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<font size=3><b>ASK MS. LIBERTY: Advice for the Love-Lorn and the
War-Torn<br>
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In today's column, our Statue of Liberty once again gasses up her torch
to answer two timely letters:<br><br>
Dear Green Lady,<br>
I am a gay soldier, trying to have safe sex at
an air force base in Nevada. It is really rough here with that Don't Ask
Don't Tell policy and all. Also I got assigned to pilot some of those
drone planes that fly over Pakistan and are called "unmanned aerial
vehicles." You look on a computer screen and drop bombs by remote
control.<br>
So far they like me here because of my experience in high school as a
video game champ, but I hate those drone missions. Even though those AUVs
are scientifically designed to only obliterate Islamic extremists, you
never know for sure who you're hitting 7,000 miles away. <br>
But since I found Billy, all that doesn't matter so much. Now, when our
drones light up the sky, I think about Billy, and it's like him and me
are playing "Call of Duty4: Modern Warfare" on my old Xbox360.
So maybe this damn war might do some good after all.<br>
What bugs me is that, even though me and Billy
are doing a hell of a job, we could get kicked out of the military just
cause we're gay. That sounds like discrimination to me. How come the U.S.
Armed Forces can't allow us gays to be all that we can be – lovers and
killers? Isn't that our right as Americans, ma'am?<br><br>
Dear Brad,<br>
Wake up and smell the corpses, dear. No, wait.
You can't – they're too far away. In any case, remember that your
President's first priority is to protect the nation. Three days after
taking office, Mr. Obama ordered his first drone attack on Pakistan. Only
months later did he announce that he wanted to repeal the Don't Ask Don't
Tell policy. <br>
To give your President a human-rights wake-up
call from his war campaign, why not write him a little note on nice
stationery? Remind him that, just like any other Americans, queers in the
military deserve their chance to kick a little Third World ass. If you
hang in there long enough, I'll wager that straight people everywhere
will soon begin to see each of your missions as a surgical strike for gay
and lesbian rights.<br><br>
Dear Green Lady,<br>
I would like to know please how to get
bloodstains out of an Oriental carpet. The carpet has been in my family
for generations, and I would hate to lose it. Two of my children were
lying on it last night, listening to the radio, when the planes came
again. This time, they hit our house. There was so much blood! They
bombed the electrical generator and the water supply for our town, so
that the fire, when it started, could not be put out. It raged all night
and, when morning came, I saw that most of my family lay dead.<br>
Then I noticed a little movement from under the
carpet. I lifted it up, and there was my youngest daughter. She was still
alive. I wrapped her in a piece of the carpet and carried her to the
clinic. She might have lived if she received medical treatment. But the
planes had bombed the clinic, too.<br>
Now I must clean this carpet. It is the only
thing of my family that I have left. The trouble is, there is all this
blood. Everywhere, blood. Tell me, please, how does one get rid of the
blood?<br>
- A mother in Waziristan<br>
<br>
Dear Islamic Extremist,<br>
I don't know what kind of low-grade media you're
getting over there. If you had access to Western TV, you would see that
THERE IS NO BLOOD! Zip. I have been watching these wars for years now,
and have yet to see any blood. <br>
Like our President says, we want only peace and
democracy for your backward, sinister country. And the best way to show
people like you that we care is with a state-of-the-art military, working
seamlessly with modern news outlets. Now, instead of massacred civilians,
blackened villages, and little napalmed girls screaming naked in the
street, you see well-groomed broadcasters in attractive fashions, talking
about things. What you probably witnessed the other night was some old
footage from the Vietnam War – with which this war has, of course,
nothing in common. <br>
Offhand, my guess is that you've fallen prey to the disinformation
program of Al Jazeera, favored news source of Osama bin Laden. Perhaps
they want you to confuse the term "carpet bombing" – which,
thanks to the precision of computerized warfare is old hat – with the
idea that someone actually bombed your carpet.<br>
There is no – I repeat, NO – blood. Why don't
you buy yourself a Nintendo game, dear? Or better yet, relax with a news
story about gays and lesbians trying to gain acceptance in the U.S.
military.<br>
<br>
© Susie Day, 2010<br><br>
<br><br>
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