"The fallen." "Our men and women in uniform." "Brave heroes." "Unsung patriots." We use these tired descriptions every day in speeches, in proclamations, on plaques and dedications. We stand with bowed heads as politicians read out the names of "those who have made the ultimate sacrifice" dying "while serving their country" "with honor." Even as peace-loving citizens we speak such words, and yet each time we do we make the same mistake humans have made for millennia: in using these words we give acceptance to war and allow it to continue.
We mourn, we light virtual candles, we ask that so-and-so be remembered. We speak in a language reserved for solemn occasions in church like funerals and sermons. We talk of sacrifices made so regular people can sleep in peace and enjoy freedom. In using such language we believe we ease the pain of loss and make those sacrifices ones "of honor." I submit that in reality, this language dips the horrible reality of war into a palatable coating so that even if we know deep inside that the kids who for some reason believe this language and go to fight actually died for nothing but the needs of a few very powerful corporate interests and the politicians who serve them.
I don't know what to call this mode of speech other than the language of lies. It is a very formal mode that is easily fallen into because we hear it so often it becomes part of our colloquial tongue from an early age. We are trained to it as it were, so that when someone uses it we automatically change our expression, body language and actions to reflect the solemnity. Recruiting ads use the very same language--underscored by driving military music-- showing kids training, dust rising, small explosions of the kind seen in any TV drama. We all know that if a recruiting ad used actual footage of a truck convoy under attack, kids screaming in terror, expanding balls of pressurized fuel enveloping them as they are shot to bits by hidden enemies, they would recruit few if any young people to their cause. No recruits, no wars. No wars, no way to test out or even justify the invention, manufacture and use of the billions of dollars-worth of weapons the military corporations sell to the American military every year.
And yet, we fall for that language every time. We as adults fall for it, and the vulnerable kids who become the newest war-food fall for it. Maybe underneath we feel that if we don't fall for it, we may stick out for fighting against it. Maybe people will say we are not patriotic or we aren't honoring the memories of the thousands of kids who have died in the latest weapons test. We need to fight against its use, though. It is propaganda and it keeps us from facing the truth: that our kids are not fighting with honor to protect American freedom--they are doing what somebody bigger that they are told them to do using words that were not true. They are not the fallen--they are the used. They are not brave heroes--they are trained from birth like the rest of us to be nearly unable to resist a language that paints war in the best of lights, so they can "serve their country." We think them heroes because we too believe that language as it resonates quietly in our brains and brings tears to our eyes. We believe that in using this language their "sacrifice" is somehow more glorious, but it is not.
We must remember, yes we must. We must remember that all of these kids who went somewhere to die that was not the United States under attack from a real enemy army actually died to serve the whims of a very souless government that is entwined limb by limb with the corporations who make the weapons that kill these kids. There is no honor in that. They are not heroes. They believed a language of insidious lies, just as the rest of us do, that covers the truth with creamy honor and God's blessings. This language needs to die so that our kids, the kids everywhere who are hypnotized by it, will no longer be "the fallen."