Prove It!
by Edgar J. Steele

August 10, 2006

There's somethin' happening here,
What it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun over there,
Tellin' me I gotta beware.
I think it's time we stop,
Hey, what's that sound,
Everybody look what's going down.
  --- For What It's Worth, Stephen Stills (1966),
       recorded by Buffalo Springfield (1967)

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning...
Ya know, that gasoline smell...
It smells like... victory."  (click here for sound clip)
  --- Lt.Col. Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now (1979)

Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie billows from huge loudspeakers strapped to the undercarriage of helicopters flying in formation.  The camera closes in on a clearly deranged Lt.Col. Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall), shouting over engine noise that the music "terrifies" villagers, just as his airborne cavalry troops swoop down upon a small Viet Nam village, showering the residents with rockets, bullets and napalm. 

Despite bullets flying and shells bursting all around, Kilgore does what any real leader of men might do under fire:  he goes surfing.  This scene from Apocalypse Now has come to symbolize for me the insanity of war, at once both random and calculated.

"I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning"

During his brief appearance, Duvall's borderline-psychotic Kilgore also utters his now-famous line about napalm, quoted at the top of this piece.  That part was true.  If anything, it was an understatement.  America used Napalm extensively in the long, waking nightmare that Viet Nam became for so many of us. 

Napalm is a mixture of styrene (plastic, but soap will do) and gasoline, yielding a gel-like substance that sticks to the skin when afire.  Napalm cannot be brushed off and is doused only with great difficulty.  So terrifying is napalm and so horrifying is death by it that napalm was banned by international UN treaty in 1980, a treaty pointedly never signed by America.

So what do you suppose America does in Iraq, a country that we supposedly invaded so as to take away Saddam's "Weapons of Mass Destruction?"  Why, in the finest tradition of Lt.Col. Kilgore, America napalms Iraqis, of course.  Never mind that napalm is a genuine weapon of mass destruction.  Never mind that its use is the very personification of terror.  Never mind that its use is a war crime.  The people flailing about, burning alive and screaming in agony, know nothing of treaties, signed or unsigned.  So what?  After all, we're talking America here.

"Oh...You Didn't Ask About Those!"

Confronted, Pentagon spokesmen denied dropping napalm on Iraqis, of course, not knowing that the beans already had been spilled.  "'We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches,' said Col. James Alles in a recent interview.  He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. 'Unfortunately, there were people there ...The generals love napalm.  It has a big psychological effect.'"  When caught out in its lie, the Pentagon replied, "Oh, you mean the firebombs.  You didn't ask about those!"  What's a firebomb?  Napalm made with kerosene instead of gasoline, which actually produces an even more horrific weapon.  Bill Clinton couldn't have said it any better.

What's more, it has become increasingly clear that America used napalm in its genocidal attack upon the civilians of Fallujah, as well.  The beat goes on.  After all, we're talking America here.

What do you suppose is producing those horrific burns on the Lebanese civilians being attacked by the Israeli Air Force?  Yes, white phosphorus, for one, almost as bad as napalm.  But if really horrible, really awful full-body burns are what you are after, nothing serves quite so well as napalm.  Never mind.  We're talking Israel now, which trumps even the "America" argument. 

Israel's biggest-selling paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, said, "(T)he army had raised the threshold of response to Katyusha rockets.  In other words:  a village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire."  Fire, they said.  And it isn't charcoal briquettes being dropped, either.  Whether it is Israeli "fire" or American "firebombs," it burns just as horribly as what it really is:  napalm.  Nor is this the first time that Israel cavalierly has dropped napalm on Lebanon.

Our Tax Dollars at Work

Where do the weapons inflicting those burns originate, do you suppose?  You read that America sells Israel most of its weaponry.  That's bad enough.  What you don't read about until a year or two later is how America then forgives Israel the debt thereby created.  Yes, in addition to the massive annual foreign aid Washington simply gives to Israel, not to mention the special appropriations always given to meet Israeli demands, as well as all that Israel steals from America both industrially and economically. 

