http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/

By Kevin Tillman

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

He’s given a series of speeches at Faneuil Hall in Boston this year where he has outlined his plan for this or that. His latest is on healthcare. He’s calling for universal healthcare by 2012. One of the first things he does is address the stupid and wrongheaded notion that we can’t afford heatlhcare or that it will bankrupt businesses and slow our economy:

Two corporations show the dangerous path ahead for employer-based health coverage. One used to be the largest company in the world - General Motors. The other is the largest company today - Wal-Mart.

As General Motors goes, people used to say, so goes the country. Well today, General Motors is weighed down with so many health care costs that it’s been called “an HMO dressed up as an auto company.” GM adds $1,500 to the cost of every car and truck it produces just to pay for health care for its workers. To give you an idea of how much this affects American businesses in the global marketplace, Toyota pays only $500 in health care costs per vehicle.

Now this isn’t just a problem for manufacturing industries. The CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz, said his company spends more on health care than coffee beans. They’re trying to do the right thing, but the people running our country aren’t doing the right thing by them.

Companies like Wal-Mart have adopted a totally different strategy - use workers until they get sick, don’t cover them for check-ups, and then tell them they’re on their own. The nice person who greets you at Wal-Mart’s door is shown the door when illness strikes. Whether it’s because Wal-Mart hires part-time workers and doesn’t offer them insurance, or offers health care packages most workers there can’t possibly afford, passing along enormous costs to families and taxpayers, the bottom line is clear: at Wal-Mart, less than forty percent of the employees have health insurance. That’s 600,000 working Americans on their own. It’s unconscionable and it is unacceptable that five of the ten richest people in America are Wal-Mart stockholders from the same family - worth double-digit billions each - but they can’t find the money to secure health coverage for their own workers and their families.