‘Support the Troops.’ I have come to have mixed feelings about that phrase. I have been both amused and appalled by the Democrats’ terror at being accused of not supporting the troops. How did our politics become so simplistic and artificial? How did it become all about appearances, and never mind the substance?
How did we get to the point that superficial insults bearing no relation to reality become the determining factors in shaping our national policy? How did Democrats get so weak as to allow themselves to be led around by the nose by those who for all their magnetic ribbons to the contrary do nothing but exploit and screw over ‘the troops’ at every opportunity?
What I would give for a leader with the courage not to knuckle under to such superficial nonsense – one who would engage us in a discussion of the heart of such matters rather than faint in the face of ‘appearances’. When did it become too much of a bother to attempt to get to the truth of things, rather than just buy into the conventional wisdom of how something might appear?
When I was approached by TexDem and timroff to do this diary I equivocated. Having come to lament our militarism as a cancer on our culture, I was in no mood to write anything remotely rah rah about the military and I was afraid that my own cynicism and loss of faith in all things military might hurt the efforts of all those good people who have contributed to the Netroots for the Troops project.
Before you mistake my intent, I wrote of my position in The Day After Memorial Day.
I was born into a military family. I’ve allied myself with anyone who supports veterans and service folk in any way such as testvet, jimstaro, Brandon Friedman, Ilona Meagher, avila, ilyana, lao hong han, GreyHawk, possum, truong son traveler, FireCrow, the IGTNT bloggers and many others.
I have reviled the repubs for hiding behind the slogan, ‘Support the troops’, while in actuality screwing the troops in every possible way at every possible opportunity.
I have affection for the military because my father was career Army and because I both grew up with, and did time in the Alabama prison system with a surprising number of Vietnam vets. Many of my current friends are Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq war vets, most of them active in the peace movement.
I am always for the little guy and in the military world the troops are the little guys – and it’s a crying shame how they get jerked around.
So there is no question as to where my sympathies lie. I’m for the troops, specifically the grunts, the rank and file, those who do the heavy lifting. They can only do what they are told. I do however hold them accountable for their actions. Just following orders doesn’t work anymore.
But more to the point, I want to question the way we think about the military and military service. My purpose in doing this is to assist in however small a way in what I hope will be the ultimate rejection of militarism in our country and around the world. I know this will not be easy, but I believe with all my heart that it is something we absolutely must do to survive. Military insanity will kill us all if we don’t step up and put an end to it.
I met Tony (TexDem) for lunch this past Tuesday at Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta to discuss these matters and whether or not I could help without hurting – and still be true to myself.
I expressed my reservations and misgivings about our military madness to Tony’s very sympathetic ear. We agreed that we can and should support the unfortunate young people who are swept up in the current madness – and that we can do that without in any way supporting war or the military fetishism from which our culture suffers – and from which it may ultimately die.
Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism
I have heard a lot of harsh criticism of the military in recent years, some of it justified and some not. I’ve known people to say that since we no longer have a draft that anyone who joins is voluntarily choosing to participate in evil. Clearly some of our guys are doing evil in Iraq and elsewhere, all too often in response to direct orders from their ‘leaders’ who themselves are being directed by our sorry excuse for a government. And some of them are no doubt doing so willfully and with harmful intent. There are always rotten apples in the military, but the majority of our people in uniform (most of whom are between the ages of 18 and 24) are either doing what they believe is right or are just doing what they have to do to survive. We may not have a draft but we do have ways of coercing young people with bleak futures into signing their lives away for a few empty promises.
The following is excerpted from Aimee Alison and David Solnit’s book, Army of None, Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War, and Build a Better World.
Top military recruitment facts
- Recruiters lie.
- The military contract guarantees nothing.
- Advertised signing bonuses are bogus.
- The military won't make you financially secure.
- Money for college ($71,424 in the bank?).
- Job training.
- War, combat, and your contract.
Top Military Recruitment Lies - Alternet
Each of those seven points are expounded upon in the Alternet article. It’s a worthwhile read.
Americans are the most thoroughly brainwashed people in the world. Our propaganda machine is awesome and second to none other in all of human history. Among the lies it has deeply ingrained in us is that our military is purely a matter of self-defense. May the Gods that be help the hapless politician seen as ‘weak on national defense’. As if all those other bully nations are just dying for us to relax our guard so that they can pounce on America and kill us all. After all, they hate us for our freedoms, right?
The harsh fact of the matter is that if there’s a dangerous bully on the planet, it’s us.
We are the biggest arms manufacturers and arms dealers in the world – but we call it the ‘defense industry’ when ‘murder incorporated’ would be more appropriate.
This is the salient fact – we vastly outspend every other nation on the planet COMBINED on military insanity.
All of this insanity is driven by the greed-fueled Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about nearly five decades ago.
