Of War and Videos (Part One)
Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, shortly before his death in an attack by an American Apache helicopter, 07/13/07. (photo: Reuters)
Reader Supported News | Perspective
t's all the talk, the WikiLeaks video. And every web site with a comment section has a long list of opinions and verdicts. Righteously judged by all. Simple.
But it's not that simple.
I know it. And you know it. We all know it and that should scare the hell out of us.
The questions fly. Is it the video-game attitudes of our troops? Don't we need to support the troops? If you were getting shot at every day wouldn't you do the same thing? Where do these kinds of soldiers come from?
They come from us.
We are the generations of war. We are the children of WWII. We are Vietnam vets with children who fought in Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom and sometimes serve with our sons and daughters in National Guard and Reserve units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have been raised on war.
We grew up playing war, strapping on canvas leggings, USMC web belts and maybe a helmet liner to go dig holes in the vacant field down the block and pretend we were landing at Guadalcanal or Normandy as we tossed dirt-clod grenades at one another.
It was the television age and we rushed home to watch Combat or The Rat Patrol. We bought ten-cent comic books like Sgt. Rock and Captain America, or Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos.
Hell, we spent Saturday afternoons at the movies: The Longest Day, The Great Escape, Bridge Over the River Kwai and Pork Chop Hill not to mention the TV broadcasts of every John Wayne war movie ever. And that doesn't even count the Cavalry and Indian movies.
Long before computers - war was great entertainment.
Then we went to war. Not a real war but one of those undeclared wars - police action war - counterinsurgency-kind of war. Not a war where you stormed the beaches or took the high ground. No, this was a war where you humped around in circles and couldn't tell the bad guys from the innocent civilians.
We didn't like the war when it showed up on television and in Life Magazine. It was blood-awful. It was not dirt-clod grenades and home for supper. It was foul and disease-ridden and murderous. It became the Phoenix Program and My Lai and other atrocities.
America was appalled. Shocked. Deeply disturbed to discover there was unbridled violence occurring in war. Innocent people were dying. Shocked, I tell you.
A few "bad apples" were publicly held accountable. Justice served. Done.
And then we realized something had to be done to fix this mess. My God, what would happen in the future if they gave a war and no one showed up?
First step was to discredit the protesters as unpatriotic and the cause of us losing the war. Sell it to the media and report every made-up story of hippies spitting on returning soldiers and sex-crazed long-hairs destroying real America. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, just print it in the NY Times and people will believe it.
The next step was to end the draft. You need all-volunteer professional soldiers, not draftees. I mean, what the hell kind of war could you have with every Tom, Dick and Harry having to serve? Of course you have to screw up the economy a little bit so the only way people can afford college or technical training or housing is to join the military.
Now this last step was the really cool part. Take the new all-volunteer Army to war. We lost the Nam because we drafted hippies and spoiled college kids. Now the Army has real Americans. 1983 we invade Granada and win! 1989 we invade Panama and win! America is back, baby! America wins wars just like we used to!
Then came 1991. The Big Show. The 100-Hour War.
Movie stars came out to support the troops. Lee Greenwood sang his song. We marketed this war like a world premier adventure at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
And what a war it was! Smart bombs down airshafts and scud missiles. No innocent people being killed. Laser technology guided our wrath right down the throats of those evil bastards who deserved to die for their sins.
The heroes came home. They had parades and media and everybody had to learn the new cleansing mantra: "Thank you for your service." Say it loud and say it proud to any and all in uniform. The hippies were dead and gone. Patriotism was back! Real patriotism. Not that un-American civilian patriotism. Our freedom came from soldiers, not a Declaration on a piece of paper but from God and soldiers.
In the movie, A Few Good Men, Col. Jessup explains it clearly: "Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns... You have the luxury of not knowing what I know... I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way."
We have made a fetish of the military, a fetish of war. We have taken war beyond entertainment and imbued it with the very sanctity and soul of our freedom. No soldiers - no freedom. So just shut up and God bless America.
We are the generations of war. We are a militarized society. We are Spotlight Rangers and Sunshine Patriots. We hire professionals to handle the dirty work while we cheer them on.
We unburdened ourselves of the responsibility of citizenship and handed it over to the professionals. We took on the job of supporting the troops and keeping quiet. We wrapped patriotism up in camouflage paper and colorful ribbon and gave it to the soldiers for safekeeping while we went back to making a living and going to see Saving Private Ryan at the movies and rushing home to see Jack Bauer in the latest episode of 24.
But war has a way of coming home to roost. It rubs our face in blood and death and we gasp in shock. This is not what we expected or wanted. We wanted the old wars in black and white with good guys and bad guys and everything turns out okay. Not this.
How could this happen? Is it the video games of war? Is it a crime or just a bad day at the office of war? Where do these kinds of soldiers come from?
They come from us.
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Comments
Well, not exactly. What about the cruise missile that went into, not a bunker with Hussein’s officers but 450-odd women & kids in it? Oops - ‘bad intelligence
Sad to say, one has little reason to hope for changes in human conduct about war, and that, as you say, is the real horror.
