Little Bang Theory

I Do NOT Support Our Troops. May 27, 2008

Yeah, I know. I’m askin’ for it here.

But I don’t. And I’m tired of mouthing the platitudes, for fear of being branded “unpatriotic,” or hell, a Goddam Traitor.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, where we all get weepy and thank The Dead for their Great Sacrifice in Service to Freedom.

Well, I did that, but it just didn’t feel right.

So here’s what I think, and you can take it or leave it, you can love me for it or hate my guts and wish me dead. It’s not that I don’t care; it’s that I’m done kissing asses in the hope that I’ll get a nice pat on the head.

Today’s soldiers are, to my mind, of two types: the Guard and Reserve folks who signed up to spend one weekend a month playing soldier, both for the bennies they were promised and for the chance to make a difference, to stack sandbags when the rivers flood, to respond to emergencies on a State-wide level.

And here they are, deployed into a desert half-way around the world, riding around in poorly armored vehicles waiting to get blown up, sleeping in their body armor even in the “Green Zone,” while their spouses struggle to raise their kids alone, unable to pay their bills, meet their mortgage, , being foreclosed on, filing for divorce, desperate for someone, anyone, to help them make a life and raise their kids.

And then there are the eager, fresh-faced young Recruits, seduced by promises of adventure, job security, bennies up the wazzoo, and trained to kill first and ask questions later, to dehumanize the Fucking Sand Niggers who surround them, to Follow Orders just like they did at Mai Lai.

And I do not, will not, cannot support this. It’s murder, wrapped in a flag, and as often as not, carrying a cross.

Two incidents precipitated this unseemly rant. The first was an encounter Across From The Common with a young woman who was a veteran of the Iraq fiasco, and was so gung-ho to get back there, she held up traffic to express her disdain for the “idiots” who were protesting on the common.

The second was my visit to Dusty’s Blog, where I got to view a sentimental country song about a dead guy who had “made the grade” by earning his angel’s wings on a one-way trip to Arlington National Cemetery.

It’s not that dying for something you believe in isn’t a noble end. It’s that dying for a lie is a crime and a shame, and taking innocent people with you is a War Crime and a God Damned shame.

Trace Adkins’ sentimental heart-breaker neglects to mention the 600,000 civilians we’ve either killed or allowed to be killed in this war waged for the profit of the Filthy Fucking Rich.

“There’s a big White House sits on a hill just up the road,

The Man inside, he cried the day they brought me home…”

No Trace, he didn’t. You didn’t die for my Freedom, you died to fatten the coffers of his Oil Buddies, and he doesn’t give a Rat’s Ass about your sacrifice or the family you left behind. And rather than crying for your passing or respecting it in the least little way, he pulled a big fat curtain across the screen so nobody would notice that you’d died to fatten his stock portfolio.

I don’t support our troops. I don’t support what they’re doing, and I object strenuously (for all the good it does me) to paying for their illegal, immoral campaign against the people of the Oil Bearing Regions in support of the hegemony of the Filthy Fucking Rich.

But what about our Poor Children In Uniform, you might ask?

Well hey, we’re all shaped by the bullshit we’re surrounded by, but we don’t all take the bait, do we? We know that child rapists were most often fucked up the ass when they were nine, but we expect them to own their actions in the here and now, don’t we?

We can’t train our children to kill, then expect them not to become killers.

WE have to own what we’re asking our young people to do. And we have to apply ourselves whole-heartedly to defunding this mission if it isn’t what we want to see happen.

Write, talk, act.

Get visible.

Peace,

TCR