REMEMBERING SAINT VETERAN

So, it's Memorial Day, and as usual for this holiday there has been no shortage of reminders that this is a day not only for hotdogs, beer and baseball, but for remembering the countless war veterans who fell in our many wars. Well, these days people send out e-mails about this, elevating our soldiers into the ranks of sainthood, and challenging anyone to deny them their due canonization by daring you not to forward this message to everybody you know. Deleting these trivial things of course makes you someone who hates America, They attribute everything good about America to to our soldiers, driving home the point that our cherished rights and freedoms were won by the blood of heroes, every one a sainted martyr. The vast majority of these e-mails are generated by people who were never in boot camp, never mind a real live bloody war. Not so fast, Mr. and Ms. Superpatriot.

Not every war is a grand crusade and not every warrior is a noble hero. And the enemy soldiers that fought against us were every bit as dedicated and patriotic as our soldiers, and every one of them had a mother who loved them and a family who missed them when they got killed, just like our guys. And not a man among them fought against American soldiers with the thought in mind to abolish our Bill of Rights or hoping to ban football on Sundays. The great majority of wars are fought for another reason, for money. So what our soldiers are defending is their homeland, of course, but the reason they are defending it has very little to do with our national values. It's all about somebody wanting something more at the expense of someone else.

Contrary to what some say, violence has solved a lot of things. Not for the losers, of course, but the winners feel pretty good about things afterwards. Winning a war often means that you get to live in a nice place, while the world's deserts and other barren wastelands get populated by the losers. Nobody volunteered to live in the shitholes of this world, no matter what they say about how unique and beautiful a place is their dusty homeland. It's only dumb luck that the descendants of the people forced to live in the sandy wastelands of the Middle East find themselves sitting on top of a sea of petroleum.

They sat on top of that oil for centuries and it did them about as much good as all that sand did until the Industrial Revolution made petroleum the new gold. And it still didn't do them much good since corporations from powerful nations prevailed on their armies to take over these oil rich nations and steal their petroleum to make the rich nations even richer. It's only in the past 75 years or so that the sand-dwellers have gotten control over their own oil and began behaving just as poorly as the nations who conquered them. So poorly in certain cases, that the United States of America used this poor behavior as an excuse to attack Iraq in order to steal their oil. A bunch of criminals running America at the time said it was about something else, but that was just a bunch of lies that many people saw through at the time and which have since been proven to be completely false.

Within weeks of having invaded Iraq, every meter measuring the flow of oil from Iraqi wells got broken all of a sudden so that there was no telling how much oil American corporations stole in partnership with the leaders of the American government. Nearly 5,000 of our soldiers were killed and many more maimed, getting turned into suckers by cynical billionaires. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died too, a whole lot more than their dictator ever killed. The dictator they used to have, that is, the guy we had hung by the neck until dead. Well, our soldiers are still there six years later, the gas meters are still broken and the price of gasoline is on the rise again. So, how noble are Iraqi veterans? Whatever their noble intentions, their personal goodness or their level of dedication, they are engaged in an illegal war of aggression and theft.

Does the fact that they were blatantly betrayed by their own government force us still to honor them with accolades as if they were defending a kindergarten on Main Street, U.S.A.? These are volunteer soldiers who know going in that they would have to obey orders, no matter what. That is the only way a military organization can function, and what makes it an ideal instrument for greedy leaders to use in any way they see fit. You can't blame the soldiers and veterans for having been forced to fight in crazy wars like in Iraq, Vietnam or inside America exterminating Native American tribes, they had no choice in the matter. It is never their idea to do these things. But do they need to be elevated to sainthood for participating in an illegal and immoral war? Exactly how does that work?

Whose conscience are we assuaging here? It wasn't our idea to attack Iraq either, an idea that was sold like a cure for the common cold and like suckers at a carney sideshow a whole lot of us bought that bottle of snake oil. Another curious thing is that having an all-volunteer military makes war hawks of many people who formerly were very vocal in their opposition to war, when their asses were potential cannon fodder for the military draft. They sure had plenty of questions then. Funny how so many of us are perfectly willing to let the other guy die for our wrong-headed ideas sold to us by con artists.

The true hero would participate himself if he felt so strongly about it. For those who never saw limbs flying and faces burnt away and have zero chance of being forced to, we've become a pretty warlike bunch of paper tigers. Like the West Indians say; "Every dog is bad in his own backyard." Let's see how loud they growl when surrounded by other dogs with sharp teeth. If the government ever decides to reintroduce the military draft, look for a cottage industry producing peace signs to spring up overnight. Washington would once again be the site of massive antiwar rallies.

Still the crime of turning our brave and dedicated soldiers into suckers goes unpunished. To have exposed them to the horror of war for no reason but greed and geopolitical power is the real crime here. Such wars do not protect our nation or make the world safe for democracy or any of those other mindless slogans used to sell naked aggression against a weaker opponent. So, fine, on Memorial Day let's remember the bravery and sacrifice of our veterans, but let's do so with eyes wide open. And let us hope that we never again send these brave young men and women on any more fool's errands.