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War and the reasons |
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Ruth made a powerful point this morning:
Today we are seeing all sorts of messages about the troops, and I keep hearing about those ‘who made the ultimate sacrifice’, and I want to know, for what? In my lifetime, the WWII in Europe ended, those troops came home who hadn’t died, and back home they found a lot of gratitude.
They built up a country that was the strongest economy for the workers that ever existed. It was a country that was worth the struggle to maintain it. Since that time, policies that fought against living wage and adequate benefits for workers has turned it around, and we have economic disaster. The social security and unemployment programs to keep us through hard time, plans we have paid into, have been borrowed practically out of existence while we bail out the financial industry that has squandered what we earn.
In my lifetime, the wars have been diminishing into policy squabbles. Vietnam was about ‘domino theory’ and draftees encountered the realities that denied political dogma and turned the public into a war machine; the machine that ended an unproductive war.
War is less about the fighting and more about the aftermath. Troops came home from WWII and made this country great. Why? Because of the way FDR and Truman handled the politics and decisions around that war, and especially the decisions Truman made after it. Why was Vietnam and Iraq different? Because Kennedy/LBJ/Nixon and Bush politicized those wars, didn’t ask for sacrifice, and din’t show gratitude to the returning soldiers.
So, on this Memorial day weekend, remember the soldiers, who did their duty and paid their price; they deserve your recognition. But also remember the Presidents, who made the decisions to send them into wars, not always for better.
War is good bidness.
America is the arms merchant to the world.
I’m sure you’re all familiar with Smedley Butler. The force of USer arms has been employed in the service of CorpoRat expansion, colonization, and domination for over a century outside our borders, but since the first moments and instants against the indigenes.
Our avian avatars, that is, are not all yet returned to their roosts.