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ArthurinCali's avatar

A lifetime ago in the mid-2000s I was on deployment in the Northern Persian Gulf right off the coast of Iraq and Iran. Our primary mission was establishing and maintaining a security perimeter around the offshore oil platforms KAAOT and ABOT in support of re-establishing the oil capacity output for Iraq.

After a month or so of chasing away fishing and transport Dhows, warily eyeing Iranian cigar gunboats and generally being on edge, I realized the stupidity of the situation. I joked to our Commanding Officer that instead of United States Navy tags on our uniforms we should get some ExxonMobil badges. My logic being that we should represent who we were actually working for. He didn’t like my humor for some reason.

Dying or being injured in the service of defending the nation is one thing. Risking American lives so a fat cat oil executive can buy another house on the shores of Lake Tahoe wasn’t what I signed up for.

Nor was I very appreciative of being a piece on the geopolitical meat chess board for NeoCon ambitions. "Democracy™ and degenerate values spread via globohomo GAE at the barrel of a gun is what the globe resists, and rightly so.

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Grundvilk's avatar

Well, no argument there as far as description of conditions is concerned. Most rural people I know, however, put just their heads down and keep moving and paying attention as well as they can -- and usually this is sufficient to the task. It is not they 'busy themselves with their lives'as a means for defusing overall misery, it is that they see and live that as their responsibility. Hypotheses about bg picture cause and effect seem to be the provenance of more urban types with much smaller back yards and less complex and less satisfying daily and seasonal occupations and duties.

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