Then there is the massive amount of money that American Jews send to Israel for each and every conflict.  (By the way, did you know that all American Jews automatically are citizens of Israel, too?  Why else do you suppose all those Jewish criminals out on bail flee to Israel, whom Israel then refuses to extradite?) 

And the money spent by America directly on Israel's conflicts with all of its neighbors.

Oh, yes, then there is the total cost of the current wars being waged by America upon Afghanistan and Iraq, which Americans finally have figured out were begun in response to Israeli demands, not 9/11, not weapons of mass destruction, not to save the Iraqis (far more of whom America has killed while "saving" them than Saddam ever thought of killing) and not because they are jealous of our freedom.  (Again, I ask, "What freedom?")  Of course, how do we assess the incalculable cost to us of the lives of our beloved sons and daughters killed in that Middle Eastern hellhole in the name of Israeli hegemony?

And don't forget the massive amount of money sent to Israel by gullible American non-Jews, particularly Christian fundamentalists hoping to hasten the Second Coming, some of whom turn a blind eye to the Israeli murder of Arab children and, incredibly enough, some of whom actually cheer on the death and destruction financed in part by their donations.

You and I pay Israel to burn Lebanese babies while they lay sleeping simply because we still pay taxes and we still make donations directly and we still allow our government to fund Israel's genocidal insanity and we still allow our government to provide the weapons, as well.  Our tax dollars still at work, still creating unimaginable horror, death and destruction.  Just like hiring hit men.  Incredibly nasty and vicious hit men.  In fact, there are some things that most hit men quite simply will not do, such as murdering women and children.  Israel has no such compunctions.  Nor does America have such reservations when it comes to Arabs.  Nor do you and I, so long as we allow it to take place.  Tell me honestly now:  How do you feel about that?  Are you mad yet?

Imagine your own child engulfed in fire, screaming and flopping about on the ground, with you helpless, unable to douse the flames.  How long will those screams invade your mind, do you suppose?  How long will your heart ache with the memory of what your child endured in those long, agonizing seconds that it took to lose consciousness, then die?  How brightly will the flame of vengeance burn within your breast?  This horror takes place for many people - for real - every day in the Middle East, thanks to you and me.  And you ask why they hate us?

It gives me no pleasure to attach the photo at the left, of Lebanese civilians burned to death just a few days ago, but this is an image that every single American needs to have seared into his or her brain.

How long are you going to put up with the criminals now in charge of America inflicting this sort of unspeakable horror upon other human beings in your name?  How long are you going to pay for it?  You might as well go to Lebanon or Iraq and burn a few babies yourself - the effect is precisely the same.  Oh, yes it is.  Don't for a moment try to pretend otherwise.

Now are you getting mad?  I hope so.

"But They're Just Arabs"

"But they're just Arabs," you might respond, as though the people being massacred with your money somehow are inferior.  Yes, that is the way that Israel views them, to be sure:  "Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in a speech to the Knesset '[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs' and a former Israeli chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan, once likened Palestinians to cockroaches scurrying in a bottle."  ("Israeli racism threatens the futures of both Israelis and Palestinians," Palestine Monitor, 7/30/01)

But, then, that's just the way that Israel views you and me, as well:   "Our race is the Master Race.  We Jews are divine gods on this planet.  We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects.  In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best.  Other races are considered as human excrement.  Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races.  Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron.  The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves."  (Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a speech to the Knesset [Israeli Parliament], quoted by Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts," New Statesman, June 25, 1982)

So much for the myth of poor Israel being a victim.  Surely, that is enough to get you mad, isn't it?

Yep.  Just Arabs.  Here, aside from so many poor souls that you and I burned alive in recent days, as proven by the picture above, let me show you a picture of somebody else who is Lebanese:

"B-b-b-but ..... that .... that's ... 'That Girl!'" you exclaim.  Yes.  Yes, it is.  Marlo Thomas, daughter of Danny Thomas, both of them beloved entertainers and performers to so many Americans.  Danny Thomas was the son of two of America's many Lebanese immigrants.  Legal immigrants, too, I might add.  Legal immigrants who learned English and paid their own way, never once asking for a handout, all the while contributing to the intricately beautiful tapestry that once was America.

