In a Mad World of Blood, Death, and Fire

(4PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

(Cross-posted at Wild Wild Left)

On Memorial Day, remember the fallen victims of every war.  Remember America’s fallen soldiers, remember their names, remember their families, remember the loved ones they left behind.  But above all else, remember how the blood, death, and fire of war are unleashed, remember why they are unleashed, remember who does the unleashing, who glorifies it, and who profits from it.

The process is always the same.  It exploits human weakness, triggers the tribal instincts within us, incites anger, and forges it into hatred.  The politicians claim a dangerous enemy is determined to destroy the homeland, they talk about patriotism, they talk about God, they talk about the greatness of their nation, the glory of their culture, the sanctity of their ideology or religion. They say the enemy is evil and deserves destruction.  The flags are waved and the guns are loaded.  The generals are summoned and given their orders.  And then the killing begins.

When I was a young man I carried me pack,

And I lived the free life of the rover,

From the Murray’s green basin to the dusty outback,

I waltzed my Matilda all over.

Then in 1915 my country said: Son,

It’s time to stop rambling, there’s work to be done,

So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun,

And they sent me away to the war . . .
. . .

There’s work to be done.

That’s what America’s young men were told.  In 1950.  In 1965.  In 1989 and 1991 and 2001.  There was work to be done at the 38th Parallel.  There was work to be done in the Mekong Valley.  There was work to be done in Panama.  There was work to be done in Baghdad and Kabul and Kandahar.  That’s what they were told.

Then the politicians gave them a tin hat, and gave them a gun.

And sent them away to the war.  

The consequences have always been the same, the consequences always will be the same–the blood stains the sand and the water.  The servants of the war machine collect the wounded, the crippled, the maimed, the armless, the legless, the blind and the insane, and ship them back home.  And others are given a tin hat, and a gun, and are fed into the bonfire of blood, death and carnage.  

The blood of soldiers, the blood of civilians, the blood of everyone caught in that Hell the politicians called Containment of Communism stained the sand and the water from Honduras to Iran in CIA coups, it stained the sand and the water of Southeast Asia in Pentagon wars. The blood of soldiers and civilians is still being spilled in that Hell called the War on Terror, and the vicious cycle of consequences keeps repeating itself because the politicians keep pulling the funding trigger, and keep pulling it, and keep pulling it.  They have no problem pulling that funding trigger, they aren’t the ones doing the bleeding and the dying.  

In 1953, we stopped to bury our slain.  We buried ours and the Koreans buried theirs, then the killing started all over again.  In 1973, we stopped to bury our slain.  We buried ours and the Vietnamese buried theirs, then the killing started all over again.  In 1991, we stopped to bury our slain.  We buried ours, and the Iraqis buried theirs, then the killing started all over again . . .

Dick Cheney Pictures, Images and Photos

Thanks to that grinning psychopath and his treachery, we’re still burying our slain.  In Iraq, they’re still burying their slain. In Afghanistan, they’re still burying their slain.  In Pakistan, they’re still burying their slain.  Those still living just try to survive, in an endless nightmare of blood, death and fire, in the shadow of Predator drones, trapped between Islamic fundamentalist madness and the mindless stupidity of American generals.        

On this latest Memorial Day, Obama, as you preside over that corporate war machine that spends more on weaponry than the next 40 countries combined, don’t talk to us about honorable sacrifices at the Altar of American Democracy.  It’s not an altar, it’s a furnace, and millions of lives have been burned to ashes in the flames.  It’s not a democracy, it’s a dying empire, crippled by corruption, paralyzed by propaganda, drowning in debt and lied to by leaders who fiddle while it burns.  

The band still plays the Star Spangled Banner, and the young men still answer the call.  But year after year, the numbers get fewer, someday no one will answer at all.  There will be no more national anthems, there will be no more borders, there will be no more politicians, no more generals, no more soldiers, there will be no more blood, death and fire.  We won’t live to see that day, but we can make it possible, we can bring it closer.  

Study War No More, America.  

Give Peace a Chance.

       

         

21 comments

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  1. drowning in debt and lied to by leaders who fiddle while it burns.

  2. …. why are they running to them eagerly to offer concessions to each bad idea ?

  3. remember

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    thanks, rusty, for this essay….  Im just so tired of all the horrible news on the gulf catastrophe….. I wake up tired. Theyre even willing to kill our oceans for war for oil for greed for nothing.

  4. Obama does his best to carry on the tradition.

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  5. I wish you could be at Arlington National Cemetary, and recite this during Memorial Day services — can you imagine?  I can dream, can’t I?

    Thank you!

  6. There’s work to be done.

    That’s what America’s young men were told.  In 1950.  In 1965.  In 1989 and 1991 and 2001.  There was work to be done at the 38th Parallel.  There was work to be done in the Mekong Valley.  There was work to be done in Panama.  There was work to be done in Baghdad and Kabul and Kandahar.  That’s what they were told.

    means less work here at home.

  7. This week at PBS NewsHour the Weeky Poem is ‘The Returning Dead.’ It would be much better if you click the link and see the introduction but here are the words by Wyatt Prunty about the reading of the names each evening on the NewsHour.

    The Returning Dead

    Each night I make a drink and wait for them

    They have become the day’s concluding news,

    Installments from a world without anthems

    Or children, unfocusing eyes

    A question that repeatedly rejects

    My easy terms. They are ones who believed

    And acted in the narrow and select

    Ways handed them, while ordinary lives

    Ran on without interruption

    Or bad pictures, as though nothing had changed

    Change is the one unanswerable question

    Of these faces. The world can rearrange

    Itself repeatedly, but these remain

    The same, silent in everything they lack;

    That’s what they’ve come to, in places with names

    Like Afghanistan, Iraq,

    And this is the way it happens: the words

    Are old – mother, father, home – and will catch

    Surrounding currents in the slow absurd

    Descending will of any river etched

    Out of a landscape history refines

    To myth. The TV blanks between

    Segments, but every static face defines

    Itself, holds stubbornly its private scene…

    Fixed, publicly, as we are led

    Back to that little negative whose lack

    Is each of us, staring the staring dead,

    Leaning, sometimes like grief itself; then straightening back.

  8. hear the music.

  9. …that I don’t know which is worse…

    ……dying under the criminal murder rain of drones…

    ……or dying under the knowledge that one’s country is a

         criminally insane mass murderer.

    How can our sins be forgiven?  When we KNOW all too well what we do?

    Obama, you know.  Holder, you know.  Connie Rice, you know.

    How can you possibly be forgiven?

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