Much like what happened on 9/11, but much more worse.
Lets all just hope when this happens, our occupiers have mercy on us and do not treat us as badly as the US gov treats its prisoners.
The twentieth century was the most brutal yet for the human race and the planet Earth. Our weapons get more and more destructive and we easily kill and kill. We don't need to see the faces of who we kill anymore. We don't need to see the beauty in their eyes.
Five years ago in horror and frustration at my society, I branded myself a pacifist with Picasso's peace dove at the base of my neck. And when most United States citizens (we are not the only Americans, why do we think we are?) understand what it is and why I did it? They tell me how stupid I am. That only war brings peace. No. War brings war. And more war.
"Our freedoms came from soldiers, not a Declaration on a piece of paper but from God and soldiers."
"We have made a fetish of the military, a fetish of war. We have taken war beyond entertainment and imbued it with the very sanctity and soul of our freedom. No soldiers - no freedom. So just shut up and God bless America."
God bless you John Cory for telling the truth. Every time I hear that they are fighting for our freedom I just want to cry. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes, they come from us...and they are not only the perpetrators of such horror, they are our victims as well. As a nation we raised them. We lied to them. We let our manufacturing base be exported away. We created a reality where joining the military just to be housed and fed often became necessary. We gave birth to them, corrupted them and in the end, we made them monsters.
Let's say we shut down all the Military-Industrial Complex; close the doors. lockdown the Fences and send them all home.
Peace of course after a transition period.
How high would the unemployment figure be then?
If the real figure currently being something near 20%.... for nice round figure...50%?
Then what?
That is why it isn't going to happen.
We ARE LOCKED INTO WHAT WE HAVE BECOME,
An unstoppable war machine.
Tennis, anyone?
Tell ya' what Jlind, if the only way we can survive is to murder other peoples, to subsist on weapons sales and enriching the military industrial complex, then we are a society that needs to be destroyed completely for the cancer, possibly terminal, that we have become. But of course we can do better and I don't give a da** how much that would cost or how difficult it would be.
My suggestion to you? Go to he**.
I can't play tennis; I'm not well enough insured
Echoes of the 'Nuremberg Rallies'
...popcorn, anyone?
Someday in the future those killers will suffer remorse over their actions, if they have a conscience.
Of course he thinks he is being patriotic, which led us to conclude how dangerous patriotism can be. It leads people to believe that they are more right than all others and that they can do anything they want to anyone that opposes them and feel righteous about it.
Isn't uber-nationalism how Hitler got people to stop being reasonable and allow atrocities to happen?
Yes, even though President Eisenhower warned us, we have allowed the military industrial complex to have their way with us.
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There are still some with the integrity to 'stand up' (Dennis Kucinich is one); but the wiseguys in DNC headquarters have made certain that such officials are mocked and marginalized enough so that even progressives who admire and support them don't have the courage to vote for them, lest their votes be 'wasted' or 'throw the election' to the Greater Evil party.
As long as we have only two, increasingly indistinguishab le parties to 'choose' between, we will have no hope of escaping the perennial war paradigm. The mess we are in is guaranteed to persist until war ceases to generate profits and/or until We The People cease participating in it....whether in the battle or at the polls.
Where is our leadership? Who will be brave enough to stick their head up above the crowds at the certain risk of it getting knocked off or shot off? The partial mitigation of our guilt lies in the fact that "they" have the guns and the willingness to use them ruthlessly, and most of us don't, I suppose. Trite as it may sound, the government needs to be made more afraid of us than we are of it.
Why not call them up and say, "enough--no more war funding." Do you know what finally ended the war in Vietnam? Lack of funding. Otherwise we'd still be fighting that war. At what point is enough enough? At this point, make the calls.
The only reason people continue to vote for the Dems is that they are seen as the "Lesser" of the "two" Evils. Is it democracy when we are offered such a "choice"? It has been over 40 years since the Dems have nominated a candidate worthy of MY vote.
Progressives b*tch and moan and threaten to withhold votes; but the Dems ALWAYS call our bluff, and sure enough progressives slink off to the polls and live down to the expectations of the Rahm Emanuels and their fellow hacks.
It's time to follow through on our threats, bite the bullet, and vote our true interests...even though we are told OUR candidate has "NO CHANCE" of winning. VOTE for the NEXT election!!
When (not if) war comes home to roost, we will have hell to pay.
It will come my friend, it most certainly will. The astonishing hubris of this nation! It thinks that the world can't concur that it has had enough of us and take over and clean house! As a debtor nation, if those who own us want to call in their markers at once and suspend trade with us of any kind and refuse American dollars in payments, we could be financially embargoed into complete chaos. In simple military terms, there is more of them than us, their combined forces are bigger than us and even with less sophistication of weapons, out gun us. Our empire could fall. Maybe it should.
Our military budget is equal to the combined military budget of every other nation on this green Planet of the Clocks. But our empire will fall, because that's what all empires do, and what they all should do.
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