Am I A Torturer? (I have been fascinated with this article tonight... )

It features one of Little Rock's own, Ben Allbright. Now, The Moving Front is most decidedly an antiwar band. Yet we do have several friends who are enlightened, intelligent people who are also soldiers. It is funny to me that I say this in the same awkward framing that white people occasionally use when describing their friends who "also happen to be black" It is trying to on one well-meaning hand state that race isn't an issue while on the other hand acknowledging that it is. I think there could be a Chris Rock routine about that. Though there is no routine about being a "radical" and being empathetic to soldiers. While I personally disagree with their decision to serve the interests of the state in such a capacity, I do respect their attempts to change it's machinations, and I admire their courage and humanity for standing up when doing the right thing means exposing yourself to extreme criticism, particularly to that of your coworkers, coworkers with guns.

By this I am putting out there ideas like: "What if the executor of the My Lai massacre hadn't have given the order?" or "What if the bomb pilot of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had refused to carry out the mission?" Somewhere in my memory I recall assorted speculative fiction authors who have touched on these points, but personally, really, I have never dealt with a situation of that gravity. I suppose I have always had the luxury of being the protester, the outsider. With a seemingly impossible dream, none of the decisions of the state can be laid at your feet . Once you believe there should be no such thing as a state, or government, or corporations, or nationalism, all the trappings of that system become nothing you have a stake in. Nonetheless, those items are the spine of our north American existence and we are all participants in this so called "country". Like it or not. Better or worse. We reap the benefits and misery. But I digress, that is a larger discussion for hopefully, a larger brighter future that eventually we might see.