Memorializing the ugly truth

May 25th, 2009 admin

The truth isn’t always pretty, popular, or palpable.  But it remains the truth.  In many areas, the truth is sacrificed for the closely guarded alternative realities of “conventional” wisdom; particularly in times like these.  As Senator Hiram Warren Johnson once said, “Truth is the first casualty of war.”

Indeed.

While the claim is rampant, and the sacredity of the cow unquestionable, the reality of our American military personnel is much different.  Those fighting a phantom enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan are not fighting for our freedom.  Those dying in those theaters of wartime absurdity have not been killed in the service of their country, nor have they made, as is often said, the ultimate sacrifice for we the living.

Though it is much less poetic, and devoid of the tearful, pride-swollen romance of popular sentiment, the dead Americans in the pointless and illegal conflict in Iraq, and the nation-building experiment in Afghanistan have died not for freedom, but for its opposite.  These lives have been sacrificed for government.  The deaths are part of a not-so-secret neo-conservative plan to remake the world in the shape of “big government conservatism,” (ala PNAC) and to give the United nations a permanent place in the Middle East, another swipe at US sovereignty and step giant leap toward global government.

There was never the slightest threat to U.S. national security posed by a prostrate Iraq, too weakened by sanctions to seriously concern any nation.  Without a threat, there can be no protection.  Without protection there is no glamorous hero’s death died by our betrayed countrymen.

The other war is at once different and similar.  It would matter were our focus on al-Qaeda.  But our military is instead focused on spraying Roundup on poppy fields (which drives up the price of heroin, and thus increases drug-related crime domestically), and chasing disorganized remnants of the Taliban, even after we trained an army and installed a government to do this very thing.

It will be said that some vast conspiracy succeeded in hiding the illusive WMDs in Iraq, and that the Taliban may justly be pursued unto the ends of the earth for harboring al-Qaeda operatives (apparently Pakistan harboring such terrorists is permissible).

Other than actually pursuing al-Qaeda in the months after 9/11, one would search in vain for a time since World War II that American military personnel died while protecting the rest of us from a real enemy.  This sad reality does not result in fewer claims to the contrary.

So on this Memorial Day, when we are asked to quietly believe the deceit of our “leaders,” and listen silently to the warm, fuzzy lies of all who wish to sound patriotic by repeating the fictions that allow the state to demand more pointless deaths, we should pause to reflect on the reality.  We should neither weep in silence, nor nod in agreement.  We should instead demand a return to the just war theory, and insist that elected officials charged with commanding our brave men and women in uniform place them in harm’s way solely in the defense of the Republic; not for the benefit of foreign tyrants, blue flags of despotism, or the revived, frightening call for empire.

Entry Filed under: Afghanistan, Foreign Relations, International, Iraq War, Military, Politics, The Presidency, The State, Uncategorized