A Military that Kills & the Culpability of Citizenry

It's hard to imagine that any person could slaughter unarmed children in the Haditha Massacre. Yet who is really to blame? Obviously, you blame the soldiers who fired the weapons & made the choice to bring death upon civilians. But why should our government or our citizenry receive a pass.

Everyone knows that 'w' stole the 2000 election & has enjoyed power, money, clout, & infamy through nefarious means but why didn't we stop him? 111 million Americans voted in 2000, that was around 60 % of the voting population...what if the America had pretended it was an American Idol vote rather than a vote to determine the future of the nation? I suspect that the results would have been markedly different, although there is probably a disproportionately high number of 'red staters' who adore Ryan Seacrest. Anyone who considers himself/herself educated &/or a 'liberal blue stater' had then & has now an obligation to vote. If nothing else, through voting, you earn the right to blog about what a disaster our nation has become.
Think about it, in the last eight years, the fate of the world, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars have been shaped & directed by Ohio & Florida. I have lived near both of these backward cesspools & I should think a bit of a stretch to even call them states. Ohio's population would give any third world nation a run for its money in potable water, hygiene, & literacy. Florida...Florida...well let's just say that any state that is run by nascar & the aarp speaks for itself. Still, because America is an equal opportunity nation, these territories were allowed to vote & due to intellectual negligence, allowed to be decisive. But how do the failures of the intellectual elite or blue states equate to the Massacre of Haditha?
A cause & effect lesson will illustrate the point. Imagine that you buy an apple & you son decides to raise a pet worm. Your son is two & while having a slight intellectual advantage over the current American president, is still only two. If you fail to set limits and enforce rules, then inevitably the worm will find its way to the apple. Our troops are largely kids. Students who were recruited in some of the most impoverished areas of our nation & sold a defective product. As a teacher I dealt (monthly) with recruiters who did what was necessary to meet their quotas. Most of the high school kids that I came into contact with struggled to find Mexico & Canada on a map; so one can imagine their knowledge of Iraq & Afghanistan. Their lack of money, education, & viable vision of the future made them the perfect fodder for the instrument of implementation for the bush worldview. But I digress...cause & effect...in essence, we have a functional--but mean--toddler running the country. He is running the country b/c our intellectual elite or liberal blue staters failed.
We failed to vote in sufficient numbers, failed to mobilize our base, & failed to stop a mad man before he could act. We allowed ourselves to be lulled by the comforts that the previous eight years had afforded us. We allowed fox news to be created, we allowed our kids to go to a land that few of us know much about. Apathy ruled the day and we are all paying our dues now. The kids...I mean soldiers...in Haditha are victims of their own judgment, madness, and a government that put them in an impossible situation. They've endured three tours of a hell that none of us dare imagine & they cracked. But imagine, if the toddler was taught to keep the worm in a jar, if the President of the United States was President Gore, not president bush...those kids wouldn't have murdered people in Iraq, they would be in college or working.
The Massacre of Haditha is a dark point of emphasis in an incredibly dark era. The US Military is one of the best & most disciplined the world has ever known, still, their alleged acts of some of their soldiers were horrific & despicable; the governmental & military cover up is inexcusable. However, the complacency, apathy, & general disinterest of thinking Americans created an untenable situation. Honestly, if you toddler drives your car into a building, is it really his fault. We allowed a functional idiot & his goons to take the wheel of a powerful vehicle, we allowed our kids to ride in the car with him, & at this point, unfortunately, we have no choice but to deal with the wreckage created.