You are fooling yourself if you think that that the U.S. does not have the blood of this young girl and millions of other children like her on their hands.

by Emma Kaplan

I have been watching the coverage on Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who was targeted for assasination by the Taliban. If you are outraged by this, look at the situation in the world right now.

You are fooling yourself if you think that that the U.S. does not have the blood of this young girl and millions of other children like her on their hands. The Middle East is in flames, with the people caught between a dire situation between U.S. bombs dropping on their houses and Islamic fundamentalists killing young girls who seek education.

Look at what your country is creating and spreading around the world. It is havoc, it is destruction and it is getting worse everyday. With every U.S. bomb that is dropped, a whole generation of Islamic fundamentalists is being created and it is the people in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and any other country that the U.S. invades that will suffer. Do you understand what its like? To live in fear of your life everyday? Are their lives meaningless? I could name off all the countries that the U.S. has invaded or intervened at the behest of imperialist interests in the just past decade: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya and say that the situation has worsened as a direct result of U.S. invasion. Imagine living your life dodging the destruction, unable to dodge the bullets, or trying to find underground shelter when you hear the U.S. bombs beginning to drop or having your doors broken down by the U.S. military in the middle of the night, being kidnapped from your home and sent to another country to be tortured. Imagine being in Iran and seeing all of this, knowing that even underground shelters will not protect your lives as the U.S. government has said before that they are willing to use bunker buster bombs which penetrate underground. Imagine looking at the world and seeing that the only thing opposing the US's crimes in mass is a dangerous, Islamic fundamentalist movement.

Imagine the hopelessness people feel. And think of our responsibility to them.

If your answer to this is "defeat Romney," YOU ARE under a major illusion. If your answer to this is a symbolic protest vote against Obama, you are still under a major illusion. How the hell is this going to solve any of these problems? These are not solutions, these are dead ends. You are living in a world where these are the times and the problems for the majority of humanity and we must confront reality head on and bring forward another way.

Everything we speak out and act on must be about bringing forward visible and widespread opposition to the crimes of the U.S. government and in doing so, giving space for those in the Middle East who have deep aspirations for freedom and liberation from both U.S. imperialism and outmoded dark-ages religious forces. If we fail to do this, the fate of humanity and the planet is literally in the balance. It is possible, people in this country and around the world are desperately yearning for and need something different, for something that is truly in their highest interests. We must draw our courage from those who are standing up around the world. And when people in the U.S. stand up, we will give courage to those all over the world.

The people must be the force that brings a different dynamic into being. We can begin to show that there truly is a whole other way that people can be living by standing up in mass against the crimes of our government.

Stop the Crimes of Your Government, Because The World Can't Wait.