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Kenyon Ralph
Branch of service: Marine Corps Reserve (USMCR)
Unit: 3rd Civil Affairs Group
Rank: Sergeant
Home: Del Mar, California
Served in:
See the IVAW San Diego chapter website and blog. Kenyon Ralph is 24 years old and grew up in San Diego, California. He joined the Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program in October 2000 and went to boot camp in July 2001. He was in boot camp during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Kenyon served for nearly 6 years in 3rd Civil Affairs Group, one of two civil affairs units in the Marine Corps. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 for the initial attack, and again in 2004 for the subsequent occupation. He is now a computer engineering student at the University of California, San Diego and an avid surfer. Kenyon has been a member of IVAW since May 2007. Kenyon initially accepted the government's propaganda for the Iraq mission, but has since become disillusioned. He attributes his disillusionment to a quality education provided by the public schools of California, fomenting his critical thinking skills, as well as simply paying closer attention to world events and seeking non-mainstream news coverage and commentary. He thinks there is much truth to the bumper‐sticker‐friendly aphorism "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." Links:
Now switching to first‐person mode. The question is WHY? Why are our countrymen fighting and dying and sustaining various injuries and illnesses in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why are we spending so much money? Nobody has yet given me a satisfactory answer. Do we want the oil? Nah, couldn't be that. We would never be so imperialistic and greedy to do such a thing as invade a region for its resources. How old‐fashioned and uncivilized. (That's sarcasm.) Are we fighting terrorists? No, we're creating more terrorists by being there and our other foreign activities. What is a terrorist anyway? Does anyone question our government's relentless use of the term "terrorist" with anybody it deems undesirable? Perhaps we should take a more rational approach to the universe than the meat cleaver approach Bush "The Decider on a Mission from God" takes. Sorry, rational thinking might require us to forget 9/11 for a moment. But then we can get back to placing "never forget" stickers on everything, like the good, emotion‐activated sheeple they want us to be. Are we bringing freedom to the Middle East? If this is freedom, I don't even want to know what unfreedom is. This reason just makes me laugh. Did we suddenly wake up one day after 9/11 and decide that it would be a good idea to bring freedom to the Middle East, courtesy of Blackwater, Halliburton, and Jesus? Was it such a necessary mission that we had to concoct WMD lies and al‐Qaeda links to deceive and convince the world of its urgent necessity? Sure, I think there is room for improvement in the Middle East – there is room for improvement everywhere. But it is laughable to me that anybody thinks, of all organizations, the US government is a good choice for liberators of the Middle East. Just look at the history of how the US government has handled Native American Indian affairs, for one thing. The government rarely does anything right. The way I see it, we have two viable options for improving the Iraq situation. One, go apeshit crazy (no offense to civilized apes everywhere) destroying and killing almost everything, or two, end the occupation and get all US people and property out of the country as soon as possible. Obviously the first option is not a very good idea. It might eliminate the violence, insurgency, and "terrorists", but only because there would be nobody left. Even then, Iraq would be flooded with foreign enemies we create in the process. That leaves the option of exiting Iraq. Is that a false dichotomy? Yes, but we're currently pursuing the third option: to maintain the status quo, slogging and clambering along, surging and launching pointless offensives occasionally, wasting taxpayer money, squandering citizens' lives, all to nobody's benefit except the spineless politicians and corporations instigating the situation. I don't know how anybody can be in favor of the Iraq occupation at this point. In retrospect, Iraq was not really a serious threat to anybody but its own people. I concede that Saddam was a bad guy, but what we have now is worse for the world than Saddam's Iraq ever was. Even if you accepted the axis of idiots governments' attempts to justify the causes for war, its lies about scary weapons of mass destruction and scary al‐Qaeda terrorists, like I did, that does not mean you are still obliged to support the occupation. One argument I have heard for continuing to support the occupation is that we are fighting a dangerous religion which needs to be eliminated. If that were really the case, then the fight should also be taken to the White House and streets of America, because we have some dangerous religious radicals there. Physical violence will never eliminate nutty delusions. People like Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, and Sam Harris, and organizations like American Atheists and the Secular Coalition for America are fighting religious nonsense the only feasible way – by education and rhetoric. But if we leave Iraq, won't there be a civil war? This is another retort I hear. The answer is no, there already is civil war – war amongst the civilians, war between factions within the same country. The current chaos is caused in large part by the very presence of the US‐led occupation force, which we are led to believe is somehow helping quell the civil war. Thanks to the Bush administration's puerile approach to foreign policy and lack of diplomacy, the United States is now in its worst position ever on the international scene. The damage will take years to repair. Thanks to their nazi–soviet approach to domestic insecurity, it will take years to recover our civil liberties, if that even ever happens. Congress is just as useless when it comes to representing and defending citizens' rights, interests, freedoms, and liberties. On the issue of corporate influence in government, I have no problem with the corporations. I place all of the blame on the duplicitous government weasels who allow themselves to be influenced by corporations. They are the ones we expect to uphold high moral and ethical standards when we give them our trust and vote. Unfortunately it seems that doing the right thing really means being at the command of whoever contributed a sufficient dollar amount. Economies do not require a "global war on terror" to thrive. |