Essay by Ray Jason enlightens me and hopefully you that the wars of our world are not your or my doing but by those in high power, who only create the chaos for their benefit, financially or by whatever means to have control. Money is the main game they are playing We as civilians, as a whole, do not want this constant strife of war or rumors of war. We want peace and a calm life. All the chaotic BS that is occurring in the world is created by all those Creatures who are in controlling positions. They use us by giving us lies and disinformation constantly and I'm not speaking of the current Creatures only but this has occurred since time immemorial. My straying a bit off course, let me now give you the words of Mr. Jason that he first wrote in 2013. He begins the essay speaking of two Creatures in our current time, Bolton and Pompeo then leads into his repeated words from 2013. This is long so use patience.
by Ray Jason
As
Bolton and Pompeo - who are a human Axis of Psychosis - attempt to
force the U.S. into a war with Iran, it seems like a good time to
re-post my most heart-felt anti-war essay. This was first published in
2013 just as Obama was about to lob Cruise Missiles into Syria.
Fortunately, international opinion and lack of support from England was
sufficient pressure to restrain him.
Of my 120 essays, this was the one that received the most appreciation and support from my readers. I hope it touches you.
http://theseagypsyphilosopher.blogspot.com/2013/09/never-stop-running-napalm-girl.html
NEVER STOP RUNNING, NAPALM GIRL!!!
by
Ray Jason
The Sea was mild and soothing as I sailed alone in the
western reaches of the Caribbean. It had
been four days since my last human contact.
Such exile does not disturb me - it comforts me. The wind was light, and the waves were small
and melodious - like the cello phrase in a string quartet.
Although quite relaxed, I was also
vigilant, because my position was near the busy shipping lanes between the
Panama Canal and the Yucatan Channel. Suddenly, I sensed a nearby hazard. My first scan of the horizon revealed nothing. On my second, more careful sweep, I saw her –
a gray smudge of a ship, still half below the undulating cusp of the
Earth. I took my binoculars from their
rack and focused them. What I saw slammed
me backwards - both physically and emotionally. She was one
of them – a gray, military transport vessel that was all too familiar to me.
I had served aboard one - a U.S. Navy
ammunition ship in Vietnam.
*******
I had not willingly
done so. I had been drafted just after
receiving my bachelor’s degree. My first
decision was whether to flee to Canada, as my courageous college roommate had
done, or to let them take me. My next
choice was between a two year Army enlistment or the four-year Navy sentence. Wishing to neither kill nor be killed because
of anyone’s insipid “domino theory,” I chose the USN. As someone who survived higher education with
my capacity for critical thinking still intact, I already knew that war was
horrible and this particular one was senseless and despicable. I was not an ideal recruit.
The toughest part of my service was
being a closet pacifist aboard a ship full of gung-ho, pseudo-warriors. And these were the worst kind - the swaggering,
macho types, who had the luxury of never facing any real combat. I kept my secret to myself, just as I kept my
self to myself. In fact, I do not have a
single friend from that chapter of my life.
When I would go ashore and meet actual
soldiers, they were not gung-ho at all.
They were beaten down and regretful and frightened - and wanted only to
be away from there…to be home…to be far from all that madness.
I never talk about this with my friends. And it rarely enters my consciousness. But that dark ship on the horizon,
transporting munitions and mutilation to who knows which target this time, just
staggered me. To ease my anguish, I
tried the comfort of my favorite classical music. It didn’t work, and neither did dousing
myself with buckets of sea water. Although
I resisted, I knew that the only way out of my agony was to burrow deeper into
it.
*******
So I brought out her picture. I keep it protected in an envelope hidden in
one of my favorite books. I unfolded it
tenderly, and gazed one more time at all the evil, meaningless terror of war captured
in a single frozen instant from 40 years ago.
I spoke to her once more as I had done many other times down the decades,
when I needed solace:
“Hello
again, Napalm Girl. Keep on running! There must be some place, somewhere, free
from this horror and insanity. You must
find that place. You deserve that
place. Never stop running!!!”
She is crying out, “Too hot! Too hot!” as she flees. Grotesque flaming jelly from the sky has
burned most of the little dress from her nine year old body. The rest she ripped off herself as she kept
running and screaming “I’m dying! I’m
dying!”
When the heroic photographer got to her, she was
whimpering, “Water, water.” He emptied
his canteen on her. With ferocious determination,
through insane traffic, he managed to get her to a hospital in Saigon. They said she was so badly burned that she would
never live and they would not accept her.
He flashed his Associated Press photo credentials and said, “Don’t let
this child die or everyone will hear about it!”
They took her in. And they saved
her.
That Vietnamese photographer, Nick Ut, deeply
understood the ravages of war. His older
brother, who was his personal hero, had already died photographing the misery
of combat. When Nick answered the call
of basic human decency, and rescued that terrified little girl, he had no idea that
on the film in his camera was one of the most profound and powerful photographs
of all time. He was only 19 years old.
Even though the immortal Napalm Girl picture touches
me in my core being, it is the one with her mother sitting beside her in the
hospital that truly haunts me. The
woman’s quiet dignity as she comforts her innocent frightened child overwhelms
me. In her noble, image, I can see what
an almost unbearable burden but blessing it is to be a Woman, and to be a Mother,
in this world of torment. And it sickens
me to realize that it is almost always men
that cause this needless anguish.
