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The poet Gil Scott-Heron wrote: "I had said I wasn't gonna write no more poems like this, but the dogs are in the streets." 

Two young men have returned home dead. A Brownsville boy was laid to rest a few weeks ago. These soldiers were hailed as heroes. Why are they heroes? Is the government using the term "hero" to brainwash its subjects? Shouldn't heroes be the products of heroic crusades? What is heroic about Afghanistan and soldiers manning posts all over the world? Is our imperialistic nation establishing bases within easier reach of the oil fields? Our soldiers aren't dying to save our democracy. They are dying to save our economy.

I have little confidence in our government protecting either our democracy or our economy. Our politicians spew their nationalistic and religious rhetoric, but I have neither trust nor faith in them. Their present and past records speak for themselves. Since the days of Carter, the oil producing countries of the Middle East have served us notice that they will squeeze our balls tighter and tighter as long as we remain addicted to their black heroin.

There is no difference when it comes to the Democrats and the Republicans. The fate of the transnational companies is more important to them than their citizens. They don't love their country. They love the firms that put money into their pockets and take care of their families and friends.

I was raised during the Vietnam War. My parents said I would betray the family if I joined the military. I had no desire to join the military. When I was a teenager, the losers joined the military. I didn't know one person of the 55,000 who died in that war. I didn't know one person who entered the military. The veterans returning from overseas and joining us in college classrooms congratulated us on our good sense.

They said that a bunch of gooks weren't worth the ultimate sacrifice. They did say that the dope was great and the pussy was greater. They said that when you ate a Vietnamese chick and brought her to a climax, it was like a dam breaking in your face. It was an image that has stuck with me. There were also the Thailand tales. I have lived a life of sexual frustration deprived of those carnal experiences.

A week didn't go by in those days that a local boy didn't die blown to bits in a rice paddy, but the unlucky victim was white trash or barrio basura or ghetto black. The middle class boys attending school may have found smoking dope and fucking gals closer to home less exciting, but it was much safer. The high point of the Vietnam War was the demonstrations in the Bay Area. They were a perfect excuse for smoking more dope and fucking more gals.

I have told my sons I would disown them if they joined the military. They have replied that they would disown me if I attempted to convince them to join the military. The volunteer military is a scam. The government knows that a military filled with middle-class boys wouldn't tolerate the farces and fiascoes of our foreign intrigues. There would be riots in every major U.S. city demanding withdrawals from Afghanistan if children from the country club were on the next transport plane deploying them. Intelligent people recognize dead-end endeavors.

The government has decided to exploit the ignorant instead. These under-educated individuals face dreary futures. There are no good-paying jobs. There are no exits from their trailer parks or barrios or ghettos. The military is their only option. The military sends poor whites, browns and blacks to recruit more poor whites, browns and blacks to do Uncle Sam's dirty work. The army, navy, air force and marines call killing the fanatics in the Middle East and Muslim Asia and African their patriotic duty. How many more years and how many more deaths before we will have fulfilled our patriotic duty?

Who in his right mind can have confidence in our Democrats and Republicans to resolve our foreign and domestic woes? The puppeteers are manipulating the marionettes while those free of strings stand on the sidelines and say nothing as long as they don't have to risk life and limb in the fray.

These recent deaths and the hundreds if not thousands who preceded them didn't die for our freedoms. Our freedoms aren't at stake in Afghanistan. Quite the contrary. We are risking our freedoms in Afghanistan by weakening ourselves in these vain endeavors. The weaker the country, the fewer the freedoms.

As much as we dislike the people of Afghanistan, their denizens hate us more. We are hated throughout the world for our self-deceiving love. But hate is a part of the human condition. It is the reason the violence never ceases.

How do we resolve these bloody situations? In the same manner we would take out a killer in a neighborhood. We descend upon the target with our sophisticated weaponry and massive numbers. In Afghanistan we unleash our might and attack with our special forces. We eliminate as much of the enemy as possible and raze their facilities. Blow them back to the Middle Ages. Then we exit.

Enough with the ideologies. Keep it simple. We punish those who commit crimes against us, but this fixation with nation building on the part of both Democrats and Republicans makes no sense when our nation's infrastructure is crumbling.

I don't like writing columns like this, but the dogs are in the street as the poet says. How can I remain silent when I think that my sons might be cannon fodder? I don't want to receive their dead bodies draped in flags to cover up the wrong-doing.

Our government abuses the good intentions of our young men and women for a bad cause. Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran and North Korea are bad causes. How long will we allow our good people to be duped into bad causes? Three young men are being laid to rest for the most honorable of intentions. That is the reason for their heroism. Their hearts were pure, but they didn't realize that they were nothing more than cogs in a machine that has spit them out.

How many more ignorant white, brown and black bodies will the machine spit out? Those figures won't include the best and the brightest. They know better. Their parents know better. Rather than the military, the universities are recruiting these boys and girls. The day the military dares recruit college kids, that day will be the beginning of the end of our endless wars.