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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