Do we now have it clear that we are not talking about barnyard animals dying horrible, agonizing deaths that you and I finance?  You might as well track down Marlo and set her ablaze yourself, you know.  Or would you rather hire a hit man to do the job for you?  Uncle Sam and Israel both are available, it seems.  For a price.  A price that you and I pay every day with our taxes.

Just how mad did you say you are becoming?

A Lesson in Turning Points

Early in 1970, then-President Richard Nixon announced that he had expanded the Viet Nam war by ordering the invasion of neighboring Cambodia.  Just a few months earlier, the My Lai massacre of Viet Namese civilians by American soldiers had been disclosed, over eighteen months after it had occurred, causing a huge public outcry throughout the world. 

Already seething with resentment, Nixon's expansion of the war led a great many college campuses to burst into full rebellion.  Kent State University, located in Kent, Ohio, saw its Army ROTC building burnt to the ground after Ohio's governor ordered the state's National Guard onto campus. 

Two days later, on May 4, 1970, during a massive campus demonstration involving approximately 2,000 students, some threw tear gas canisters back at National Guardsmen who attempted to break up the rally.  Bayonets fixed, 77 Guardsmen advanced toward the crowd, then withdrew when the students refused to give ground.  The crowd followed at a short distance.  29 of the guardsmen opened fire and, less than a minute later, 4 students lay dead and several others had been wounded, some quite severely.  For objecting.  To an unpopular war.  A war in which America dropped napalm on civilians.  A war in which American troops committed atrocities and war crimes.  Dead.  For objecting.  In America.

Kent State, which so horrified middle America, marked the beginning of the end for the Viet Nam war and the beginning of the end of Nixon's presidency, though both actually were to end years later and ostensibly for other reasons.  I remember, though - Kent State is where it all turned around.  Yes, Nixon did get reelected after that.  But only because the execrable Henry Kissinger, Nixon's Secretary of State, flat out lied to America just days prior to the 1972 election, proclaiming (about the still-raging and ever more unpopular Viet Nam war): "Peace is at hand."  Desperate for peace at any price, America chose not to rock an obviously-sinking boat.  It was a mistake, as time well proved.  A mistake for which a great many more Viet Namese and American soldiers paid with their lives.

A mistake that we keep making, unfortunately, simply because we choose to believe what our allegedly elected officials tell us.  Because Americans tend to dismiss people like myself as anti-government extremists, foaming at the mouth with disinformation.  Never mind that I have been right, all along, about Bush, then Afghanistan, then Iraq and, now, Israel's treatment of Palestinian and Lebanese women and children.  Never mind that people like I have been telling America the truth and the monstrously-evil cabal now astride America has been lying through puppets like George Bush.  Still, people want to believe government and its lapdog controlled press.

There are Liars...and then There are Liars

When it comes to lies, the current American regime makes Nixon's look positively saint like.  Rather than recount the many lies told us by Bush and the Satanic Neocon horde that carries him along, better I should ask you to tell me when he ever has told us the truth.  And Israel?  Well, lying truly is its raison d'etre.  Israel's motto, in fact, is  "By deception, we shall do war."  Israel quite literally does not know how to tell the truth.

Speaking of Israel, take a moment now and go back up and look at those two photos of Lebanese people.

How mad did you say you are?  Mad enough to make a difference?  Mad enough to risk being part of another Kent State rally?  Prove it. 

Do something.  Do anything, but do something.  Anti-war rallies are scheduled all over the world.  Prove just how mad you really are and I proudly will stand beside you.  There are a great many other things I should tell you to do, but that would just get us both thrown in jail.

New America.  An idea whose time has come.

My name is Edgar J. Steele.  Thanks for listening.  Please visit my web site, www.ConspiracyPenPal.com, for other messages just like this one.