[Peace-discuss] Memorial Day

[Brussel Morton K.]

Reflections on 11/11, formerly Memorial Day.  --mkb


Veterans Day or Rulers Day?
Wednesday 11 November 2009

by: Bob Richards, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

How is it that Veterans Day gets turned around into US Military  
Hegemony Day? The airwaves were buried under an avalanche of lip  
service about veterans, but the moving lips were all about the myth  
that the warfare decisions this country's rulers make have something  
to do with anyone's freedom. Just as soldiers and sailors are doing  
around the world today, I did in my time. I was there as a teenager,  
ignorant of the forces moving me, believing whatever line I was being  
fed.

I grew up on the hundreds of war/propaganda movies that came out of  
WWI, WWII and Korea. Today we are deluged with more nationalistic  
propaganda than ever before in my lifetime. It can't be avoided. The  
TV spews the images nearly nonstop. Recruiters are in our schools,  
along with the pop machines. The words Army, Navy and National Guard  
are on race cars at the drags and the ovals. "Take Me Out to the Ball  
Game" has been replaced with "America the Beautiful" with cordons  
placed at Yankee Stadium to keep fans from going to the bathroom while  
the dose of nationalism is served up.

Once a year the veterans are rolled out, but without a real veterans'  
voice. The physical support for veterans comes nowhere near what is  
needed. Suicides of veterans always wind up taking more lives than the  
wars that set them up.

It is important to some vets to keep believing the myth they fought  
for, that going into that foreign country had a bearing on anyone's  
freedom here. These are the vets who get a voice, as this is the only  
voice acceptable to the ruling powers. The Revolutionary War and the  
Civil War may have had some bearing on someone's freedoms, but even  
then, not everyone's. The former held only for white male property  
holders, and the latter for humans who were property themselves. In  
both of these cases, those native to these lands could not be  
included, as they were busy at the time being relieved of their  
homelands and freedom.

If you want to thank anyone for your rights and freedoms, thank an  
activist. No soldier ended segregation in the 1960's. No sailor got  
women the vote. No National Guardsman got you the 40-hour week or took  
children off the shop floors or out of the mines. No, they were called  
out by the states to kill the very people who were fighting for the  
rights they eventually won for you.

Mostly what the vets have done is to be tricked into serving the  
forces that have used them, and in many cases, used them up. The vets  
deserve your support mostly because they believed, and gave what was  
asked, and were promised something in exchange. When promise-keeping  
time comes up, they find they have to get in a line and wait and then  
they must fight to receive what was promised. In many cases, what they  
get is enough for a little cheap wine and a bed at a shelter. These  
aren't the vets that get dragged out before the game or race, or at  
half-time. Nope, those vets are the believers. The "presentable" ones.

So, here we are at war to get Unocal's dream pipeline route across  
Afghanistan secured and prop up that ex-Unocal employee's stolen  
election. Then there's still that war we don't talk about so much  
anymore. The one that the lie to get us in there changed nearly every  
day, when the truth may have been as simple as the Decider told us  
himself, that Saddam tried to kill his daddy, and that he would use  
that war for his own ends.

These two wars send home more corpses and vets every day. These vets  
are more often acute cases needing the highest levels of attention,  
overloading the system and triaging the old farts back down the  
waiting lines. The government will front load the wars with the  
drones, missiles, guns, mines, ships, planes and trained bodies as its  
priority. It will use up more than it gets from its taxpayers and hand  
the debts to the future, and vets will fight for crumbs. This is the  
record from every war the country has ever done. Still, its propaganda  
works, and it won't have any trouble finding believers to march in the  
parades. It can parlay that percentage into a rock-solid myth and keep  
the guns-and-butter gravy train rolling along.
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