MEMORIAL DAY 2019 AS WE SQUANDER TROOPS ALL OVER THE WORLD AND MEXICO INVADES OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS
"We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not
hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall
not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
(Excerpt from the Gettysburg Address)
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
(Excerpt from the Gettysburg Address)
“Many of us are a shell of who we were before”
Memorial Day
2019: US Army tweet prompts outpouring of antiwar sentiment
Last
Thursday, the US Army asked its followers in a tweet, “How has serving impacted
you?” It was meant to be a routine Twitter post ahead of Memorial Day to draw
responses which would glorify the United States Army and veterans who served as
cannon fodder for the military. It did not go as planned and backfired
spectacularly.
More
than 10,000 people replied in response with an outpouring of antiwar sentiments
detailing the horrors, crimes and ravages of war. Many of the comments are
harrowing stories of lives completely undone, a portrait of an entire
population scarred and destroyed by US militarism at home and abroad.
“Your
impact is that you’re a death cult,” San declared bluntly on the US war machine
in a typical response.
Suicides,
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nightmares, depression, bipolar
disorders, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addictions, eruptions of violence, sexual
assault, marital breakdown, health issues from exposure to chemical weapons
like Agent Orange, failures of the Veterans Administration, families and
friends wrecked over multiple generations, and worse are some of the thousands
of devastating stories detailed in these replies.
“Many
of us are a shell of who we were before,” said one military veteran.
Shane
spoke of veteran suicides and unending military deployments. “My best friend
from high school,” he said, “was denied his mental health treatment and forced
to return to a third tour in Iraq, despite having such deep trauma that he
could barely function. He took a handful of sleeping pills and shot himself in
the head two weeks before deploying.”
“I
didn’t serve but my brother did,” Penny noted, recounting the tragedy that
befell her family as a result. “He never went to war but still shot himself in
the head. He was the sweetest most tender person I’ll ever know and the US Army
ruined him.”
Veterans
continue to kill themselves at alarming levels in the United States. More than
52 percent of military suicides occur among US Army veterans. A Veterans
Administration study from 2016 showed that approximately 20 veterans die every
day, or one every hour or so. According to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of
America (IAVA), more than 5,500 veterans killed themselves in 2018.
Alice
spoke of the generational traumas felt by the scars of past wars going back to
World War II. “My grandfather fought in Burma with the U.S. Army in WWII,”
Alice wrote. “He lived a long life and had 7 children. But as he got older the
nightmares came. It broke my heart to hear him tell me with tears in his eyes
that he was dreaming every night of all he had seen.”
Chanda
spoke of similar traumas affecting whole families. “My uncle was US Airforce,”
she said, “and he came home with PTSD that went untreated for almost 50 years
and had an impact on his ability to be the family man he needed to be. Now,
he’s suffering serious physical side effects from agent orange exposure. It’s
affected my whole family.”
“The
real take away,” Brett remarked on the Army’s tweet, “for the social
media/marketing folks whose brilliant idea this was should be to stop selling
and glorifying military service to underprivileged 18-year-olds while covering
up the consequences and side effects.”
Another
commentator declared, “Soldiers are not your money-bought pawns. They are not
random collateral. They are family. They are friends. Our mothers and fathers.
Our sisters and brothers. Our aunts, uncles, and cousins. They are more than a
serial number. Even if they don’t lose their lives, they lose themselves.”
“The
US Army takes advantage of those stuck in unfortunate circumstances,” said
another, “while the elite continue to profit off their ‘service’ and reap their
benefits. My heart breaks for every veteran in this thread brave enough to
speak their painful truths of this dystopian cult.”
The
pervasiveness of antiwar sentiment is detailed in comments like the following
as well: “My grandfather was drafted from Puerto Rico against his will and
taken to Korea to fight a war for the USA and when he didn’t want to kill
people that didn’t do anything to him he was thrown in jail.”
A
person in Sacramento, California spoke of the crimes of US imperialism in
Vietnam and that war’s continuing impact: “My grandparents were used as pawns
serving the US army in aiding them on the Ho Chi Minh trail. They served in The
Secret War, and when the US lost the Vietnam war the Hmong were left to die in
genocide. To this day Hmong veterans are not recognized by the US army.
“More
than half of my people were wiped out through genocide. Only about a third of
what once was the Hmong population are scattered in diaspora around the world.
Many in the US who deal with PTSD through alcoholism, abuse, and addiction to
opium.
“And
the children are left to pick up the pieces and navigate a delicate past,
present, and future for the years to come while inheriting intergenerational
trauma.”
