This holiday weekend the forces of empire will rest their right hands above their hearts to honor ‘ Our Brave Warriors’ and ‘ All those who served’. Sadly, the majority of my fellow citizens will follow suit with eyes closed ( some with tears) to give memory to our fighting forces in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan… to name but the largest places of US interventions. We can factor out the last real war we entered into, WW2 and let’s address the rest.
The Korean Civil war, which like that one in Vietnam, was never a declared engagement by our government. No, they were both part of an imperialist plan by the Military Industrial Empire to keep our jackboot on the necks of the native populations. As with any chess match you need the pawns to march forward for cover for the mighty Queen and her rooks, bishops and knights. All to protect the King AKA Empire. The pawns get destroyed until a cease fire or settlement is reached… always after the empire makes its profits. Ditto for our most recent major involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan ( along with Syria of course) that saw a multitude of pawns destroyed… sometimes with even ‘ Friendly fire’… but who cares how they died, when they died for a cause? Iraq was the most obvious use of A) Destroy a nation’s infrastructure with taxpayer funded WMDs , B) Then hire out US and allied corporations to rebuild the mess… yes, with more taxpayer dollars… duh, like hundreds of $ BILLIONS .
To go after the criminals in suits and uniforms decorated with fruit salad who orchestrated the Korean and Vietnam debacles will be somewhat futile. Most of those evil people are probably dead and buried… thank goodness. With the pre-emptive attacks and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan many of those criminals ( sorry about Bush Sr. and Don Rumsfeld, but the devil took them already) are still around and operating. Junior Bush and his puppeteer Dick Cheney are breathing well. Junior loves to paint pictures and watch Texas Rangers games, while Dick enjoys his free time as he pleases. Sleepy Joe and his main man Barack, with their 10 to 1 increase in drone missile attacks, creating lots of collateral damage, are still standing free. Trump and his ‘ Mother of all bombs’ and other assorted attacks against sovereign peoples is running again for that power over life and death. Ain’t freedom great?
It would be so nice if the veterans and their loved ones of all our phony and immoral so called wars would speak out this Monday. I would love the mass of them to say what needs be said: ‘ Arrest the war criminals who sent us into those hornet’s nests’! As the MAGA crowd likes to say ‘ Lock em up!’
PA Farruggio
Memorial Weekend 2024
How is that saying…”wrapping itself in the flag is the last refuge of the scoundrel’??? A land of phonies.
well said Vera.
It was Sinclair Lewis who said … ‘ Carrying a cross wrapped in a flag’.
CHILDREN by David Rothauser
At the end of the day in the dusty corners of our minds the horrors of this war will fade, as they always do. Semite, antisemite, collateral damage, hostages, terrorists, winners, losers, heroes – all and all of it will become a dim memory in the illusion of our dreams – gone, as wispy clouds sigh away on their West to East with Middle East in between…Yet harken before we lose that final, sweet note, desperately clinging to our aborted entrails…Let us forever remember the children…The children, here and there and everywhere in our open eyes, guts, stomach retching, mind searing, arms begging, hearts racing, cascading tears and laughter…They are ALL, our children…they belong…
A FINAL WORD. THE MURDER OF CHILDREN IS NON-DEBATABLE AND NON-NEGOTIABLE.
Copyright 2024 by david Rothauser
http://www.hibakusha-ourlifetolive.org
Massacre of the Innocent, by Peter Paul Rubens
those who study metaphysics like myself always state that the 2 greatest sins in the universe is to Violate a child ( murder included of course) and ditto to a harmless animal
well said David