Dear Dirty America

The Army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, received what the media is calling “glowing evaluations” by his supervisors months before he went on a killing spree which resulted in thirteen dead and more than thirty wounded. The reports praised Hasan’s expertise on Middle East culture, and remarked that he’d make a fine Army officer.

What the report didn’t mention was the impressive poise Hasan had while shooting his unarmed colleagues at close range. His “unique skills” were lauded, but those skills didn’t include carrying out a shocking rampage.

All the technological advances in the world could not have curbed the violence that happened at Fort Hood. No amount of spying or snooping could have shown us that Maj Hasan was going to kill his colleagues before he did. His religious beliefs, as well as the actions of the United States armed forces overseas, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have been the motivation to cause Hasan to “switch sides” in this war on terrorism.

The example of Hasan shows us that we’ll never beat this ambiguous enemy called terrorism. We’re never going to stop every individual act of violence against a government or body of people, nor are we able to detect every plan someone has to murder fellow humans. And every time innocent humans, cheaply referred to as casualties or collateral damage, are killed in the pursuit of hunting terrorists, we lose the battle again.

We’ve relinquished our rights and freedoms in hope to end all terrorism, but that will never happen and Maj Hasan’s case at Fort Hood is proof. It’s far more dangerous to allow our rulers in the government and military industrial complex to brutalize humans around the globe through predator drone strikes and hasty, bloody invasions, with the overarching justification of routing terrorism.

The very word itself–Terrorism–is purposefully meaningless and vague, and is malleable enough to be used as reasonable cause for a multitude of ulterior motives pursued by major world players.

Defeating this word, terrorism, is never going to happen, and our leaders know it. It’s being used as a pretense to pillage and control vast populations and world resources by using the United States’ vast treasure and bloated military might. It’s a sham. Terrorism will never be shot to death or stomped out or blown apart by Hellfire missiles. Terrorism is a game that will never end, which is why it is an invaluable word, concept, and eternal foe held up before us.

It’s a ruse and we’ve given everything we had as a nation to indulge the psychopaths who propagate the madness in our names. We’ve given up our blood our treasure and our sacred Bill of Rights so a few greedy authoritarians can make decisions on our behalf, and those decisions are violent, destructive, irrational decisions meant to extract the wealth from our once enormous middle class system into the coffers of global banks and multinational corporations, as well as gain control over the world’s resources.

The spy grid is in place, as we are learning week by week, and we may never be able to derail it or escape it. Technology has sneaked up on us, and the only chance we have left is not physical confrontation but complete dismissal of those in power who use and continue to build the system that has ensnared us. We must support each other, and especially those who bring into the light various elements of hidden truths, such as Bradley Manning has, as well as Edward Snowden. We must support the journalists who dare to continue to expose the corruption, and we must ignore the mainstream networks that do not bring us truth, but instead work overtime to reprint and broadcast the deceptive statements and hollow explanations of corrupted politicians and special interest groups.

The fear of being killed by a terrorist, which is less likely to happen than being killed by a swarm of honeybees, has become the irrational heartbeat of a nation that has allowed its politicians to conduct themselves like virtuous tyrants, yet in another era, in another age, the very same actions would have been considered treasonous.