Category: War

With all due respect to those who serve in the armed forces, we owe it to them to ask hard questions about the sacrifices demanded of them and their families.

It’s fine and good and perfectly appropriate for us to honor our dead, but if we allow ourselves to be whipped into a patriotic frenzy every time some yahoo waves a flag it can serve to legitimize the military enterprise – and that is the point I wish to make.  The military enterprise is not legitimate.

-Edward Luttwak



On Memorial Day, a day that is intended to be one of somber remembrance and the recognition of our nation’s war dead although it is perversely come to be more associated with boozing barbecues, silly assed NASCAR races and the inevitable retail extravaganzas at the shopping emporiums throughout the land it is no longer necessary to most Americans to pay tribute. They are the type who just wear those stupid assed American flag pins as though they were some sort of star spangled merkin, festoon their gas guzzlers with yellow ribbon stickers that in and of themselves are gauche take offs on a lousy country western song and wrongly believe that they are being truly patriotic. Such garbage only serves to dishonor those who have sacrificed and perished in past conflicts and will continue to do so in the new American century due to the illegal wars of aggression and conquest that have been thrust upon us due to the criminal Bush regime and it’s neocon policy makers who conspire in secret to launch their schemes of global conquest all justified by that one great and fortuitous ‘terrorist’ attack that tore open a hole to a parallel universe where up is down, black is white, freedom is slavery, war is peace and most importantly: ignorance is strength.

Here’s something you’ll never hear from any pundit, news reporter, or politician this Memorial Day: an apology.

To all the soldiers who have been maimed and killed in the wars of the Bush-Cheney regime:

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I didn’t do more to voice my opposition when it mattered.

I’m sorry I have kept paying for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan with my tax dollars, without doing more to ensure that you had all the equipment and training you needed to stay alive.  I’m sorry I didn’t do more to prevent all the money spent so far from being written in the form of blank checks to Halliburton and other war profiteers.

I’m sorry for all the pain, suffering, and death you’ve had to endure.

I’m sorry you were sent in without a clear mission, without an objective, and without constraints on your behavior so you could avoid being put in the position of committing war crimes on the orders of your inferiors in Washington.

I’m sorry some of you were allowed to be in the military, when your recruiters and training instructors knew you had little or no moral compass, when they knew you might gladly mistreat prisoners at places such as Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.  The actions carried out by these disgraces to their uniforms have tarnished the reputation of the military as a whole.

I’m sorry many of you who were maimed — mentally, physically, or both — were tricked out of your health care benefits by a Pentagon so greedy for money that it decided it could get away with fraudulently listing your conditions as pre-existing.

I’m sorry I didn’t make a bigger, louder, and more effective effort to call for the impeachment, prosecution, and conviction of those whose lies sent you into the hell of Iraq and Afghanistan with no way out.

To the families who have lost loved ones to these horrific wars and occupations:

I’m sorry your friends and relatives have suffered and died in vain.  I’m sorry their sacrifices have been swept under the rug, their true stories and their names and faces hidden away so that the public feels little connection to what’s being done in our name.  I’m sorry your loved ones have been turned into instruments of propaganda and political posturing.

To the people of Iraq:

I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to endure.

The picture below was taken in July of 1918 at Camp Dodge, on the north side of Des Moines, IA.  Approximately 18,000 men were assembled on the parade grounds to form a “living” Statue of Liberty.

According to a July 3, 1986, story in the Fort Dodge Messenger, many men fainted-they were dressed in woolen uniforms-as the temperature neared 105 degrees Farenheit. The photo, taken from the top of a specially constructed tower by a Chicago photography studio, Mole & Thomas, was intended to help promote the sale of war bonds but was never used.” (Grover 1987)

I’ve always had a hard time with this day.  I’ve always had a hard time with the military, understanding my own feelings about those who, with the power of government behind them, put guns in the hands of young men and women and teach them how to kill.

Here we are in the 21st Century, and we are still doing this, putting weapons in the hands of young men and women, sending them out to kill human beings.

We hear the usual sayings, “they chose to serve,” “to protect and defend,” “those who died are heros,” all those things.

I wonder what Americans really want when it comes to protecting and defending.

Memorial Day has become in our modern world a day to remember those who died for the sake of protecting and defending our country.

I see the names, I read the IGTNT diaries over at Daily Kos, showing the pictures of those killed in war, showing their families and friends, telling of their lives, their interests, dreams, ambitions.

Protect and defend.

They chose to serve.

Once again Veterans are living with the apathy of the country they served!

Remember Agent Orange or the many other ailments and Government using Military Personal to test the effects from Nuclear Explosions and Drugs, probably not!

Look them up, or search out the Vets, using this technology, who are still trying to Educate you too!

Remember the 1st Gulf War?

How about the Veterans from, with questions about, their rapidly deteriorating health after serving, many having died since, coming under the obscure name of ‘Gulf War Syndrom’, look that one up as well!

Teen PTSD researcher Ilana Rice

Why do I get the feeling you two are destined to meet? And by all means don’t change your first names!

Right here -> (*). But that just means they’re going to get away with it.

UPDATE – May Thirty-One Oh Eight

The above link is to McClatchy 5/23/08. It looks like everything is going off on schedule. It’s amazing how nimble the Global Corpse can be when they set their collective minds and will to it.

This was predicted by the Ka-Ching. 😉 ;-(

Shanti.

The youngest victims of the Wars we adults wage, especially our Wars of Choice!

Bob Woodruff, of ABC News, did another of his outstanding reports on the ‘Wounds of War’, this one about the youngest victims, the children of those who serve.

As a Country cheers on the ‘Shock and Awe’ of Waging War on others, those others having done nothing to warrent our Invasion and Occupations, that same Country does little in Sacrifice!

We wear our shame with our Apathy and Arrogance!

The US military is back in the cross-hairs of human rights organizations.  The issue in question is our detention of children, their treatment in custody, judicial review, and access by international monitors. Today, the issue will come up for review by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

On May 22, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will meet in Geneva to review US compliance with the international treaty banning the use of child soldiers, which requires states to help with the recovery and reintegration of such children under their control.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Although Iraq is supposedly a sovereign country, US forces still seem to be playing a major role in arresting and detaining Iraqi citizens, including children.  

The PBS News Hour carried a report on the IVAW ‘Winter Soldier’ testimony in Congress tonight, 5-21-08

Witnesses to War Speak Out on Rules of Engagement

As the United States prepares to remember its war dead on Memorial Day, some veterans who want to remember their fallen comrades with a wish for peace are being barred from participating in official events.  

Two chapters of Veterans for Peace, one in Washington state and one in Washingtgon, D.C., have been banned from parades.

In both cases,VFP was told it could not participate because the organization is “too political.”  That is the same reason that others have given for barring Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War from Veterans Day parades and activities.

What is particularly sad is that those who exclude them are often veterans themselves, with some misguided sense of patriotism.