This post officially NOT for children

Well, I'm upset. A family member sent me the following "joke"...

Osama bin Laden was being guarded by two American army reservists, one an
Indiana farmer, and one an engineer. They come across a lantern and a Genie
popped out of it. "I will give each of you one wish, which is three wishes
total," says the Genie.


The Hoosier said, "I am a farmer, my dad was a farmer, and my son will also
farm. I want the land to be forever fertile in Indiana." Pooooof! With the
blink of the Genie's eye, the land in Indiana was forever made fertile for
farming.

Osama bin Ladin was amazed, so he said, "I want a wall around Afghanistan,
Iraq and Iran so that no infidels, Jews or Americans can come into our
precious states." Pooooof! Again, with the blink of the Genie's eye, there
was a huge wall around those countries.

The American engineer says, "I am very curious. Please, tell me more about
this wall." The Genie explained, "Well, it's about 500 feet high, 50 ft
thick and completely surrounds the countries. Nothing can get in or out --
it's virtually impenetrable."

The American engineer says, "Fill it with water"

Here is my question. When did genocide become fucking funny?
Now I know that de-humanization is a military and imperialist teaching to make it easier to fight the battles that one has to fight. But if the above "joke" was done with an Englishman, A Jew, and Hitler... is it fucking funny? No it's genocidal insanity. WTF???

We are in a "war" in which the de-humanization of the CIVILIANS has reached a point that the only casualty numbers we care about in this country are American soliders. They aren't even COUNTING the number of Iraqis that have been killed. Conservative estimates are around 10K... and that's the low side. Gods damn it all, that's over 3 times the number killed on 9-11... when is enough enough?

And then to advocate genocide of the Iraqi, Iranian, and Afghani people as a fucking joke is too much. It's shit like this that DOES embarras me to be American. I support our troops completely... I support the idea of them getting to come home. This is a fucked up war engineered by a group of fucked up little men. I cannot even FATHOM the real reasons we are there. We've been told so many stories as to why we must respond to Saudi terrorists by killing Iraqi civilians. Logic has no place here... begone.

I love this country... but like a mature partner, I can be embarrased and ashamed at the same time. Daddy isn't always right.

You know what... this joke that set me off could be 100x better by changing the punchline. Instead of "Fill it with water" (fucking genocidal asshole), how does "Make Osama a woman" work? It both draws attention to the plight of women in fundamentalist Islamic nations and has a touch of irony at the same time... oh, and it's not mass murder, always a plus.

I once postulated that we could better spend the money we are pouring into KILLING Iraqis, to help people around the globe. To this, I had a fundamentalist x-tian friend tell me that "It's not America's job to feed the world." Is it our job to kill it? We seem to be pretty damn good at that. How very chistlike a concept. I'm sure Jesus would have said the same thing... "Not my job to feed them... suffer the children to bugger the fuck off?" Sounds like the christ I've read about... how about you?

The concept of terrorism is not a concept that can be fought with guns. For every person you kill (or torture... ) you just cement the concept further into the minds of those who hold it. If a bomb accidentally kills a persons mother, or wife, or child, he will be more likely to take up arms against you. We are making our "enemies" stronger through our policies, not weaker. Sun Tzu would be shitting a giant purple twinkie at the current situation.

And all this came from a "joke". Well, I'm not laughing!