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CounterPunch
January
10, 2003
Dual Use for the Weird Uncle
Sam Society
By ADAM ENGEL
I'm
throwing down the gauntlet. I DEMAND satisfaction. I hereby challenge
the Usurpers of the United States of America and their Military-Industrial-Corporate-Intelligence-Everything-But-Th
e-Kitchen-Sink Complex to a duel. Yeah that's right, it's me
against THEM. Mano a Many-o. I was waiting for some pissed off
soul to be MAN enough or WOMAN enough to do it, but since nobody's
volunteering for the job as of yet, might as well be chicken-hearted
little me.
And don't go comparing me to that freak,
McVeigh. Whatever points Gore Vidal made about his motives, he
hit a "civilian" building full of workers and children.
Another Bin Laden, trained to kill by THE MAN'S army. More Blowback.
And we all know that what the wind blows back ain't hitting THE
MAN, but WE THE PEOPLE and our kids. Fuck any cracker who thinks
he's taking some kind of stand against THE MAN by blowing up
our children. That's not what this is about at all. I'm calling
for a genuine duel, fair and square. Me versus the Weird Uncle
Sam Society (WUSS) and their Military, at ten paces -- well,
maybe twenty. Gunfight at the OK corral. The five trillion dollar
death machine versus yours truly. No innocents involved. This
is personal. This is BIG.
After all, except for September 11, 2001,
nobody's openly challenged the Usurpers since WWII. And unlike
Bin Laden, I'm not some chicken-shit, disgruntled, NIMBY, ex-CIA
operative all bent outta shape cause THE MAN inevitably set up
shop in my hometown. He who sleeps with the CIA, gets raped by
the CIA, eventually. And unlike Bin Laden, whatever his motives
and if he even exists, I am not a fundamentalist terrorist sending
rubes to hit a building full of civilians then heading for the
hills to set up my own video-cult (let it be duly noted that
there are at least one billion humans who practice Islam peacefully
on this planet without getting the call to take out over-worked,
underpaid office workers in the name of Allah). Why am I talking
about Bin Laden? Fuck Bin Laden. Forget about - oh, that's right,
they already did.
This ain't so much about BLOW BACK as
TAKE BACK. Take back humanity from the WUSS garbed in the flag
like gaunt, bleak, old Uncle Sam himself pointing his bony finger
at WE THE PEOPLE cause he got his fool ass into another war and
needs new crop of blockhead canon fodder to close the deal.
Now if I remember right from Shakespeare
and Nineteenth Century novels and 1950s Westerns, a free man,
or a gentleman, could, in fact was obliged to refuse to duel
a slave, an underling, a pauper, a "savage," etc. This
was THE MAN'S way of putting folks in their place. The only way
to challenge THE MAN was to be one of HIS own. Well, I'm declaring
myself, here and now, a free man. I challenge the WUSS and their
whole damn army.
True, this might take some doing. For
instance, in order for me to duel the entire Military Machine,
the WUSS is going to have to call back all their soldiers from
all the countries the U.S. has "a presence" in (I think
there's about 80 or something, could be more). Well, call 'em
home. Nobody's challenging them (the WTC massacre was a criminal
act which should have been prosecuted in an international court,
not Kabul) anywhere else. You see Saddam throwing down the gauntlet?
Or North Korea? Or Chicken-little "bock, bock" Bin
Laden himself (assuming he exists)?
I am offering to duel the entire WUSS
military machine and every man in it, and I demand my challenge
be taken seriously.
Again, this is probably a big deal. Lotta
paperwork, troop movements, flight plans, coded messages, leaks
to the press and all that. I'm calling out the whole damn crew
- Army, Navy, Air force, Marines, CIA, NSA etc. - for this duel
and it is my right to face every single one of my opponents.
After all, I help pay their salaries. This means, at the set
date and time (these things usually happen at dawn, eh? that
sucks; really, I'm a night person to the core) the whole mega
billion dollar behemoth is gonna have to meet me and my Second
(his name's Lebowski; he's a good man; and thorough) to answer
my call. This means pulling all those troops out of South Korea,
Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and wherever the hell else they
don't belong and sending them to do the job they're paid to do,
which is defend the WUSS against ME.
Another thing I noticed about those old
duels they had way back when, before we got all civilized and
discovered the safety and convenience of DEATH FROM ABOVE, is
that those guys faced off over any stupid little thing imaginable.
"You hittin' on MY woman? I choose, you, I call you out."
"You sayin' my escutcheon's shorter than your escutcheon
and has less real creme filling? Pistols at dawn!"
