I cannot join those who honor the military dead on memorial day, although we are all asked to do so, since I do not agree we should have been in any of the wars we had. Our first, the revolutionary war, was a mistake. The majority of Americans were against it, but it is the nature of democracies that it takes only a few people to get us into war. Canada and Australia gained indepedence without war with Britain, and we could have as well.
India gained independence from britain without war, through nonviolent means. This is better, although India went from British oppressors to Indian oppressors. The Tea Party people should know everyone of their candidates that were elected have already sold them down the river, so that is nothing new.
The way I read just cause and just war theory, we had no wars that were just.
By the time my draft number was coming up, I had already heard plenty on nonviolence and conscientious objectorship. I was already aware of the pointlessness of violence, so it did not matter to me that MLKing declared the usa as the #1 source of violence in the world. True but irrelevent. We can’t go to war even if we are the 321st in unjust warmaking.
Extremely few people who are “veterans” ever see combat. My father was on a destroyer from 39 to 45. A destroyer’s job is to seek out, engage and destroy the enemy. Real agressive work, with minimal equipment. In the navy they call destroyers submarines with portholes, their design causes them to go through the huge waves, not over them. My father served in the Aleutians, the only us territory invaded and taken by the Japanese, and in the Caribbean, when south atlantic waters were the scene of one of the bloodiest in naval warfare.
For all that his ship never fired a single weapon in combat, nor was ever fired on.
It is typical of cults for members to move from “willing to die” to “willing to kill” for the group. I don’t believe anyone is really “willing to die” for America. Look at how these soldiers are flak-jacketed and armed and backed up with snipers and artillery and air cover and nukes. It seems to me they very much do not want to die. I don’t blame them. I would not die for my country. Friends, maybe, but never willingly. But soldiers sure look willing to kill.
There is a reason we send 19 year olds off to fight. They have no idea what they are getting into, and there may be nothing quite as dangerous as an armed 19 year old American, to quote Michael Herr. There is a reason why we recycle troops back into battle. Combat makes people very dangerous, and better they get killed being recycled in after patching up than they recover and return to society. And even people not in combat, some veterans find the reality just too much, Suicide rates in the military are very high. And they don’t count the suicides after service.
Please do not tell me our military keeps us free. Our butcher, baker, candlestick maker, farmer and fisherman are who keep us free. They are the ones that fight, if need be. We do not need a standing army. One reason USA went independent was the British maintained a standing army in the colonies. When we went to war it was citizen-soldiers who defeated the world's sole superpower, the UK. When USA invaded Vietnam, farmers got their guns and defeated the superpower USA. Farmers are defeating USA in Afghanistan. All of the European counties with standing armies were quickly rolled over by Hitler's invading armies. No standing army = victory. Standing army means defeat. We need no standing military.
We were never meant to be an empire. We need to honor entrepreneurs, not soldiers.
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