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.
July 22, 2026
The third soldier:
Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, age 28.
And killed elsewhere in Iraq.
Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, age 30.
I suppose their faces look like America as it is. . . but not really the America that people like some in the Trump seem to want it to look like.
CST headline:
Well, like they say, freedom isn't free, and apparently giving up your freedoms for a demented narcissist isn't either.
The Houthis are threatening to close the Red Sea.
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.
Last edition:
