Our soldiers are killing and dying for greed wrapped in the American flag. The only “freedom” being served is the freedom for our well-connected corporations to loot at will while our young men and women cover their backs. Memorializing the corporate greed for which most of our soldiers have fought and died is simply, and continually, pornographic.
This year, Memorial Day left a bad taste in my gut. It started during lunch at a local restaurant. The owner, a man in his early 30s, said he had bought the local franchise operation three years ago. I asked what he had done before: “Five years in the Army, Sir.” I told him I was glad he’d come back alive and whole. A quick odd grin: “Well, mostly whole, Sir.” Not going there. “Look; it’s been a long time since I was a ‘Sir’; just call me Davidson.” There was a short silence. He added my age to the “Sir,” though it was still an unexpected question: “Were you in Vietnam, Sir?” “Yes. I was a combat photographer and press officer.” He became very earnest: “Thank you for your service, Sir.”
Another customer called him; I paid and left. I was suddenly angry as hell, and a small flood of old memories and newer stories came together like a perfect storm. I remembered the fall of 1964. I was stationed in Germany, a few months before returning to attend Officer Candidate School. At the makeshift base movie room, we watched the new film, “The Americanization of Emily,” with James Garner and Julie Andrews. It was the third film she had made, before the release of her first two: “Mary Poppins” and “The Sound of Music.” Andrews has said that “Emily” was her favorite film. It’s one of the best anti-war films ever made: more courageous than “All Quiet on the Western Front,” because rather than just tackling the senseless waste of young lives, James Garner’s character – an Admiral’s aide – attacked the “hero” cult. By putting up statues of dead soldiers, we bait the trap to lure more young men into the ugly hell of war. Memorial Day is for remembering those who gave their lives.
But for just what did they give their lives – more accurately, had their lives taken? Just what are we memorializing? What was the “service” for which we thank our soldiers? This is a slippery area. Many soldiers are brave, heroic; I’ve known some whose automatic, selfless courage has made me proud of them, no matter what I thought of their war – and I’ve told them so. But how do we keep this from becoming a self-perpetuating hero cult? What does it take to make actions heroic? It’s not just the willingness to engage in life-threatening violence. Street gangs do that, as well as teen-aged Somali pirates, martial artists, boxers, daredevils, Formula One race car drivers, and those “Ultimate Fighters” who risk getting beat senseless while beating the other guy senseless. There is some genuine respect for their skill and courage. But heroic? No. We wouldn’t think of telling them “Thank you for your service.” The service that elicits our thanks requires not only courage and risk, but courage and risk in the name of an ideal we regard as sacred. The boxers and martial artists have everything it would take to become a heroes – except the noble cause.
Reduced to one word we say soldiers are fighting for Freedom. They’re somehow fighting for our freedom: freedom wrapped in an American flag. They’re fighting, killing and being killed so we can be free, we say. That’s the propaganda, but not the truth; the last war fought for our freedom was World War II, which ended 65 years ago. Most wars are fought for greed, not freedom.
In his 2006 book Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer identified the steps the U.S. has followed faithfully in our orchestration of political coups in which American corporations made healthy profits: from Hawaii in 1893 to Iraq in 2003. Here’s what the blood of our soldiers has bought, and how the proceedings are structured:
- A US-based multinational corporation faces a threat to its profits by the host country’s environmental or labor laws, attempt to nationalize resources, refusal to let our corporations into the game.
- Under corporate pressure, U.S. politicians redefine this rebuttal of American greed as an attack on “American interests,” the code word for “corporate profits.”
- Politicians sell it to the voters as a war of good against evil.
- Then, in the poignant words of General Smedley Butler, “The flag follows the dollar, and the soldiers follow the flag.”
General Butler (1881-1940), had earned the right to criticize war. In his 31-year career as a Marine, he was one of only two Americans ever to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for two different battles. In 1934, he was the most respected military name in the country.
That’s when a group of wealthy men and corporations (including Prescott Bush, whose son and grandson would both be President) offered Butler fabulous wealth to assemble a 500,000 man volunteer army, take over the White House, dethrone Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and becoming America’s first fascist dictator. The American oligarchs drooled over Mussolini’s fascism, which had eliminated individual rights and replaced them with the nation’s rights – which in turn served the needs of its best-connected corporations. Henry Luce, founder of both TIME and FORTUNE magazines, devoted the whole July 1934 issue of FORTUNE to Mussolini’s social and economic achievements – and ran Mussolini’s picture on the cover.
Unfortunately for them, though fortunately for us, Gen. Butler was a patriot. He went to Congress to make the treasonous offer public – watch the story here — http://www.vloggingtheapocalypse.com...
One measure of the privilege of wealth is the fact that FDR did not have these traitors tried and sentenced to prison or to death.
The next year, General Butler wrote his classic little book, War is a Racket, describing his career-defining role in the racket:
I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
This is what we’re sending our young people to die for: greed, oil, resources and territory. This is the truth that must not be named. When it is named, heads roll. And this too happened on Memorial Day, in Germany.
German president Horst Kohler resigned over criticisms of his truth-telling. His comments came in a radio interview on May 22:
“A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.”
This is the secret elephant in the room: that war is a racket in which corporate profits are bought with the blood of our soldiers, and the pain and suffering of “enemy” soldiers and civilians, as well as their own families.
I’m still not sure what our soldiers died for in Vietnam, or came home physically or mentally shattered. Certainly not our Freedom. But it’s much clearer in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither country had a thing to do with Osama bin Laden, Al Qaida or 9-11. The original name for our illegal invasion of Iraq – Operation Iraqi Liberation – spelled it out so vulgarly that the name was quickly changed. Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are there because the flag followed the petro dollars and soldiers followed the flag.
Our soldiers are killing and dying for greed wrapped in the American flag. This isn’t to doubt their courage and sacrifices. I respect and admire the selflessness of soldiers I know from six wars: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, First Gulf War, 2003 Invasion of Iraq, and Afghanistan: the longest “war” in our history.
The only “freedom” being served is the freedom for our well-connected corporations to loot at will while our young men and women cover their backs. Memorializing the corporate greed for which most of our soldiers have fought and died is simply, and continually, pornographic.