Everything they didn't tell me

My suspicions grew during the weeks following the tanks in Tienamen Square.  I called my section chief and asked him if I needed to repack my gear for China, because it is still cold in the Fulda Gap during the Ides of April, 1989.  I was stationed in Erlangen, FRG, and it was colder than the bible belt.  Not so much in China, so I wanted to know if I could drop my extreme cold weather gear.  My chief laughed and told me to stand down; we would stay here and protect against the threat of Communist invasion from Russia, we couldn't worry about China.

But as time passed, and the Stars and Stripes reported no change to our relationship to China, it gnawed at me.  We fight all these wars against Communism, we are told that Communism is the enemy of liberty and so we have to wage all these wars.  Blood and treasure, based on a lie.

But when people stood up for Freedom we did nothing?  I started looking more closely at how we used our forces.  We were not a force for good in the world, we were a force for capitalism.  And capitalism has no soul.  We are not fighting for freedom, but only for free markets, so we can exploit the cheap labor of the countries we 'helped' into their new government.

Americans didn't see this; most would not have looked.  But even the ones who wanted the truth were muffled in the name of 'national security'.  Another lie.  Our national security has mostly comprised of fighting wars against those we put into power so we could leach the natural resources out of their country. The next to last lie.

The final lie is that they hate us for our freedoms.  That is delightfully droll.  They hate us because we are assholes that raped the planet.   Most of them have far more freedom than us.  You are just confused because your cage is so elegantly gilded.