I’ve grown really sick of all those ads and special events honoring those who fight for our right to steal people’s sovereignty and take their resources. We don’t fight for “our freedom” as many people want us to believe…our military fights for resources, such as cheap gas. The people of Afghanistan will never get to enjoy all the gasoline that lies under their land. It will all go to people here in the US. By honoring our troops in foreign lands, we encourage others to fight that same dirty war.

On Monday, most TV stations will run movies about the “good” wars our troops fought in, mostly World War II. They won’t show movies about Abu Ghraib (although none have actually been made yet). We may see plenty of movies with John “the Duke” Wayne. They might even use graphic tools and computer tricks to put the Duke in movies he wasn’t in. For example they might take the movie The Sons of Katie Elder and remake it to The Sons of Katie Somoza. In the remake, in which they resurrect John Wayne, Dean Martin and Dennis Hopper from the grave, Katie is the fictional wife of Anastasia Somoza, who lost Nicaragua to the Sandinista Rebels. The Duke and his friends help Somoza reclaim his rightful dynasty and kill off all those nasty terrorists (originally dubbed as freedom fighters).

The Duke always wins and we always knew who the bad guys were in one of his movies. The Duke and his Hollywood buddies were good at revising history. On the other hand we can thank a lot of Hollywood progressives for anti-imperialist themes for such movies as M*A*S*H (1970), Missing (1983), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Under Fire (1983). There are some good people in Hollywood.

- សតិវ អតុ