The Bravest of Soldiers Repent: "I realized I was the terrorist"

Unfortunately, the anti-war movement in America has grown silent (with the exception of the courageous Cindy Sheehan). As The New American points out:

The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency has highlighted the foreign policy double standard that the activists on the left end of the political spectrum have exhibited, or should one say not exhibited, towards the President's war-centric foreign policy.

Obama is following the McCain plan for Iraq, doubling the U.S. forces in Afghanistan in addition to sharply increasing the number of private contractors operating in that region and bombing Pakistan on a regular basis. Yet, all of these actions, which in prior years would have been decried by those who consider themselves liberals/progressives, have seemingly fallen off the radar of the left-wing grassroots activists.

The Netroots Nation, an alliance of liberal activists, held their annual convention on August 13-16 in Pittsburgh which featured "the most concentrated gathering of progressive bloggers to date." Surprisingly, the issue of ending the multiple conflicts the United States is actively engaged in, which was such a big topic from prior years, was barely a blip on the agenda. Byron York, writing for the Washington Examiner, states: "Not too long ago, with a different president in the White House, the left was obsessed with America's wars. Now, they're not even watching."

For any who would be aghast that soldiers might oppose this war and peacefully refuse to participate, even to the point of repenting of their own "terrorist" actions, consider Lew Rockwell's comments on the violence of government power:

I get a kick out of this common definition of terrorism: “the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.” So tell me, in what sense is the US state, and every state,
not involved in terrorism? The state threatens violence against the people as its normal order of business, to achieve its political goals of wealth and power at our expense. Instilling fear? That is its normal MO.

When the state, or its media and academic enablers, call people terrorists, it simply means: a group of gooks to be massacred. Now, maybe they are bad people too, or maybe they are victims, or maybe they don’t like being occupied by armed aliens, but certainly to libertarians, at least, “terrorists,” like all enemies of the state, should be innocent until proven guilty.