“Then you go on leave, and realize that Ayn Rand has no idea what the fuck she’s talking about. You realize that Fox News and Limbaugh and John McCain don’t respect you or your buddies. They don’t give a fuck if you get a parade or a box when you get home, you’re nothing to them but a prop.
Then you get out, and you hate the news. You hate the apathy, and you hate the murder being carried out in your name. You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper, a faceless, nameless rifleman, carrying a spear for empire, and you start to accept the startlingly obvious truth that these are people like you.”
~ Daniel Crimmins, U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division
Kaepernick
This practice of invoking fallen soldiers in order to win debates about toxic US policies is obscene, illogical, and pernicious, and it needs to stop. Colin Kaepernick is not automatically wrong because the US government routinely sends its teenagers overseas to die for American oil interests. The fact that soldiers fight and die in military operations has no bearing whatsoever on Kaepernick’s attempts to draw attention to specific US domestic issues.
These foam-brained non-arguments point to a much broader phenomenon in US political discourse in which the uniquely American way that military personnel are fetishized prevents people from speaking plainly about the reality of what the US war machine is actually doing. Anyone who wants to bring any criticism of US foreign policy anywhere remotely close to mainstream discourse must first do a whole ridiculous song and dance about how they’re so grateful to the brave men and women in the armed services for their heroic sacrifices who fought and died for our freedom.
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How do you as a people walk around head held high, knowing that every few months you are committing a 9/11 event to other people. Imagine if the 9/11 terror attacks were happening in america every few months. Again and again, innocent people dying all around you. Your brothers and sisters. For no reason.
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Many of us are unable. Many of us watched 9/11, and accepted the government and media's definition of the attack as a act of war rather than a criminal action. A smaller portion, drifting along passively thought a major war was coming, that people we knew were going to fight and die. Some of us maybe worried about our younger brother being drafted, despite being in college. Now, it seems stupid, but in the 72 hours after 9/11, some Americans, maybe suffering from depression, certainly with a mind shaped by comic books and action movies, ate up the "us vs. them" good vs. evil rhetoric spouted by the cowboy in chief. After all, he was the president, and no matter how bright you might think yourself, you can still be swayed by passion and emotion, led to terrible decisions.
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Some of us, therefore, left our dorm rooms, and walked down Main Street to the recruiter's office. Some of us were genuinely surprised the office wasn't full to bursting of young men eager to avenge their fallen countrymen. Some of us were genuinely surprised when we had to push the recruiter to stop trying to sell desk jobs and just let us join the damn Infantry.
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So they persevere. They learn to work as a unit, to look past personality issues, to see each other as Soldiers rather than as a race, or economic status, or any of the other things people hate about each other. They learn to kill.
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Then some of these people, perhaps while sitting hungover in the platoon area in the Republic of Korea hear that we have invaded Iraq. They have "Big Scary Bombs", and Saddam Hussein, the secular Arab dictator had somehow colluded with the devoutly religious OBL to attack the US. They hated our freedom, you see.
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Then some of these young American men might transfer back to Georgia and be assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, and end up in Iraq in January of 2005. And maybe these kids, still drunk on Fox News and fantasies of glory and renown being enough to win their ex-girlfriends back, are excited to go to Iraq. Sure, we hadn't found any WMDs yet, and we had Hussein in custody, but they were still somehow a threat and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into Jeffersonian democracy. Inside every dirka is a good American, yearning to be free.
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You fight, you kill, you watch friends die, and you notice a distinct lack of change. You kick in doors and tell terrified women to sit on the floor while you and your friends ransack their home, tearing the place apart, because they might be hiding weapons. There is no reason to believe this house in particular is enemy, same for the next one, and the one after that, or the seven before; they just happened to be there, and maybe they had weapons. Probably not, they almost never did. There were a few times when we had deliberate raids based on solid intel and we'd turn up some stuff, but generally we were just tossing houses because we could.
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Then maybe your FISTer forgets to carry the remainder, and drops a mess of mortars on the village your supposed to protect. Maybe the big Iraqi running at you screaming was just mentally ill. Of course, you won't know this until after you've but seven rounds through his ribcage, and his wailing, ancient mother is cradling his body, spitting at you.
Maybe when you get back to the FOB, the Platoon Sergeant tells you you did the right thing; next time, it might be a suicide bomber. They tell you it was an honest mistake, it wasn't your fault. They tell you to go get some chow, take a shower if the water works, and sleep it off. You did good work that day, apparently.
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Then you realize you haven't seen anything to support the idea that these poor fuckers are a threat to your home. You look around and you see all he contractors making six figure salaries to fix your shit, train Iraqis, maintain the ridiculous SUVs the KBR dicks ride around in. You consider the fact that every 25mm shell costs about forty bucks, and your company has been handing those fuckers out like shrapnel flavored parade candies. You think about all the fuel you're going through, all the ammo and missiles and grenades. You think about every time you lose a vehicle, the Army buys a new one. Maybe you start to see a lot of people making a lot of money on huge amounts of human suffering.
Your statement is correct enough; if all of America was one dude, that dude would not give a shit about the little brown people we're burning and crushing and choking to death. We aren't all like that, but it makes me incredibly, profoundly sad to see what my country actually is. Some of us care, and I think there are more every day.