So what am I dueling mad about? Well,
whatever it is, I'm sure the Media will twist it into the isolated
ravings of a lone madman after the five trillion dollar military
smokes my ass, but just for the record, it's no one thing, but
a thousand. Let's say THE FUTURE. That's kind of a big thing.
Not only has the WUSS failed to recognize the almost irreparable
harm being done to the air, land and water of this planet due
to fossil fuel consumption, but they're planning to send the
military that WE THE PEOPLE paid for to commandeer yet more oil
from foreign lands (incurring yet more Blow Back that the WUSS's
stealth bombers ain't gonna protect anybody but themselves from)
and poison humanity yet further.
More? The WUSS soiled my good name -
no small matter for us duelists - for making me complicit in
murder across the globe - South East Asia, Africa, South America,
Central America, etc. etc. - because after all it's my tax money
they're building cruise missiles with instead of schools. And
when some pissed off native of another country turns terrorist
and blows up innocent people in America, some of those innocent
people will inevitably, one day, be my loved ones, and the WUSS
could give two shits less about them, and that's enough of an
excuse for me to challenge the whole damn Machine and all it's
evil works to an honest to goodness duel.
Oh, also, Anthony Gankarski ("Come
Fly With Me", CP, 1/06/03) got hassled by tiny airport Rent-A-Nazis
- as if the air on those flying subways wasn't bad enough! Why
bother sniffing glue when you can just crawl into the tube? Then
there's that teacher, John Borowski ("PepsiCo Kids,"
CP, 12/31/02), whose students, and goddamn it even his own daughters,
were being poisoned by the PepsiCo empire until some teenage
cheerleader said "Generation THIS!" and got her bottled
water biz shut down by the "invisible hand," but Borowski
spoke out like an ADULT - very inspiring, I thought.
I'm challenging the WUSS, for they usurped
the lives, land, livelihoods and rights of WE THE PEOPLE so that
we shall die and the artificial, immortal, "people"
that corporations are legally supposed to be can live.
Sure I'll get smoked in a nano-second,
gimpy little me against that monstrous arsenal of nukes, bio
weapons, chemical weapons, assorted death rays and tons and tons
and tons of conventional ammo, but at least I'll die like a free
human and not a yipping yapping dog. I would assume that since
I helped pay for their arsenal the Usurpers will have the decency
to provide me with a proper dueling pistol, but knowing them
it'll be rigged to jam or the powder'll be damp with piss. But
hell, I wasn't planning on shooting the damn thing anyway. All
I want to do is throw it, just let me throw something at them
and I'll die happy.
Yeah, I guess that's about right. I actually
have no intention of shooting some poor kid who got gypped out
of a decent public education so the WUSS could teach him to cherish
his own liberty to be unemployed and illiterate and have nothing
to do and no money to do it with but join the military and defend
some other kid's liberty to receive a shitty education and eat
a vegetarian meal of Ketchup and Pepsi in a dilapidated cafeteria.
I just want a chance to face their commanders, that's all. Throw
whatever antiquated weapon they'll supply me with - and charge
me extra for - at the fat head of one of their West Point COs
before they vaporize my sorry ass.
Call the boys home to where the real
war is: against ME. No other challenger is calling the Emperor's
legions to the field. It's me against the biggest, baddest, most
expensive war machine the world has ever known! Bring your camera.
It's a FREE MEDIA event. Hell, it should at least be as exciting
as the Super bowl, and MUCH shorter. Also, your admission is
pre-paid!
True, I'm quaking in my boots. But nothing's
ever going to change until WE THE PEOPLE decide to Live Free
or Die, and MEAN IT. And really, it's only one life out of billions.
Others will come along - maybe. Anyway, I'd rather die now, a
free human spitting the fattest, gooiest, throat-clam I can muster
at the WUSS than live another minute as an ox-dumb extra in THE
MAN's blockbuster war extravaganza against life.
Adam Engel might
need a Second in case Lebowski backs out - he's a good man, and
thorough, but unreliable. Anyone who would like to volunteer
to perform the traditional duties of a duelist's Second can contact
asengel@attglobal.net.
Today's Features
Tom Gorman
Blaming
the Victim:
Sanctions as Scapegoat
William MacDougall
McDonald's Worker Resistance:
Shaking the Golden Arches
Chris White
Is War Still a Racket?
An ex-Marine Compares Gen. Smedley Butler's 1933 to 2003
Deb Reich
Calling All 9 Million
Gloria Bergen
War and Carnage in the Workplace
Steve Niva
Sharon's Fingerprints on Latest
Suicide Bombing
Jack McCarthy
None Dare Call It Liberal Lottism
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January
4, 2003
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Something
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Saul Landau
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Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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