[Peace-discuss] Memorial Day - Andy Piascik (2014)

[David Green]

 *Memorial Day and* *Everywhere is War*

                                                    by Andy Piascik

            Summer approaches and the stench of war is all around. Or, as
the great Bob Marley put it, Everywhere is War. Start with the
commemorations over a five-week span of Memorial Day, Flag Day and
Independence Day, all presented varyingly as celebrations of our war dead,
symbols of our greatness, the freedoms we love so dearly and seek to export
to every corner of the world and, perhaps most important, the unquestioned
rightness of our cause.
            In reality, the celebrations are of imperialist war, with the
talk about the hallowed dead just so much cover for the murderous nature of
US foreign policy. Celebrating the dead – note that the dead celebrated are
just the American dead, not any of the millions killed by US aggression or
client states – is a no-lose proposition designed to render anyone who asks
the wrong questions a traitor or a terrorist. The notion that the US
regularly commits war crimes and that polished, well-educated men like John
Kennedy and Barack Obama are war criminals is unthinkable; war criminals
look like Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein and those other nasty people
far away, over there.
*World War One Centennial*
            It’s also the summer of the centennial of the start of what in
its time was known as the Great War, the greatest blood-letting in history
except for that of the Second Great War barely two decades later. Of one
thing we can be sure and that is that the lessons drawn from mainstream
discussions of World War One will be all the wrong ones. Worse, the
spectacle of the intelligentsia waxing eloquent about the horrors of war
while unflinchingly cheering on the warmakers in Washington will be
accepted by one and all of their kind as perfectly reasonable – as beyond
discussion, in fact.
            In recent weeks, meanwhile, mainstream commentators have been
shocked to discover that things in Iraq are not alright, in fact are worse
than at any time since the second US blitzkrieg in 2003. Gee, who knew. Who
knew that an invasion predicated on a lie of weapons of mass destruction,
designed to secure control of massive oil supplies, would go wrong? The
political class and intelligentsia didn’t, or at least they pretended they
didn’t, but millions around the world who demonstrated against the invasion
in the weeks before it was launched certainly did. And one of the points
those demonstrators underscored was that a US invasion would fuel sectarian
divisions and violence, precisely as has happened. Al-Qaeda, which did not
exist in Iraq prior to the invasion, now flourishes while a new group, the
Islamist State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), rampages through the country.
            The response of many elites in the US, naturally, is for more
war. Calls from certain factions for a third US invasion are growing louder
and, true to his preference for violence over diplomacy, Obama has sent a
strike force to Iraq. Whether the people of the United States can come
together as we did last summer when we rose up and prevented Obama from
attacking Syria remains to be seen. We must at least try.
*Disgraceful Treatment of Veterans*
            Also on the war front is the Veterans Affairs’ disgraceful
neglect of ex-soldiers in need of medical care. For years, political elites
have been slashing benefits for veterans while increasing spending on
weapons and cutting taxes for the Super Rich. That the problem came to a
head with a Democrat in the White House is simply an accident of timing,
and it is especially outrageous that the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of
the illegal Bush-Cheney invasions, as well as reductions to the VA’s
budgets and the tax cuts for 1%, now pretend that they care about soldiers.
            Equally farcical is the commencement of yet another round of
hearings on the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Such hearings would
certainly be valuable if everything related to US actions in Libya since
the launch of the 2011 assault were up for review, but there is virtually
no chance of that happening. The deaths of tens of thousands of Libyans in
yet one more illegal military strike, as well as the resulting chaos and
violence in that country, is of no concern to those who long for the good
old days of Bush-Cheney and are interested only in scoring political
points.
*Bowe Bergdhal*
            Then there is the saga of the much-vilified Bowe Bergdhal, a
heroic young man who came to see the criminal nature of the US invasion of
Afghanistan. The refusal of working class youth to fight for Empire is the
ruling class’s biggest nightmare and the attacks on Bergdahl, like the show
trial that convicted Chelsea Manning, show how far they will go to punish
those in uniform who dare challenge their objectives. A hidden aspect of
the movement that ended US carnage in Southeast Asia is that it was the
widespread opposition of soldiers, both as embodied by organizations like
Vietnam Veterans Against the War as well as active duty resisters, that
decisively turned the tide.
            So alarming was this development that two massive
disinformation campaigns were immediately launched: the myth of the
hostility of the anti-war movement for returning soldiers that sought to
drive a wedge between active duty and homefront resistance (see, for
example, Jerry Lembcke’s outstanding book *The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory
and the Legacy of Vietnam*); and the completely fraudulent MIA blitz
(expertly exposed by Bruce Franklin in *MIA, or Mythmaking in America)*
concocted by the Nixon Administration to shift attention away from the
death and destruction wrought by the US to the plight of nonexistent
prisoners of war.
            Because preventing any similar development of resistance among
soldiers is central to imperial objectives, discussion has largely avoided
what Bergdahl actually said about his service in Afghanistan, including his
telling declaration in a 2009 e-mail to his parents, as quoted by Amy
Goodman on *Democracy Now!*: “The future is too good to waste on lies and
life is way too short to care for the damnation of others as well as to
spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I've seen their
ideas, I'm ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self righteous
arrogance that they thrive in.” Rather than joining in the Bowe Bergdhal
lynch mob, US soldiers everywhere, not to mention those with loved ones in
the military, would do well to heed his words and experience.
*The Supreme International Crime*
            Lastly, the same standard that applies to the war crimes of
others applies to the US. As articulated by Robert H. Jackson, chief US
prosecutor at Nuremberg, a war of aggression such as committed by the US
against Afghanistan and Iraq “is not only an international crime; it is the
supreme international crime, differing only from all other crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” In such a
circumstance, what Bergdahl did was proper and, it could be argued,
*obligatory* for anyone party to war crimes. So amidst the flag waving and
speechifying that glorifies imperialism, we should support him and
prisoners of conscience like Chelsea Manning. We should demand that all
services veterans require be provided, that US bases around the world be
closed, that soldiers be returned home and that the US cease its campaign
of endless aggression. And as enticing as the military may seem in such
desperate economic times, we should counsel young people to stay away no
matter how bleak the alternatives may be.
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