Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4

December 30, Email to Representative Ron Paul

Dear Congressman Paul,

I received a copy of an article containing your Patriot Act II concerns from a good friend, Kay Lucas, one of the directors of the Crawford Peace House. I agree with you. My name is Captain Eric May, a former Army intelligence and public affairs officer who has become an antiwar warrior. I marched on Bush in Crawford this summer with Candance Robison (Military Families Speak Out), wife of my brother officer Lt. Robison in Iraq. (Candance was the brave lady who also stood up to bully Sean Hannity on fascist Fox Network.) I read a speech at the antiwar rally that day, based on military essays I’d written for the papers in past years warning against invading Iraq.

I keep in touch with folks like Kay and Candance because they are committed, serious peace activists – as I am, and as I hope you are, too. I believe we are all building-blocks of a network of people – an underground, like the Underground Railroad that liberated American slaves when American government tolerated that evil. We’re a new group of Americans who are acting the way courageous Americans have acted during past periods of repression, like the freedom marchers, riders and sitters-in of the 1960’s. [Editor’s emphasis, in all cases]

We are trying to weather a civil-liberties repression by a mentally-imbalanced man who received the presidency as a family gift in a millennial election – and interprets all of these things with a Fundamentalist’s world view! George W. Bush believes he is anointed by God and on a mission from God – and his adherents call this his conviction. If he weren’t so powerful any fool would talk about him as a screw-up, country club kid who’d gotten a bit of structure in his life with a supporting family and a structured if narrow theology. We would wish him the best and suppose that he would get on just fine – as long as he wasn’t entrusted with responsibilities great enough to upset his iffy balance. Heaven help us all!

George W. Bush has entered a regional war (remember, it’s two countries now) because of the kind of military delusions common to leaders who inherit powerful militaries – and the excuse to use them. His character is going the way of far-greater men such as Alexander and Frederick. But the similarity is superficial. Both the great warriors were brilliant students of war and history before they went to war, so they had far better (military) results. Not that a successful imperial war does anyone that much good, since all of them entail the same domestic agenda of repression at home. The Jingo Jihad George (XL)III has been proclaiming will make it so that home is no longer “home,” it’s just the Rear Area of Operations (RAO), and “abroad” is not the quicksand of entanglements that George Washington warned us away from in his valedictory address, it’s just the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA). We should get good and used to martial acronyms, since it’s martial law that we will face if things escalate (and George hopes they do – he might even help them along...).

Considerations like these led me to write a gloomy prediction of things to come at the beginning of the war:

“Our plan for a quick knockout – the classic aim of blitz warfare – is disappearing, and a protracted war means more time for international frictions to spark new conflicts with an irritable U.S. government. Britain has lined up with us, not to forget Italy, Spain and sundry others. But Germany, France, Russia and Turkey seem to have lined up against us, not to forget the public opinion of the Islamic world. NATO is split. The Arab world wants to convene a General Assembly of the United Nations to condemn us. Meanwhile, North Korea is threatening a nuclear tantrum and Japan is leaning toward rearmament. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has recently said that the world is at its most dangerous point since the Cold War. A question frightens me: With all this geopolitical jostling, just how many mistakes are we away from World War Three?

“Military intelligence officers are accustomed to being told that their field is a contradiction in terms, and that they are the bearers of bad news and worst-case scenarios. But it seems to me that fortune is no longer smiling on our heroic liberation of Iraq, and I’m afraid we may learn too late that we have stepped into quicksand.” (Eric May, Visions of Stalingrad: Claim victory in Iraq now, Houston Chronicle Outlook, April 3, 2003)

It was all a bit ahead of the pack, but mainstream columnists began to popularize the term quicksand a month later, then even Rush Limbaugh began to use it…

I appreciate your forwarding the Patriot Act II email to me, and I’ll pass it along to my little “underground,” which involves some rather fraidy-cat but fun media folks. One of my friends, Thom Shanker of the New York Times, is as nervous as a (Thom) cat in a room full of rocking chairs! He’s over at the Pentagon… I sent Thom some wolf fangs for Christmas (wanted to put some teeth in his writing), but he said that they were slow in getting to him because of some kind of bio-alert – things are getting kinda shaky all over, I suppose. Well, we can count on one thing in these times of crisis: George (XL)III, like George III his predecessor, will not give up his imperial schemes – worse, far worse, he will seek to expand them until we have dictatorship at home and world war abroad, because the one will entail the other as surely as yin entails yang.

We are like the blind folks who have been groping around in the dark (the corporate media blackout) to discover that the beast threatening our Liberty is an elephantine police state, unleashed by a royal screw-up named George against dissenters to militarize America. He abuses a credulous public (with plenty of media amplification) by saying that he is taking emergency measures for our protection? I don’t feel very protected, do you? As I write we’re in a high terrorist alert (Code Orange) according to the government. Naw, Boy George wants the same things now that he wanted when he decided to mislead us to war: revenge, redemption and resources.

Now that we know what we’re up against, we must move from groping around the beast to grappling with it. I know it seems impossible, but Neolithic folks hunted mastodons, and this is just an elephant! There are plenty enough of us for the job. Besides, I’ve got a mean, crazy streak when it comes to standing up for my country, and I learned it while serving it three decades in Army green, including some time volunteering for the first Gulf War under the former President Bush. I’m sure I’m obeying my constitutional oath as an officer now by vowing my opposition to this illegal militaristic madness. I am operating in conjunction with my friends with a simple plan and goal:

We act within the Constitution to restore the Constitution! If you agree with this plan and goal, then you’re an ally.

We must continue to network, as Kay Lucas of the Peace House did with us, and as 125 of us did in the hot days of summer when we laid siege to King George in Texas, sticking in his imperial side like another Alamo. I’m proud to say that I was cited for criminal trespass for showing up at the Crawford burger stand Boy George loves to visit (as a photo op with Powell, etc.). I went there in my dress blues, captains bars and medals, (looked just like just like Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, except I’m bald) to collect money for the Army Emergency Relief Fund to support the war widows and orphans of our soldiers in Iraq – and was rousted by the authorities for my un-American activities! I smiled about it philosophically and stuck the police papers on the wall of my little office in the underground when I got home, next to a letter from Thom Shanker and pictures of my loved ones.

Keep fighting the only good fight: the one where we act with conscience and courage as true Americans, for America is rightly the beacon – not the bane – of conscience and courage – the land of the free, and the home of the brave. I extend my compliments to each of you. May success shine on our cause, and may your sacrifices be seeds for a better future. You may be called upon to make the kind of sacrifices that Tom once wrote about. No, not Thom (Shanker) of the Times – he keeps his nose close to the grindstone so his eyes won't see too much nowadays! And not Tom Cruise from the movie, although he did a good job of imitating martial arts and gave a hint of warrior ethics. Nope, I’m talking about a far nobler, greater Tom than either of the above mentioned talented gentlemen, whose last name was Jefferson. Tom said that the tree of liberty must be nourished from time to time by the blood of patriots, and I’ve got a feeling that if he were here right now (and who’s to say he’s not?) he’d be smiling at our underground correspondence, proud that the American Revolution isn’t dead, and that monarchy is still despised by a free people!

Your Comrade in the Cause,

Captain Eric H. May, MI, USA

Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4