nations to the same standard, especially if their freedom is our goal in helping stabilize and build their nation under the guise of a democracy.

Again, it is time to come home.

Nothing great has been accomplished with our actions over there. There probably has or probably will be some great mind wasted in battle (well, there isn't much battle these days, we lose our soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors by other means) that could provide a genetic link or a molecular marker that could lead to the cure of this disease. Some folks suffer, even when they can maintain life through chemical imbalance like some of my people do.

But then again others suffer when their loved one is sent away to fight and sometimes die or come back totally mind fucked from fighting in an unnecessary war, seeing and doing the most unbelievable things. And then we come home to the regularity of waiting for our burgers in the drive thru, never revealing to our families the atrocities of our actions as well as never properly re-acclimating ourselves...

Dangerous.

It seems even with an exit strategy, more money and effort will be pumped into death and destruction rather than research and development in finding some semblance of a cure. And the rest of us continue to suffer.