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Open Letter to Lynndie England
How old are you, Lynndie? 21? 22? I'm sure you're young enough not to like it much when people tell you you look like a child.
But you are not a child, Lynndie. You are on the very threshold of womanhood, at an age where most young American women are occupied with the wonders of learning, choosing a career, dreaming of their future, pretty dresses and interesting young men, the whole world unrolls itself before them, to be enriched by their talents, their charm.
You made a different choice. You chose to enlist in the armed forces of a country not known for its - well, let 's just say that thanks to you and your friends, more people have an idea of what it is known for.
You have become a symbol, Lynndie. People all over the world, from places you probably don't even know, or want to know exist know your name, know your face, some of them may know more about you than even you know yourself. You're still that young, that old folks can say that about you.
I don't know how big a part reflection has played in your life, but I would be willing to bet that you've been doing some reflecting lately. On the incongruity of being America's secret sweetheart they can't be seen with in public. Oh, sure, some of them can, we all read the Australian paper's interview with the folks back home, and it helped some of us understand you a little bit. You were just having some fun, just joking around. I don't believe for a minute you're the kind of girl who would do anything like that to someone she thought of as human.
America's secret sweetheart, America's secret mirror. There's one thing I bet you do know. A lot of those fancy talking folks in their fancy suits, with their twenty dollar words are not a whole lot different from you, in their hearts, so deep most of them don't even know it. They've just read more books, learned to be politically correct, learned that it's something to be ashamed of.
Which is in a way, terribly unfair to you. You are the kernel on the same cob they cling to like glossy silk. They will not claim you, they will denounce you and decry you and see you tarred and feathered and locked up, for being the result of their decades, their generations, of failure to act, complicity.
America made you what you are, taught you what you know, sent you to manifest its innermost values and desires, and now they act all shocked when somebody holds up a picture, holds up Lynndie the mirror, Lynndie the harvest of 2 centuries and change of amber waves of grain.
Neither you nor I know how many other hands were with yours on that leash, but we know it's in the millions. The big millions. But all those millions are a speck on the wall compared to the billions of us who were supposed to be on the other end of that leash, the billions of us who were that one time, saved from our intended American planned fate. And I bet we would give you a fairer deal than those millions of hands, all slippery from their new unfamiliar coats of shame.
We would not expect so much from you, we know it must be hard for you to turn on your babydaddy like that, since both of you were just having some fun, not doing anything either of you thought was wrong. Expectations would, under the circumstances, be highly out of place.
I don't expect you to get up on that witness stand and throw millions of people in with your babydaddy, and tell them America taught me this was the right thing to do, a perfectly acceptable way to have fun, joke around.
I want to ask you a favor, though. I want to ask you to do one thing that will make all the difference in the world to a human being that has never harmed anyone, a person who is completely blameless, completely innocent - your child.
Whatever your fate may be, whatever your reasons may be for the choices you made, and the choices you will make, please find it within yourself to rise to the occasion of your motherhood, and make one noble, selfless, mother's choice, and allow your child to be adopted by loving parents who will love her, or him, as their own.
Please give your child the gift of NOT growing up in a world where photographs of his mother engaged in acts of cruelty and depravity are freely downloadable from the internet. And you know as well as I, that I am not referring only to acts committed against other human beings.
Regardless of the circumstances of the videos of you which are not yet released, but will be, as sure as the sun will rise, your innocent child does not deserve to struggle with the knowledge that the woman in the video is his mother, that the woman in the photographs is his mother.
Motherhood is a gift, some would say a sacred gift, and it is a responsibility you assumed when you made the decision to carry your child to term, to be its mother.
Lynndie, please BE its mother. Give it the one thing that only you can give - the chance for a happy and normal life. Please love your child enough to put it in the arms of someone who can give it what you, rightly or wrongly, never can.
All those billions of us who escaped the leash this time are praying that your little son or daughter will grow up learning different lessons than you learned, or can teach.
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