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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Why are U.S. troops going into Uganda to take sides in a civil war?

By David McElroy · October 15, 2011

Right after World War II, a revolutionary group forced the Vietnamese emperor to resign and then declared Vietnam independent of French colonial rule. The emperor headed to the southern part of the country and established a new capital in Saigon, where he got his new government recognized by the U.S. and French governments.

In 1949, U.S. President Harry Truman ordered U.S. military advisors into the country to train the South Vietnamese forces in how to use American weapons. From that tiny detachment of advisors grew a war that killed more than 58,000 Americans, some of whom hadn’t even been born yet when the advisors were first sent.

I couldn’t help thinking about that as I read Friday about Barack Obama sending about 100 armed U.S. troops into Uganda to train government forces fighting rebels for a religious group calling itself the Lord’s Resistance Army. Will more Americans get sucked into a conflict that we know almost nothing about? I don’t know. The only thing I’m sure of is that there’s no reason for U.S. taxpayers to be paying for training another country’s army in a civil war.

One of the things politicians of both major parties agree about is that the U.S. military is the world’s policeman. If there’s a problem anywhere, the response from some Democrat or Republican (usually whoever’s in the White House) is to send in troops (as advisors or “peacekeepers”) or to send in bombers to reduce the country to rubble. While this death and destruction is going on, most Americans go blithely about their business, unaware and unconcerned that their tax dollars are financing the killing of many people in other parts of the world.

As Americans, we tend to be happily in a little bubble where we believe “our troops” are the good guys everywhere they go — and that they’d never do terrible things the way the other guys do. But have you ever heard of the My Lai massacre? A company of U.S. soldiers murdered somewhere between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians, including many women and babies. Many of the women were raped and many of the bodies were mutilated. The bodies in the picture above are only a few of the victims. Only one U.S. soldier was ever held responsible for anything related to these murders — and he only served three and a half years under house arrest. There are plenty of other atrocities that you’ve never heard about.)

We’ve seen plenty of reports (many substantiated) of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. forces. It’s not a uniquely American thing. Unfortunately, it’s what men do when they go to war and get numb to killing. It’s always been done and always will be done, just as long as humans exist and send soldiers off to kill each other.

When we get involved in other countries’ wars, we’re dragging ourselves into fights that shouldn’t be ours and we’re setting ourselves up to be responsible for more death and destruction. It’s foolish. It’s unconstitutional. And it’s immoral.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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