And even Barack Obama has bought into the madness of the Military Industrial Complex.
Strengthen the Military: Our country’s greatest military asset is the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States. Barack Obama will work to solve the military’s recruitment and retention crisis by asking Americans to serve in the military, increasing the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and the Marines by 27,000
troops, and properly training and equipping our troops to face the battles of the 21st Century.
from the Obama ’08 website
We already have the biggest military in the world by a very substantial margin. I support Barack Obama, but he is going to have to grow a bigger pair to stand up to these monsters, and we are going to have to insist on it and never let him back down.
We have to stop buying into this insanity. We have to stop feeding the Military Industrial Complex and get focused on the issues that truly matter to the future survival of life on earth. War, militarism and war profiteering are horrible distractions and consume not only our attention and the lives of our youth, but also our genius and our treasure. We must get our priorities straight if we are to survive.
NASA warming scientist: 'This is the last chance'
WASHINGTON - Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.
James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.
"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."
(SNIP)
"We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would."
Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.
Longtime global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., citing a recent poll, said in a statement, "Hansen, (former Vice President) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it."
But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., committee chairman, said, "Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet."
Source
We have to drastically change our ways. We can no longer afford to be consumed by stupidity and greed. Militarism has got to go.
The cult of military self-sacrifice has also got to be dismantled. Let’s us stop romanticizing the needless and wanton waste of young lives in service to war profits.
We are told that our loved ones are taken from us to protect and preserve ‘the American way of life’. What they don’t tell us is that ‘the American way of life’ is code for a rich man’s right to be a rich man, even at the mortal expense of every other human being on the planet. We are encouraged to be grateful for and proud of the opportunity to give the lives of our loved ones to the cause of improving the balance sheets of the filthy fucking rich. And the most galling aspect of it is that these already enormously rich assholes are so eaten up with greed and hubris that they know but do not care that their profits come soaked in the blood of patriots and innocents.
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
~ General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC
I pray that there is a special part of hell reserved for these monsters who run and profit from the Military Industrial Complex, and I pray that we all finally stand up and cut the bonds that bind us to their ravenous and soulless greed.
Let’s stop making soldiering romantic - it’s not romantic, it’s tragic. And let’s stop making death in war a noble sacrifice – it’s not noble it’s foolish (on society's part), it’s regrettable, it’s wasteful - it is anything but noble (however noble the individual may have been).
Please do not take this as disrespect for those who have died or their families. That is NOT my intent. I just want us all to put it in the proper painful perspective.
By all means, let us not forget that our troops are victims of this madness. There is a reason that the very young are recruited and sent to war. For the most part they do not possess sufficient self-knowledge or personal insight to understand what a rotten deal they are getting. They have the idealized picture of war that has been planted in their heads to make them amenable to the program. Sadly they learn all too quickly that the real thing is an entirely different beast.
To make matters worse they are deprived of so much of what they need. The military no longer takes care of them – not like they did in previous generations at least. They shut down the Quartermaster Corp and farmed everything out to the likes of Halliburton or KBR who supplies them with filthy water and substandard everything – ripping us all off in the process. They don’t have the armor they need, they don’t have clean water - they don’t even have things like socks and underwear. Let’s forget for a moment what that says about our government, and let’s be grateful for the efforts of the IGTNT bloggers and the Netroots for the Troops bloggers here at dailykos and elsewhere in the netroots. They have worked diligently on behalf of all US service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their efforts have no doubt eased the burdens of young Americans serving in awful places under horrible conditions far from their homes and families. I am grateful for these bloggers and their efforts, and I pray that all our people will be home soon to live out their lives in peace.
Now that the Netroots for the Troops project has exceeded its primary goal (congratulations to all and thank you to everyone who contributed), we are looking for names and mailing addresses for any service folk directly or indirectly associated with DailyKos or the netroots. This includes family and friends of the netroots even if they never heard of us.
We need the name, rank, unit and APO of servicemen you might know currently serving in the field. Knowing their glove, insole, sock and underwear size is an added plus!
We need cards, letters, photos, and other words of encouragement from home that we can include in the boxes.
We still need a range of sundries, preferably in bulk, that we can package with the boxes. The list includes: cotton socks, men's and women's cotton underwear, CDs and DVDs, Tampons and sanitary napkins, foot powder, crossword/puzzle/sudoku books, Q-tips, paperback books, shampoo, sketchbooks and pencils, conditioner, paper and envelopes, tissues, Individually packaged sports drink mixes, body wash, microwave popcorn, lotion, licorice, lip balm/Chapstick, gum and mints, disposable razors, meat jerky and much more.
If you can supply any such names and addresses, please email them to katroshp@bellsouth.net
For a mailing address for any of the other items, first email timroff at tim@timroff.com
And thank you kossacks for all the wonderful things you do to make this world a better place. Together, we are making a difference.