We can’t keep pretending that most of our wars have been noble or worthwhile, so where does that put us on Memorial Day?
—
Let us be absolutely clear from the outset: the Iraq War was based on nothing but lies. What percentage of those lies came from outside or inside the U.S. government is the only remaining question. All of the reasons cited for invading Iraq were false, perhaps not surprising when one recalls that most of the Bush administration had signed a letter years before saying that they’d like to invade Iraq at the first available opportunity. These facts are not in dispute.
Likewise, the casus belli of the disastrous Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, never actually happened. This isn’t an allegation or a claim, it’s a fact. Ten years of war, over a million deaths, 58,220 of them Americans, based on a lie, and the stated purpose of the war failed. Is anyone making a case that America would be worse off or less free if, instead of spending all those years sending men and money to be destroyed in Southeast Asia, we’d simply not done that?
This is an ongoing problem. General Smedley Butler famously characterized his job as having been a “gangster for capitalism”, particularly regarding his distinguished service in the Banana Wars, in which U.S. forces invaded a number of small countries to force them to do what the United Fruit Company wanted them to do. These wars were fought for money. Again, this isn’t a subject of debate or contention, it’s what is openly acknowledged to have happened.
Right now, a lot of you are feeling offended or upset that someone would bring these facts up, especially on Memorial Day. And that, right there, is a problem we need to address, because it’s killing people.
♦◊♦
You’ll occasionally hear some rote comment that “all veterans are heroes”, though you won’t usually hear it from veterans. People who served will usually admit that at least some of the folks they served with were total jackasses of various stripes. The most common rhetoric you’ll hear is that veterans “fought for freedom” “defended freedom” or even “gave us our freedom.” These sentiments are considered so self-evidently obvious that nobody feels the need to justify or explain them. Which is a problem, because they’re not true.
The Declaration of Independence is quite clear about who “gave us” our freedom: we were endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. The military isn’t mentioned. Freedom does need to be defended, yes, but we’ve seen above that that usually is not the case with American wars. Americans are not more free because we bombed Iraq or Afghanistan or Cambodia or Vietnam or Sudan or Bosnia or… look, there’s quite a list. Not one of these military interventions can be even tangentially connected to the defense of American freedom.
There’s a popular bumper sticker one sees around that says “If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you’re reading it in English, thank a soldier.” I’d pose a question in response: English as opposed to what? Spanish? Vietnamese? German? Russian? Farsi? At what point, exactly, has the United States been in danger of conquest? Citation needed.
Abraham Lincoln, who knew a little something about wars for American freedom, had some choice words about these fondly-fantasized conquest scenarios:
All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
Indeed, the Civil War was absolutely a war for American freedom. And just as Lincoln predicted, the threat did not come from overseas, but from the worst parts of our own society, the Americans who were against freedom.
So yes, all veterans of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War fought for our freedom. (Well, the Union veterans. The Confederate veterans fought against it.) And certainly WWII veterans fought for freedom in general, against the sick military fascism that threatened to crush Europe entirely. And they definitely contributed to keeping Western Europe out from under the Soviet Union, which is also a victory for freedom. The dead from those wars can say that they fought and died for freedom.
But the veterans, living and dead, of all our many, many other wars can’t make that case. They fought for a lot of things, but mostly for nothing at all, as ugly and inconvenient as that fact may be. And that, too, is a problem we need to address.
♦◊♦
The preceding two sections aren’t meant as a polemic or an attack on anyone. They’re simply establishing the basic facts of the situation. Almost all the combat veterans now alive, and many who are dead, fought in disastrous wars that were founded on ignoble lies. It is difficult to square the desire to honor their service with the fact that most of that service accomplished no lasting good, and did much harm.
Most of the time, the solution we adopt is to lie about it, to avoid inconvenient truths and pretend that every war was about freedom and change the subject as often as necessary to maintain that pretense. We need to stop that. We cannot do honor with lies.
Today, on Memorial Day, we must accept that there are at least 4,425 American soldiers who are dead today because they were sent to defend against Iraqi weapons that never existed. America today would not be less free or less safe if all 4,425 of them had stayed home and had a beer. They did not need to die, and to pretend that they did is to insult the dead, which strikes me as a bad practice on Memorial Day.
We must make this day a time both to take pride in those who died for good causes, and to bear the moral weight of those who died for bad ones. Reflecting on our glories while ignoring our follies is just an invitation to repeat those follies, which in this case means more dead. Our unjust wars have cost us many thousands of our own citizens, a national addiction that consumes the young, the patriotic, the talented and brave. (And, as most veterans will tell you, a few total jackasses.) Let us remember them not to whitewash our history, but to learn its lessons. To refuse to learn those lessons just because they’re uncomfortable is a moral crime; the one good that can be salvaged from those brave young people who died for nothing is if we learn to stop making more of them.
Photo—SDRandCo/morguefile.com
Great article; however, 35-50 years ago, if you had written an article like that, many Americans would be attacking your article and your character and even threaten violence to you just like Michael Moore faced when he oppose war with Iraq.
I read an essay once written by a professor in Europe. I wish I had it. It was a beautiful essay. He talked about how he came to the U.S. to teach and was surprised by our commitment to excellence. He talked about how there was so much depth in the U.S. that even if you got rid of the Stanfords, Harvards, MITs, and Yales, etc, we would still have more than enough brain power in our second tier institutions to overcome any obstacles. He ended with this comment directed at the terrorist. The U.S. is the best problem solvers… Read more »
The way the USA has been going for the last 35 years it has created more problems than solve them. As a matter of fact, it has gone backward in many areas compare to Europe who has going forward in things such as public transportation, investing in the workforce, health care, education, etc.