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"THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE." What a crock of s...t. Strictly for suckers. When was the last time you heard this on the lips of some presstitute or faux journalist?
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n reality, of course, none of the men and women in the United States armed forces are fighting and dying for freedom, they’re fighting to make billionaires richer and shore up strategic geopolitical assets for the US empire. They’re not making “sacrifices”, because that word implies that you’re taking a loss for a greater good. And they are not heroes — they are victims of an exploitative and amoral war machine which has never, ever cared about them.
Every mature person knows this on some level, but we’re not permitted to say so in polite company. And our good intentions are used against us, to shame critics of US military aggression into silence in essentially the same way supporters of Colin Kaepernick are shamed into silence. We know that the thousands of soldiers who have died in America’s recent military invasions left behind families, friends and loved ones, and so many of us have entered into this silent agreement not to speak the truth that they died for nothing but the mundane greed and power hunger of a few oligarchs because we don’t want to hurt their feelings. But in our silence we permit the war machine to keep advancing the lie that America uses its military to defend freedom, justice and democracy, which in turn allows it to throw the lives of other people’s sons and daughters into its gears as its depraved bloodbaths march on.
We need to be able to say this, and to say it unequivocally. It’s impossible to fight the war machine from one side of our mouths while adorning it with lies about heroism and freedom from the other.
If people can’t oppose the US war machine effectively it will keep creating more grieving families as it continues to hurl their loved ones into its insatiable furnace. A widespread counter-narrative against the grain of the fictions that Americans have been telling themselves about what their military is and does is absolutely necessary for an anti-war movement to gain any headway.
My Dark, Secret Fantasy: A Robust Anti-War Movement In AmericaCan I share a very intimate, private fantasy of mine with you, dear reader? I want to see a large, ideology-spanning…medium.com
The US war machine is lying about Afghanistan, just like it lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to manufacture support for the useless and devastating Vietnam war, the false Nayirah testimony which was used to manufacture support for the Gulf War, the amazing network of lies spun about Saddam Hussein and the mass media propaganda campaign which caused seventy percent of Americans to believe he was responsible for the September 11 attacks, the “humanitarian” intervention in Libya and the unconscionable Bana Alabed psy-op in Syria. If the US military was really being used for beneficent purposes, the proponents of its actions wouldn’t be lying to us constantly.
In 1935 two-time Medal of Honor recipient General Smedley D. Butler wrote a book titled War is a Racket, describing how business interests had already become inextricably intertwined with military interests. In 1961 President Eisenhower warned in his farewell address to the nation of the looming danger of the military-industrial complex. This is all above ground and has been for many decades. Anyone who isn’t bound and determined to avoid looking at the truth of what is happening here can see this for themselves. Scratch the surface of any act of military interventionism in recent history and you find an unbelievable web of lies leading invariably to a staggering amount of money.
Trump’s Afghanistan Surge Could Mean Big Money For Defense Contractor Tied To James Mattis https://t.co/gWitF6jat8
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 22, 2017
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]enerally speaking, Americans are wonderful people and its military is full of individuals who joined with good intentions. Generally speaking, there is nothing wrong with patriotism or flag-waving, and celebrating one’s nation can be a positive thing. But both of these things are being used to inflict a profound evil upon this earth. The good intentions of US military personnel have been used to facilitate the slaughter of a million Iraqis and two million Vietnamese civilians. Patriotism and flag-waving has been used to manufacture support for evil acts of military aggression for profit and power. We need to stop facilitating this deceit.
There are no war heroes. There are only war victims. War is never a good thing, and should only ever be used in great reluctance to defend a nation’s own land. This simply does not happen in America anymore. War is sought out as a Plan A against sovereign nations on the other side of the planet, and then excuses are concocted to justify it.
The men and women who unknowingly die facilitating those evil agendas are not heroes, they are victims. When someone is a hero you celebrate them and encourage others to do as they did. When someone is a victim you mourn losing them and work toward making sure that such senseless tragedy never happens again to anyone else. This is why the US war machine works so hard painting its victims as heroes.
Did you know that it wasn’t customary for NFL players to stand for the national anthem until 2009? Until then players generally stayed in the locker room instead of standing on the field during that time. Colin Kaepernick wouldn’t have been able to hold his absurdly controversial demonstration at any time except in the NFL’s very most recent history.
Do you know what changed in the NFL’s very most recent history? The Department of Defense and the National Guard began pouring millions of dollars into the NFL for on-field displays of patriotism. It was a recruiting campaign. In order to implant the seeds of the patriotism it has been using to manufacture support for its depraved bloodbaths around the world into the minds of young football fans, the US military instituted the very practice that Kaepernick used for his protest. People are literally invoking the images of dead soldiers to condemn a protest performed on a foundation built by the institution which creates dead soldiers.
Stop idolizing that piece of cloth. Stop fetishizing the victims of the US war machine. Evil is being wrought, innocent blood is being spilled, and we need every voice crying out against it. Don’t be silenced from doing so by blind, vapid patriotism and lies.
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Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
In reality, of course, none of the men and women in the United States armed forces are fighting and dying for freedom, they’re fighting to make billionaires richer and shore up strategic geopolitical assets for the US empire. They’re not making “sacrifices”, because that word implies that you’re taking a loss for a greater good. And they are not heroes — they are victims of an exploitative and amoral war machine which has never, ever cared about them.
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