Decades later, I can still imagine their likely
conversation as the child asks the mother, “What was that horrible fire that
fell from the sky?”
And the mom might reply, “It was some terrible new weapon
- like a bomb, but different.”
“But why did they drop it on us?” asks the little girl. “We were just children and old people hiding
in the temple from the planes. We didn’t
hurt anybody!”
My guess is that the heroic mother, overwhelmed with
grief by the sight of her incinerated child, might have said something like
this. “I do not know the answer, my
beautiful daughter. But I do know that
you survived this horrible thing, and your pain will go away and you will heal. And someday, life will be sweet and sensible
again. Now, try to go to sleep, and when
you awake, I will be right here beside
you.”
*******
 |
| Kim with one of her children. |
The dark gray death ship passed a few miles ahead of me,
and has now disappeared beyond the horizon.
But even though it is no longer visible, its malignancy still torments
me. I stare again at little Kim’s photo
in my hands, and ask myself, “How can I best honor her suffering?” And then I realize that what makes her pain-wracked
image so universal and so immortal is that it lays bare the true nature of war. And that
the best way to repay my gratitude, is to use my power as a writer, to further
expose this loathsome evil.
*******
Tragically, as I type these words, the war drums are
beating again. The Deceiver-in-Chief has
scheduled a national address in which he will knowingly lie about the need for
this latest “regrettable but necessary action.” Then the commentators will babble on about
“sufficient justification” and “reprisals” and “surgical strikes. But they will never discuss what war actually is. And that is because, at its core, it is sick
and perverted and senseless.
If someone invades your home and threatens your
family, it is your right and your responsibility to protect them, even if it
necessitates violence. This type of
personal duty is decent, courageous and just.
But war is the killing of human beings with whom we have no personal
grievance. War is Mass Psychotic Hypnosis.
But it is never initiated by ordinary people.
One morning at breakfast, a million Norwegians do not spontaneously
decide that it would be a good idea to invade Ireland that afternoon.
No, this type of insanity can only be seeded and
nurtured by certifiable sociopaths. Unfortunately,
we don’t call them lunatics, and banish them to asylums. Instead we anoint them as political and religious
leaders. These diseased power addicts
use cold-blooded manipulation to convince enormous groups of people that other
groups of people are their enemies…and so they must go forth…and annihilate
them.
 |
| Nick and Kim at the Vietnam Vets Memorial |
| . |
Here is another truth about war that the
self-righteous, talking heads deliberately avoid. Those
who make the wars never have to fight the wars. The Great Deciders will never be in a night
ambush, where the fear is so overpowering that their bodily control abandons
them, and they shit themselves. And the
defense contractors, engorged on obscene profits, will never have to kick open
a mud hut door after strafing it with automatic weapons fire, and discover a
heap of dead children beneath a wounded mother, who is so traumatized that she
cannot even scream. And the media
tycoons cheerleading for more carnage, will never rush to the flag-draped
coffin of a dead son or daughter and wrap themselves around it in fury as the
military band tries to sound heroic.
And here is yet another profound truth that the
acceptable, credentialed pundits never state:
War doesn’t work! It never makes the world a better place. For thousands of years, humanity has waged
hundreds of wars, but they never achieve their supposedly noble ideals. They never “end all wars” or “bring
everlasting peace” or “insure self-determination” or any of the dozen other
excuses that are used to incite people to massacre one another. What it does succeed at doing is bringing
misery, murder, mutilation and madness to ordinary, decent people.
So listen carefully as the highly paid military and
political analysts parade across your television screens, proclaiming the need
for this latest “kinetic action.” Observe
how these shrewd distorters evade the three paramount characteristics of war
that I have just discussed. None of them
will address what war really is. Nor
will they mention that those who benefit from war do not suffer its horrors. And finally, they will not admit that war
never brings good into the world and is actually a plague that sickens the
human project.
*******
Recognizing that war is Mass Psychotic Hypnosis, how
do we overcome those who mesmerize us?
How do we break free from their spell?
Certainly our liberation will not come from those at the top. War rewards them too handsomely.
We must rely on our numbers. We are many, they are few. When the chant from the anti-Vietnam
protests, “Hell, no…we won’t go!” became a reality and not just a slogan, the war
machine sputtered and died. Refusal is
our best strategy. We must refuse to
serve in their militaries or in their terror cells. We must refuse to resolve disputes through
violence. And if they incarcerate us for
our resistance, that is a better fate than killing someone who is not an enemy. And when enough of us refuse, their prisons
are not large enough to hold us.
I am perfectly mindful that such thinking is
idealistic and foolhardy, but perhaps it will inspire others to come forth with
better options for ending war. Yet, even
if such ideals are useless, we must try - if for no other reason than to honor Kim
Phuc, the Napalm Girl. We must sculpt a world where an innocent
little girl does not have to race down a road with the flesh peeling off her
body, trying to outrun her own death!
I urge you to visit www.kimfoundation.com. Dedicated to helping other children who are victims of war.
Almost
every day something utterly insipid "goes viral" on the World Wide
Web. Perhaps we can help spread this little essay at this critical time
when the war drums are again thundering Inside the Beltway. By doing
so, we can all honor the Napalm Girl.
