SUPERHEROES DON’T DIE

This story says it all...a soldier from a town near where I grew up died in Iraq on Saturday. This story from the local paper really validates everything that’s ever been said about the poor being sent to fight the rich man’s war, i.e. :

CARRIERE - A gray 1949 Chrysler will become a tribute to Sgt. Larry Arnold Sr., killed Saturday in Iraq by a roadside bomb, his son said Monday. [snip]
The car has tremendous sentimental value, said Larry Arnold Jr., sitting outside the mobile home where the family lives in rural Pearl River County.

People don’t live in “mobile homes” by preference. If a person has a choice between a tornado magnet or a real house, they don’t choose the magnet. Could it be that the Arnolds couldn’t afford a real, non-mobile home and that’s why they lived in a trailer? Being from the area and knowing its vast quantities of trailer parks and very low income statistics, I’d say that of course that’s why this “superhero” lived in a trailer (“superhero” is what his son described him as).

Unfortunately, one of Arnold’s sons is also in the military–does the same fate await him, too?
Also, according to the article, the father died after reaching retirement eligibility. What a pisser. George W. Bush and the neocons preyed on the patriotism, sense of duty, and lack of other choices of people like Sgt. Arnold. Here’s how Arnold’s wife put it:

"He had his 20 years just about the time they got the orders for activation," Melinda Arnold said.
Her husband did not try to avoid the second tour of duty in Iraq.
"He wanted to go over there and finish what he started with the 890th," she said. "He wanted to finish his mission."
The troops remaining in Iraq stayed on his mind during Arnold's two-week leave in early May, she said.
"The whole time he was home, he worried about the guys in Iraq," she said. "He wasn't comfortable."

Obviously Sgt. Arnold was a real man of loyalty with a powerful sense of kinship with his brothers in arms. He even decided to forego retirement to be with his men on what their commander-in-chief told them was a vitally important mission, to supposedly defend America from an inevitable and devastating “nuke-you-luhr” attack (now that I write this, maybe that’s why Bush the Criminal insists on that pronunciation–because it implies that you will be nuked–“nuke-you-luhr”).

Grandfathers Dying

Not only is Arnold a father of three, he also had two grandchildren and was married to Melinda for almost 28 years. He was 46 years old. That’s who this foul, evil war is killing–grandfathers and faithful, devoted husbands–and not just on the American side. If that fact doesn’t utterly sicken you deep within, given that every reason we were told we had to invade and occupy Iraq has now turned out to be not just untrue but in fact vicious, sinful lies, then you literally have no soul.

Make One Giant Magnet

Sgt. Arnold is the very emblem and reason we should all rip the yellow magnets off our cars, point them all to the east simultaneously and hope that the magnetic force generated will attach to the troop transports and pull them back here. We should be lying down en masse to stop traffic and striking en masse to grind our economy to a halt until our boys are back home. We should encircle the White House with Bush inside and lay siege to it until he issues the order to bring the soldiers back home and then submits to being thrown into the brig.

But I fear that none of that will happen–even Sgt. Arnold’s own son, one of the people who should be the angriest of all, misunderstands what is happening:

"He was a real life super-hero," he said of his father. "The super-heroes in comic books don't have anything on him. He went to serve his country and protect the people of Iraq and America.

But the superheroes in comic books don’t die (and even if they do, they always come back to life), and soldiers dying in Iraq are not protecting America. Saying that doesn’t mean Sgt. Arnold is any less of a true patriot who clearly loved his country more than his own life. It means that George W. Bush and company will have a hell of time come judgment day.