Dear Gathering of Eagles,

First, let me thank you for reading all of my members-speak posts. I know it takes a real thinker to be able to get down and appreciate the true value of my intellectual analysis on such philosophical topics as non-violence, use of force in armed conflict, and the spread of militarism into American culture. Thank you for taking the time to thoroughly digest the ideas which, to an uninitiated, hate-mongering coward of an intellect, might invoke a degree of temerity. I deeply appreciate your thoughtful reflections on all IVAW members-speak postings (which can admittedly be lengthy and verbose,) particularly when you insulted my mother, and compared my photo to Timothy McVeigh's. Your capable musings on my mother and my appearance and belie your true scholastic and academic prowess. Whereas any lesser man would have succumbed to my pitiful attempts at crude, uninformed analysis of the complex situation in Iraq where I spent a year as an intelligence analyst, you great Eagles of Free Speech were first to respond with your own version of (dare I call it) Reality. I also appreciate your diligence in keeping up with my latest and greatest; the trivial musings of this humble army veteran.

I would, however, like to correct you on several points: I never claimed to pass out flags to Iraqi children, and I have yet to meet a real Eagle in person. You must have mistaken me with one of my numerous, similarly clean-cut, youthful and good-looking fellow IVAW members. I should also thank you for contributing to the image I so carefully cultivate: omnipresent Peace activism (the highest calling.)

Also, thank you for inquiring, but I do happen to know which side is up on the American flag. If you had caught me on a bad day, you might have correctly assumed that I forgot which end of the American flag goes in which direction; however, I must inform that I wear the flag upside down on my shoulder ON PURPOSE. This may come as a shock (even to a Great Eagle- or Cub- Scout) but the American flag is renowned the world over as the standard of Death, Destruction, Imperialism, Economic Pillaging, and slavery; even the Roman and Nazi fasces were never so hated! Indeed, it is the moniker of hatred and inequality: the universal symbol of clumsy evil which has devastated numerous lands & peoples, and destroyed billions of lives. Don't believe me? Ask your friendly liberated Iraqis who you love so much.

I do have some doubts as to the nature of your honor, which, debatably, should not be left out of my moral calculation of your Great Gathering of Patriotic Eagles: chiefly your sham patriotism-cum-nationalism-cum-fascism. I know that many of you claim to have “served” this nation; I ponder the nature of your “services” and the inherent honor of it. But, instead of burdening you with more of my tiresome rhetoric, I will attempt to boil-down my thoughts on you and your kind to something more manageable for those of us who don't like apologetic pretense.

Whores can serve their country honorably. In fact, I think that many whores have served America more honorably than most of you. And what is honor? To paraphrase Shakespeare's Henry V on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, “[Your] honor is all just a bunch of ceremonial fluff.” (Like the down feathers on a pack of carrion-feeding, scavaging, foul-mouthed Eagles gathered at a Peace Protest.) I consider it the highest form of Honor to dissociate myself from your inverted principles of 'honor' and faux-patriotism. In fact, I cannot rightly express my pure pleasure at being opposed to your thoughtless [mis]conceptions of “honor” and “service”: it would be something a militaristic Eagle might only understand in the metaphor of dropping bombs on innocent children.

But let me shove the butcher-knife of my moral analysis a little deeper into your avian brains.
At first I wondered to myself why an Eagle would bother reading my boring rants. Then your magnificent red-white-and-blue allusions to Force, Power, and Projection led me to the sudden stark realization that you are scared.

So read my words here, Eagles, and understand. I see through your phony facades. Make no mistake, you are terrified, not “terrorized”. You are cowards to the very core, and you are scared of the moral judgment that awaits you soon. You turn and run from the new America that is being built, and you hide in your online forums, peering out suspiciously at the vast majority of Americans who know what you are all about. You hide behind the police when you show up at Peace rallies. You hide behind beards, biker-jackets, and terms like “honor.” You joined the Navy or the Air Force during peacetime and collect a pension, pretending that you are great patriot heroes living from righteous sinecures. You are small-minded men. You are cowards, and that is why you insult my mother and make innate comparisons of my picture to a terrorist's.

Now, you may think I hold this against you, but you are wrong. I don't have time to hold anything against you. I am too busy moving on with my life. Why then, you ask, am I writing this letter? Simple. To help you understand. I feel sorry for you, really. I am sorry that you are forced to invoke the stale bald-eagle as your totem of raging, jaundiced cowardice. I am sorry that you cannot find the force of will to truly understand my writings or my colleagues. I am sorry that you are living in a cave of extremist zeal because of a few PTSD-suffering Iraq vets who you aren't near smart enough to comprehend. I am sorry that, in your haste to “defend,” you have become the comical fascist equivalents to cave-dwelling Osama Bin Laden, being (ideologically) defeated, but embedded deep in your own fear.

From the bottom of my heart: I hope that, before your lives are over, you see the error of your ways. I pray that, before God judges you as morally corrupt, you come to realize the truly degraded nature of your pale, bald, thieving, cowardly Eagle nature. I pray that you never have to endure an American-armed death squad like the ones you have helped to create in Iraq. I pray that you will be able to see firsthand the ghosts of the billions of dead, exploited peoples around the Earth whose deaths you sanctioned and whose silenced voices scare you into your primeval state of fear, inspiring you to call IVAW names.

I pray that you someday face the ghosts of your policies, your ignorance and your shame. And I pray that you can find the courage to defend your own morality before invoking lies against your concieved enemies.

Peace, and non-violence, always,

Evan M. Knappenberger
A co. 1STB, 4th Infantry
2003-2007, Taji, Iraq