“The way the USA has been going for the last 35 years it has created more problems than solve them ” I think that’s a popular belief in some circles, but I don’t know how accurate it is. Let’s look at some stuff the U.S. is blamed for. Income inequality – Sure, there is a larger difference between the rich and poor, but people have more stuff these days. You can complain about your cable and internet bills, but 50 years ago people didn’t have TVs. Many people didn’t even have phones in their homes. They had to run out… Read more »
You still have cable companies that are refusing to serve rural areas and parts of the inner cities since they can’t make a profit. But it they can’t make a profit, then why are they sponsoring legislation preventing government from creating internet services? The answer is that they can’t stand competition from the government. By the time the USA recognizes global warming, it will probably be too late because the corporate control of our government at the local, county, state, and federal levels. Water crisis. We had over 40 years to develop the technology such as desalination plants and create… Read more »
i would argue that WW2 was not about preserving our freedom but about keeping Europe from falling into German control. No one can say what might have happened had we not joined that war. It is very possible that Europe may have rebelled (after they fell to German control) and overturned the conquest. Its very possible the Germans would not be able to govern such a large area and control it. By doing nothing the results may have been the same and our allies would have been more involved in their own freedom. To assume we would all be speaking… Read more »
If we had stay out of WW2 and the Allies had won, the British, the Dutch, and French would still had to deal with the colonial independence movements.
This is exactly why I no longer frequent this site. The rhetoric is appalling.
Barbaric, you are at liberty not to visit the site. No one is forcing you.
I think we need to differentiate between politics and casualties. For sure the wars fought were for questionable reasons. But the troops who fought did not create those reasons, or choose who to fight, they just answered a call and for those who lost their lives we should remember them.
We can be against the war, but be for the troops.
Mr. Tedgold if you believe what you said, then we should have not been prosecuting the German troops for war crimes after World War II and fighting for their country even though they had an evil regime under Adolf Hitler; otherwise, we should have been American, British, and French troops for war crimes for all the wars they have fought before and after World War II. BTW, if any soldier refuses to fight, then he/she is court-martial and then be given a long prison sentence or the dead penalty. Either way the soldier gets screw.
I FINALLY STARTED LEARNING MANY LIES, AND TRUTHS WE WERE TAUGHT AND TOLD. IT IRRITATES ME HOW MANY MEN DIED OVER THE YEARS FIGHTING FALSE WARS THAT WERE MEANT TO MAKE THEM MONEY AND FIGHT FOR TERRITORY AND POWER! AND WE BOUGHT INTO IT! PEOPLE DIED FOR RICH MEN AND POWERS HIGH UP, WHILE WE WERE CONSTANTLY BLIND ASKING NO REAL QUESTIONS, LIKE SHEEP TO THE SLAUGHTER AS USUAL. A ONCE CHRISTIAN NATION RUNNING ALL OVER THE WORLD KILLING PEOPLE FOR THE GOVERNMENT AND POWERS OF EVIL TO RULE.
NEVER MADE SENCE TO ME, STUPIDITY!!
Personally, I have had to change my attitude about veterans of our most recent actions versus my experience after returning from the Navy in 1968. I have been bitter about the reception received by almost all veterans in the last 15 years. We, vets of the Vietnam era, were not heralded as heroes. But on reflection, I can see that I need to change my attitude. I am not sure what form that will take, or how I will feel about today’s veterans (who are a much more diverse group than the ones from the 60″s). But for my own… Read more »
They got misuse in believing and dying for their country. What freedoms? As I have pointed out, look at all the economic, political, labor, civil rights, and social freedoms that have been lost due to 9/11, the Reagan years, and the US Supreme Court decision on Citizen United. Amazing how we criticizes the German soldiers for fighting for the politics of Nazi Germany and yet we can’t or won’t criticizes the American soldier for being a gangster for American corporations and wealthy people as Marine Corp General Butler himself admitted in his book War is a Racket. You have a… Read more »
They died serving their country. They died believing in our freedoms. They died because they love this country and the people in it. That is not for nothing. Regardless of the politics, these people, and my friend and brother, died because they believed in this country and wanted to do something thing greater than themselves.
Not “for nothing”.
Please choose your words more carefully going forward.
They did die for a reason: they were lied to by politicians who have misused the military for over a century. They did not enlist to be cops or social workers to the world. Or to do peacekeeping or meals on wheels missions for the UN, which should not even exist on American soil. When Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire the Army tried to cover up what happened and use his death for publicity purposes. Michael New was an Army Specialist who was court-martialed because he refused to wear a UN beret or insignia on his uniform. Our… Read more »
We did not hesitate to use the United Nations to back us when it came to the Korean War except the troops were mostly US,A, South Korean, some British, Australian, and South African units.
Military defend the USA. Oh really? I don’t recall US military protecting striking workers in 19th and 20th century America plus the American military was spying on Americans from the 1920s even up today.
How do we justified our Indian Wars? And regarding World War II, it was all for nothing since our civil, economic, labor, and political rights have been on the decline starting under Reagan and even more rapidly after 9/11 and the US Supreme Court decision on Citizen United.