Veterans for Common Sense

Randy Abel

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Birthday: December 03, 1969
Hometown: Bessemer, PA
Website: http://www.myspace.com/rustbowlrefugee
Occupation: Teacher

My Quote:
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Strength to Love”

About Me:

USN, 1989-93

Near the end of my enlistment I participated in the act of state-sponsored terror investigated in this excellent article by Seymour Hersh:

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index...

In a nutshell, my service in the Gulf helped to bring about the deaths of innocents... their being Iraqi and living near a military target did not make them guilty of anything. What I saw of our government's early-90s ambitions in the Middle East, and what I subsequently learned of the unjustified June 1993 cruise missile attack in which I took part, convinced me that we were on track for a major imperialist clusterf*&k in that region. Coming to this conclusion didn't take genius smarts or psychic intuition, just common sense.

Like many, I took my common sense-powered right of dissent into the streets on the eve of this war, only to find that millions of us were marginalized to the crackpot fringe as the military-industrial machine rolled on and on. But all hope is not lost--groups like this one are still open to all voices, accomodating the many and various shades of outrage created by a system whose checks and balances have been hijacked for undemocratic purposes.

I contribute to this righteous forum primarily in the interest being aware and of having other voices keep my common sense in check. Only under these healthy conditions can I say my piece about the injustice and ignorance and hope to make my peace with what I saw and did as a decorated volunteer mercinary.

Note on my blog title, "Ars Oblivionalis? F@RGET THAT!":

Ars Oblivionalis, the “Art of Forgetting,” is a term brought into nonexistence by Umberto Eco to highlight the fact that it’s impossible to intentionally or consciously forget—though we live in an age and under an administration bent on employing forgetfulness as a mollifying opiate and a defensive strategy.