“My
dad was in the marines in the 2000s,” another person explained. “He served in
Iraq and then got honorably discharged. He talked a lot about how proud he was
for that, but I’ve spent a lot of my time the past couple months crying. How
does pride come into play when he’s gone?
“He’d
been struggling with PTSD for so long. He’d been struggling with addiction and
alcoholism, but he wanted help so badly. He spent the entirety of 2018 wanting
to get better. He went to rehab and took all the medication he was told to, but
there was so much medication.
“He
slipped. He made the mistake of fueling his addiction. Once. But with all the
medication prescribed to him his body couldn’t handle that. So he was on a
ventilator and then they disconnected him a week later after giving him 72
hours.
“Take
better care of our veterans. He was only 37. My mom used to do everything with
him and now she looks so lonely. The calendar that he hung is still there, in our
kitchen. It still says December 2018. No one has touched it.”
Nathan
spoke of the wars coming home with devastating violence, “You all make the
world a scary place playing war games killing people overseas then the poor
guys come home, get police jobs and end up shooting people in our communities.”
More than one thousands Americans are killed by police every year, a reflection
of the brutalization and militarization of all forms of social life.
Karen
spoke of the falsehoods and imperialist deceits used to prosecute these illegal
wars. “My uncle is still MIA in Laos,” she said. “He was involved in a secret
war, and the military lied to my family about his location. He was 20 years
old, too young to vote at that time.
“The
US has learned nothing,” Karen added, “and continues to manufacture war under
false pretenses.”
This
outpouring of rage on Twitter highlights the latent but deep going antiwar
sentiment in the American population that finds no expression in the current
political system or the corporate media. A quarter century of endless wars of
aggression waged to offset the decline of US capitalism on the world stage has
taken a heavy human toll at home as well as abroad.
A
continuous string of administrations from both parties of big business, from
George H.W. Bush, to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald
Trump, are the chief architects of a maelstrom of bloody imperialist violence
unleashed around the world since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
While
George H.W. Bush went to his grave praised by the political establishment,
thousands of veterans and millions of civilians have been scarred by the first
Gulf War which he oversaw. Following Clinton’s crimes in Iraq and Yugoslavia,
George W. Bush’s administration began the unending “War on Terror” that killed
and maimed millions in Iraq and Afghanistan and destroyed and destabilized an
entire civilization and region. Nearly two decades later the US military
continues to occupy both countries.
Millions
hoped that Obama would end the wars of the previous Bush administration, but he
extended the theater of war to more than seven countries, including Libya and
Syria, and carried out deadly drone strikes in multiple countries that killed
innumerable innocent civilians. Trump has continued Obama’s wars, maintaining
an illegal occupation of northeastern Syria and deploying 1,500 additional
soldiers to the Middle East to threaten Iran.
The
endless sociocide waged by American imperialism has unleashed the largest
refugee crisis globally since World War II and threatens the world with the
outbreak of a third world war with nuclear armed powers, Russia and China.
War
criminals like George W. Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump have yet to be held to
account for their crimes; instead, they walk free and have made enormous
fortunes since leaving office. Unlike the Nazi trials of Nuremberg following
World War II, there has been no reckoning with the crimes of American
imperialism.
For
its part, the US media, including the New
York Times, Washington
Post, CNN, Fox News and the rest of the mainstream media have
served as open propaganda instruments for the US ruling elite, justifying the
lies and false pretexts manufactured to prosecute criminal wars of aggression
and to suffocate mass antiwar sentiment in the population.
These
are the crimes that Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and whistleblower Chelsea Manning
courageously revealed and risked their lives. For revealing the truths about
the wars of American imperialism, a responsibility the media have completely
abdicated, both Manning and Assange have been thrown into prison. They are
victims of a massive political frame-up by the US ruling class, which now seeks
to criminalize the freedom of the press with the use of the Espionage Act.
As
the comments in response to the US Army Twitter post reveal, there is a
powerful revulsion to war and mass antiwar sentiment in the United States. The
crimes of American imperialism are above all the product of the failure of the
global capitalist system, the growth of social inequality and the continued
division of the world into competing nation states.
The
intolerable conditions millions confront in their daily lives are driving them
into opposition to capitalism and war. This opposition, however, can only be
mobilized in progressive direction through the building of a mass antiwar,
anti-capitalist and socialist movement of the international working class to
once and for all end the scourges and horrors of war and capitalism.
No comments:
Post a Comment