In the various tales of vampires, there is a common tradition about inviting them inside: Once you have welcomed vampires into your home, they are then free to enter your home any time.<\/p>\n
Like many mythological ideas, this one is grounded in truth: Before agreeing to something, it is wise to understand not just what we are agreeing to, but whom we are dealing with.<\/p>\n
Continuing yesterday’s theme (today being the 10th anniversary of the American war in Iraq), the following open letter from Tomas Young to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney<\/a> provides a searing reminder of this truth. The letter is from a young man who is currently dying from injuries sustained during his service in Iraq.<\/p>\n In the letter, he points out that he had enlisted two days after the destruction of the World Trade Center, to fight those who had attacked the U.S.<\/p>\n Now, as he spends his last days in a hospice bed, he is processing the fact that his enlistment gave our government the legal right to send him to fight any war it wished — even a war that had nothing at all to do with those attacks against the U.S..<\/p>\n A sad reminder that once you invited vampires in, you no longer have power against them. Alas, the vampires at your door can appear very presentable.<\/p>\n Sometimes they even wear nice suits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the various tales of vampires, there is a common tradition about inviting them inside: Once you have welcomed vampires into your home, they are then free to enter your home any time. Like many mythological ideas, this one is grounded in truth: Before agreeing to something, it is wise to understand not just what … Continue reading “Inviting the vampire in”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11714"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11777,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11714\/revisions\/11777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}