Veteran's Day Redoux

This was written as a response to a lengthy Facebook comments feed on Veteran's day. A friend of mine (Jeff, a devoted and sincere pacifist and anarchist) said, "Soldiers are murderers, every single one signed up to kill. They sacrifice their own morality on the false altar of our corrupt government for lies of glory or desperation for money and education. Many of them don't have a choice in becoming soldiers, and for that I pity them. But I do not, and will not, respect anyone who CHOOSES to kill and die at the beck and call of the immoral fatcats." Needless to say, many of his friends took offense to this and responded in various ways - some personal, some with simply differing opinions. (the feed can be found here, or at least it was at one time.) I missed the entire conversation, but felt compelled to write the following - which I in turn much abbreviated and added as my two cents to the conversation.

I wrote,
Killers a killer. I know soldiers who are proud killers or at least like to say they are. Our military is being misused. Aggression and hegemony are not appropriate uses of military might.

My dad's birthday is Veterans day, he's the only one of his brothers who never served a day in the military. My Grandad was a sailor in the Navy during World War Two, he lied about his age to join up, he was sixteen. After the war he joined the Air Force, and served until he reached retirement. Neither of my Dad's older brothers were sent to Vietnam, my dad was too young to serve anyway. Rumor in my family is that Papa made a deal with the military, somehow. He had pretty high top-secret clearance, so my guess is he had some leverage. Wild conjecture but a good story nonetheless.

My step-brother is in the Army, he's been to Iraq four times. In his own words, he kills bad guys. I was socialized to love America, and in my own way I still do. As a child I read every history book about war I could get my hands on. I grew up wanting to be a soldier, but then when I was given the opportunity to break codes for Marine Intelligence, I decided I couldn't be a part of the machine that kills people. Jeff and I share the same month and day of birth in different years so I find that similarity to be an interesting correlation.

My Papa died of cancer when I was three. I barely remember it. Some of my earliest memories have to do with visiting him in the VA hospital with my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins. There's a good possibility that he died because of, or in relation to exposure to agent orange. I don't believe my Grandmother was ever able to be a part of the agent orange settlement, either because she chose not to participate, because my Papa's security level denied her access to his records, or perhaps one of uncountable other reasons.

Needless to say, my opinion of soldiers and soldiering is nuanced and mostly unimportant, and although I love the anarchist ideals that Jeff purports, they are not the way of the world and whether or not they should be is not what this discussion seemed to be about. I read all these comments and there are many good points that have been made - as well as an unfortunate amount of personal involvement. Something John Stewart said comes to mind, "We can have animus and not be enemies." You're friends, don't let THIS be what comes between you. Our differences are what make us strong, balanced. So the Jeff's are balanced out by the Killers, and vice versa.

That said, it's nice to bring up the the founding myth of the American Revolutionary war, and it's regular-fare to talk about Vietnam, but nobody talks about the US Civil War, which killed over six hundred thousand American soldiers. The north fought against the slaving south in as honorable a war for freedom as can be - and the south fought for their way of life, which they also described as freedom (just not for Blacks), but without Sherman's march to the sea, in which horrible atrocities were committed against the south, the victory of the Union, the country as we know it, history as we recall it would be very different. Horrible things are done to achieve and maintain.

After the revolution, we slaughtered the natives, then fought Mexicans, then each other, then the Spanish, then Mexicans again, then World War One, then World War Two, which ushered in the Nuclear age and the cold war. Then the hegemony and posturing against the communist menace - America as the world's savior. And! we won. But we didn't bring the troops home from Europe, we didn't bring them home from anywhere, we kept our military stationed worldwide; regardless of whether or not we want to admit it, we're acting as if the world is completely within our hegemony.

With the invention of the atomic bomb came the invention of National Security - nothing had ever been that big of a deal, and with good reason. What if the Nazi's had the bomb? (Some dude makes a mint writing about that.) The bomb put the President in charge of war, which is unconstitutional. One man isn't to be in charge of war, that's a king's duty or (a) God(s)'(s). It was extra-unconstitutional for our congress to give Bush II the right to declare war on Iraq, the pre-approved, pre-emptive strike (against a third world country that wouldn't admit they didn't have any WMD because they were worried they'd be invaded by Iran if they admitted it). Afghanistan, though much closer to a retributive strike for the attacks of 9/11 was still a violation of international law and the sanctity of Afghanistan as a nation - Afghanistan didn't declare war on the US, some people who happened to be hiding out there did. Now, we're still fighting in both places, eight and ten years after the fact. Struggles longer than either of the World Wars, longer than the US Civil War, and almost as long as the US involvement in Vietnam.

The grander point that I am trying to reach here is that regardless of how one feels about what happened on 9/11, our wars in the Middle East and Western Asia are not "just" wars - they are wars of hegemony. We decided that these other countries (or more accurately, what was going on in these countries) were (was) problematic for our interests, regardless of their national sovereignty. This is practically a dictionary definition of hegemony. This would be reverse of the situation regarding Switzerland and Nazi Germany - if the Nazi's had gone decided that the correct answer wasn't to bypass Switzerland to get to France, but instead to just simply invade Switzerland. Or if the rest of Europe had decided that Nazi Germany was to be stopped - which is the rhetoric that was used to whip up the pro-war frenzy in the wake of 9/11. The fundamental difference between the rhetoric and reality is the difference between a nation invading another nation and a nation invading a nation to get at a group of people hiding-out in that other nation. That'd be like Mexico invading the US to get at drug dealers hiding out here - or vice versa. But I think it's important to note the difference in feeling to our country being invaded vs. our country invading another country. One makes us the victim, the other the hero. By that same logic, that makes Afghanistan the victim, though we still like to imagine that we're the hero. The foil to a victim isn't a hero but a perpetrator of Evil.

Lastly, I think it's difficult to say who would do what, when x and/or y variable occurs. Reality makes, and history has a record of unlikely and awkward heroes, strange bedfellows and surprise killers for better and for worse. People complain about the media and a slanted message, they should turn that directly on the slanted lens of history. In a way I find it hard not to see this nation as a self important bully with a long and violent history of same, but we've stood against (what have been portrayed as) more-evil-states that could have otherwise shaped the world, for better or for worse, but we're writing the history books, because we're winning.

But the unfortunate side effect of our victories has left an unbalance - there's no ONE, clear enemy anymore, or at least not a NATION - and we're not willing to put down our dukes, even though we're drained like an aging punch-drunk champion fighting against shadows. It's just sad that though what lurks behind some shadows is genuinely unhappy and possibly willing to kill us, and behind the rest are innocent bystanders.

It takes a lot to kill but if you pay your taxes you're suporting it. So if you don't agree with it, either stop paying your taxes (in which case you go to jail and basically wind up a ward of the state who winds up contributing in other ways) or as some love to remind those who feel differently than they do about love of country and freedom, maybe it's best to just leave - but where does one go? Perhaps to a democratic-socialist state, like Switzerland, or anywhere in Scandinavia. No where's really perfect, because we're not, but if America wants to continue to see itself as the hero and savior of the planet, her people, liberty and freedom, we've got much harder work ahead of us that doesn't involve anything remotely akin to invading countries and waging war. We need to wage a war against our selves and see our own faults and flaws.

Killing is killing, a person who kills is a killer. Sometimes, killing can be done in the best interests of a large amount of people, but it is never in the best interests of the killed or their relations. If we don't change our methods and our ideologies, we are going to create a world that is hardly worth living in, let alone killing for, and far too many people are going to die. But then again, sooner or later, there's going to be too many of us for this lil'blue planet and we're going to have to figure something else out or we're all going to die.