Against All Enemies

http://www.ivaw.org/node/1957





Against All Enemies
by Clifton Hicks | Thu, 10/25/2007 - 6:43pm

My name is Clifton Hicks, I volunteered to fight in Iraq when I was seventeen years old, three of my best friends died there. The first burned to death when his tank was hit by a rocket, the second was shot by a sniper, and the third was blown to pieces by an IED. Four years later I stand before you in the name of Peace and Liberty, and I stand with you against the illegal, immoral, and unnecessary occupation of Iraq.

When I joined the Army, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, be they foreign or domestic. To this day I still live by that oath. In October of 2003, I was ordered to join the 1st Squadron of the 1st United States Cavalry Regiment, which had been in combat for five months just south of Baghdad. When I got there, they gave me an M16 rifle and a bullet proof vest, and in exchange for this, they took from me my soul, and my conscience, and for ten months, every single aspect of my humanity. They told me to forget everything I'd ever known or thought I knew, they told me to shoot first and to ask questions later, they told me that if I wanted to survive, I would turn myself into a machine. Well I wanted to survive. So I shut my mouth, and I shut my ears and my heart, and I didn't hear the screaming of the people that died, or the pleading of the women who’s husbands we took away in the night, or the motherless children who begged for food and water. It was easy for me to ignore these things, to pretend that they didn’t affect me, because I was so afraid. I was afraid of dying, more afraid of being crippled, and even more afraid of what might happen to me if I was ever captured. I was so afraid of this that I swore that I would never surrender to the enemy, and for this purpose, I kept a spare bullet with me at all times, so that I could take my own life if necessary.

By the time I was nineteen I had learned that the natural human reaction to fear is hatred, shortly followed violence. Because any Iraqi might potentially pose a threat, all were treated as the enemy, and eventually, as casualties mounted and families fell apart back home, abusing them was seen as a simple matter of revenge. Wether it be demolishing their homes with our tanks, handcuffing and publicly beating them in front of their families, destroying their livestock and burning down their places of business, kid-napping entire male populations of villages to be tortured in secret prisons, refusing basic medical care to mothers with dying children, cheering from roof-tops while entire apartment complexes were leveled by C-130 gun ships, or even covering up the wrongful deaths of local civilians. I speak not of rumors or of hear-say, I speak of what I have seen with my own eyes, and what I have done with my own hands. Because of our hatred for the Iraqis, and the fear and mistrust of our own corrupt and abusive leadership, none of these occurrences were ever questioned, they were simply accepted as the way things had to be.

Now I’m not here to tell you war stories, and I’m not here to shock you, none of these things should come as a surprise to any of you. We’ve seen it all before throughout history; the countless times we’ve murdered each other by the thousands, and by the millions, over nothing. Wether we’re talking about Iraq, or Vietnam, the 1st World War, or even our own Civil War, all of these tragedies, these fools’ errands, they’ve all had one thing in common besides fear, hatred, and death. All of them directly resulted from the same pointless and idiotic logic, the same greed for wealth and power, and the same disregard for the sanctity of human life.

Well I don't know about you folks, but I for one am sick and tired of being thrown to the lions every time some high-born coward decides that we need another war. I came here today, to send a message to these lying, yellow-bellied, chicken-hawks in Washington, that the American people are against this stupid war, and that the American people will not stand for it any longer.

I want to tell you about a conversation I had with my father just the other day. He told me something that really stuck in my mind. Dad was stationed in the Middle East back in the 60's and his father fought in the Pacific during the 2nd World War. What he said was this; “History has well proven that the United States cannot be defeated from without. It can only be defeated from within.” Now these scumbags that run our country have been lying to us for years now, telling us that it’s, “Better to fight ‘em over there, than over here.” Well what they’ve never told us is that the enemy is already here, and they never came from places like Iraq, or Vietnam, or Iran. They were born and raised right here in the United States, and they all live about 800 miles North of here, right across the Potomac River, in a filthy, rotten cesspool called Washington, D.C.


http://www.ivaw.org/node/1957

:patriot:

this kid is just a whining FAKE Soldier. If he were brave like the patriots on right wing god bless america radio he would understand the need for never ending war without explanation. He should listen to real men like toby keith and hear the patriotism just drip from their music.