Terrorist=Someone with a Bomb, but no Air Force

Many years ago, I lived near Moffett Air Force Base, and for two years, attended the Blue Angels show on 4th of July.

In some sort of dissociative state, I watched the precision flying with enjoyment, as if it were synchronized swimming or something innocuous like that.

Then I invited my Dad to go. He refused, pointing out that the purpose of those planes was to terrorize people and to drop bombs on them. Plus, it was a giant waste of energy.

I didn't go again.

But one year, as I was getting my mail, with my back to the base, a Blue Angel bomber flew very low over my head. I didn't hear it until it was over me, it was flying so fast.

Now I know what my Dad meant by terror! My heart was pounding, and I went inside and called the base to complain. Some sort of community soother calmed me down and promised that it wouldn't happen again. He told me that it was the last year the Blue Angels would fly there.

Lucky me, to be an American, and to be able to complain.

When the US attacked Iraq with their "shock and awe", which is very clearly an euphemism for raining terror on people, 24 hours a day, for days on end, how many people cared about the human beings on the receiving end?

I heard testimony about a woman whose two teenaged daughters couldn't take it. They were crying and screaming, so her husband and she and the kids got into the car to get out of Baghdad. They came to a roadblock of American soldiers.

As it happened, her husband had gone to college in the US., and spoke English very well. He got out of the car to explain to the soldiers that his daughters were terrified, and needed to leave the targeted area.

The soldiers killed him. Then they killed her kids.

I think about that man often. He came to America and met the tolerant, educated, friendly sort of Americans. Did he ever run into the nasty, ignorant, violent kind before that day? (At least, in person. Obviously, he had been a victim from the air). What did he think as he died?

Howard Zinn, like my Dad, was in WWll and came out with a hatred of war. I paraphrased his observation on terrorists for the title of this post. It says a lot about Americans that they think that someone with explosives around his waist is a despicable terrorist, but dropping bombs on people 24 hours a day is something to be proud of.