July 21, 2026.
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
Kipling.
Just 19 years old. She died, not so that Iran would not have a nuclear weapon, not for liberal democracy in Iran, but because a demented old narcassist duped by a prime minister of a desperately minoritarian regime in the Middle East could spill her blood for its purposes.*
Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and every American supporting this war has blood on their hands.
And not just hers.
Isabella Gonzales. A life cut short, and a life taken on behalf a regime that would likely send her to Mexico on the basis that she has a Spanish last name, if it could, for a war that most Americans don't want, and which is being fought for Israel.
I'm not, as I've noted before, in favor of women in combat. Pvt. Gonzales left a few social media type posts of herself, in uniform, acting very cute, and very feminine. She did not deserve this. It sounds brutal to say this, but this is a man's role.
But more than that, this is a role that should be filled, if it had to be, by those who brought it about. Why are the Trumps not in action?
Why have they never been?
A person who did.
Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go send your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need*
Nah, that's not going to happen.
Most days now, it won't even be the main headline. Troops will go on killing and dying, and for what? A goal never clearly expressed, and which cannot be obtained without massive loss of life.
Footnotes:
*“The White Man’s Burden" by Kipling, quote in part.
I don't admire the sentiments in this poem at all. It's racist. But it expresses the type of WASP colonialism, sans the Protestantism which at least moderated it a bit, of the colonial 19th Century, that the US is now experiencing under Donald Trump.
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