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4.29.2004
Waving the Myth in my face I'm going to take a few minutes to write about my feelings on the military. First of all. I don't fight. I hate confrontation. I'll stand up for myself and fight for what I want but I never pick a fight where I don't have to. This is in contrast to some that love conflict and thrive on it. Second, I think most people get it mostly right. The soldiers that serve in the military do represent our country and should represent our interests. They are there putting their lives on the line to "defend" us. I put that word in parenthesis for a reason and I'll explain why in a bit. So it is right to have respect and honor people that are standing in for us so that we don't have to. In the ideal world we would only ever send people off to combat for the explicit goal of defending our homeland. We would only do so after our Representatives gauging the will of the people to do so grant such authority. As with anything involved in the Democratic process only actions sanctioned by those being governed take place. Its an elegant feedback system wherein those who shoulder the burden of war are the very same ones deciding when and where war should be engaged. Sounds good, in theory. But there are some problems. In general its the members of the privileged classes that are making the decision to go to war, sending members of the working class off to fight. Class division, whether you like to admit or not, does affect policy. There has been talk about a draft. Some for reasons of this class inequity are proposing to start drafting people into the military. I suppose this is in the hope that when the powerful face the reality of sending their own kids to war they might not take the decision so lightly. I disagree with that logic. I don't want to be in the military and I'm glad that people that actually want to fight are there instead of me, and I bet they are glad that I'm not over there in Iraq complaining my ass off about how truly fucked up this whole war has been. However, its not even fair to say that everyone that joins the military does so out of a sense of duty and obligation. Let's face it, joining the military is a career decision for some. They are there doing their job the same as if they were sacking groceries, because they need the dough. For many joining up is the quickest way out of a dead end situation. You spend a few years serving, learning some skills, making a little scratch and you get to see the world. Sounds good, at least till the day that some politician in need of a re-election theme decide to pack your sorry ass up in a transport and send you off to die. I wouldn't mind serving if I thought I could trust the political system to work right and I would only be sent off as a last resort measure because it was absolutely VITAL that I get put in harm's way to DEFEND the country. I have no such faith. The Iraq Debacle has not changed my view of things... Nope. So you have some kid that enlisted thinking that he might get out of Deadend, KS or any other small town USA and next thing he knows he's out tramping through the desert about to become a statistic. Money for college. Something about marketing the military makes my skin crawl. I watch those ads where the son or daughter tells their parent they are joining the military and the parent gives them that "I'm so proud of you" look. I want to throw something at the TV. Tell it to me straight. Don't make this about some quest to earn parental admiration. Don't make this about becoming an adult! Fighting a war is not a right of passage, it is a necessary evil at best. We "defend" ourselves, but how that word can apply to Iraq is beyond me, given the complete and total exaggeration of the threat posed by Saddam and his Weapons of Mass Disappearance. We fight others because we HAVE TO, not because it has become part of our social fabric. Chris Hedges: War as myth begins with blind patriotism, which is always thinly veiled self-glorification. We exalt ourselves, our goodness, our decency, our humanity, and in that self-exaltation we denigrate the other. The flip side of nationalism is racism--look at the jokes we tell about the French. It feels great. War as myth allows us to suspend judgment and personal morality for the contagion of the crowd. War means we do not face death alone. We face it as a group. And death is easier to bear because of this. We jettison all the moral precepts we have about the murder of innocent civilians, including children, and dismiss atrocities of war as the regrettable cost of battle. I sense that we have also made war part of the life cycle of this nation. Its our rebirth. There was a sense during the buildup to the Iraq Debacle that "This is what we do", pull out the flags, slap on the bumper stickers, here we go again. I feel the opposite must be true. This is not what we do, we do this only because we have to. Not because it has become a stage in our own national right of passage. For an interesting experiment, go here and read through the speech that Hedges gave at the Rockford College last May, almost a year ago and find anything that he said that was not true or prescient. I couldn't, yet he was booed and harassed till he had to cut his speech short. War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press -- remember in wartime the press is always part of the problem -- have turned war into a vast video arcade came. Its very essence -- death -- is hidden from public view. To that end we must maintain the myth and protect it as well we can from reality. Sinclair Broadcast Group has ordered eight ABC affiliated stations to not carry Friday's Nightline Broadcast. The ABC Television network announced on Tuesday that the Friday, April 30th edition of ?Nightline? will consist entirely of Ted Koppel reading aloud the names of U.S. servicemen and women killed in action in Iraq. Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq. Political agenda? I feel that it is my duty as a citizen of this country to question the actions of our leaders and inform myself to the best of my abilities. That is MY political agenda. War is not a sacred cow that we must only talk about in rosy happy terms lest we "undermine the efforts". I, in contrast to what many others have expressed DO NOT think that it is unpatriotic to call into the question the motivations of those wishing to send fellow citizens off to die. On the contrary, I will "undermine the effort" when it is called for. It is not contradictory to call this Debacle an Excercise in Stupidity and still have an immense amount of respect for people that are serving our country as best they can. Not all soldiers are angels, most are just kids strapped into gear and sent out to carry out their orders. Those orders are supposed to come from us, the citizens, through the representatives. And if those represenattives, or president, lie about what we are doing then we have the duty to say something! I'm disgusted... I'm sure I'll regret posting this, but not right now. | |
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