This pretty aptly sums up Memorial Day.
I'll bet 9 out of every 10 people under 30 at the beach this weekend could not tell you what is being memorialized on Memorial Day......that is if you could get them to put their phones down long enough to understand the question.
19 comments:
What an indictment of our educational system!
“All of America’s wars except the first—the war for independence—were wars for Empire. Keep that fact in mind as you hear the Memorial Day bloviations about the brave men and women who served our country in its times of peril. The United States has never been in peril, but Washington has delivered peril to numerous other countries in its pursuit of hegemony over others.”
(Paul Craig Roberts, As Our Past Wars Are Glorified This Memorial Day Weekend, Give Some Thought To Our Prospects Against The Russians And Chinese In World War III, 5/31/2016)
F. U!
Billy, Billy, Billy. Does yo momma know you be channelin' Tupac Shakur?
Isaac, not every military exercise must be in defense of the homeland. It is righteous to on occasion, defend the homelands of others who cannot defend it themselves.....especially when it is in our best interests to do so. Now, you or I may disagree with this action or that action, and that's what elections are for, but always letting the terrible crush the weak all over the world, is not in our best interests.
I understand what you are saying and, to some extent, why you are saying it, Ed. I just don't agree. It is my firm conviction that the purpose of wars, like government, is to transfer wealth and power from the many to the few. In my view there are no noble wars, notwithstanding how those wars are sold to the dupes, uh, I mean masses.
Hmmmm, too many items to debate all at once....the purpose of government, the purpose of war, the nobility of war, even a righteous one.
I'll just say that there are many reasons that nations, including the US, have gone to war. I don't think you can lump all wars into having a single purpose. Misguided ideology, revenge, prevention of the loss of civilian lives by the millions, defense of territory held by allies, are among them, though even these are far too simplistic.
Do people figure out ways to enrich themselves and aggregate power during war? Certainly, but I doubt that's ever been a chief reason the US went to war with anybody. Not that our intentions are always above criticism, I just don't think it's that simple.
“Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” ~Henry Kissinger
As we go through school, they teach us that we have always been the good guys and everyone else was always bad. How is this possible? A country that has been at war in 223 out of their 240 years of existence and currently has more than 800 foreign military bases worldwide is not protecting their freedoms; they are invading and occupying others.
(”What if We Are The ‘Bad Guys?’”, Irwin Ozborne, Waking Times)
“We have been watching for nearly a month a steady buildup of American and NATO forces along Russia’s borders – on land, on the sea and in the air. There has been nothing like this on Russia’s borders, such an amassing of hostile military force, since the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.” (America’s leading Russian expert, Professor Stephen Cohen, Princeton and New York University).
What positive spin do you and the other propagandists for American Exceptionalism put on our current drive to WWIII, Ed?
"As I have previously written, pushing Russia to war means the demise of the US and Europe and, considering the destructive power of nuclear weapons, most likely of all life on earth. The main cause of this danger is the arrogance, hubris, and utter stupidity of the American neoconservatives....
(Paul Craig Roberts, 06/02/2016)
“The only just war is one fought to defend one’s own soil from invasion. There is no other. Every other conflict reeks of statist opportunism and yen to expand tax jurisdictions and the power to rob others of their wealth and resources.
[…]
“Veterans don’t need gratitude but a self-realization on their part that the machine they worked for was never an engine for liberty but a device whose single purpose was aggrandizement of American political power at home and abroad. And that political hammer always extinguishes liberty and never expands it.”
(Memorial Day is a Fraud: The True Meaning is Worse by Bill Buppert, retired army officer)
Isaac, whose national wealth did we appropriate for ourselves in Japan? In Vietnam or Korea? In Germany? In Iraq or Afghanistan?
You can present arguments against the two most recent wars and I would probably agree with them, but in none of these did we take any wealth or create a larger tax base from which to steal money.
That idea is farcical.
"There are none so blind as those who will not see." (John Heywood, 1546)
I think you've used that on me before.....you need some new material. ;-)
You are right, Ed. That was a very poor post on my part. What I should have done was restate the truth -- again -- and give you yet another opportunity to display your considerable prowess at ignoring the obvious.
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
(Excuse me for a minute. I think I am going to be sick.)
- War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
…
- A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
…
- I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
…
(Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940)
While interesting, none of that proves anything, but only states what YOU believe.
Do defense contractors profit from war and therefor have a vested interest in our going to war? Of course, that's always been true.
So you're saying that because Germany didn't attack the US directly, though Hitler eventually would have had he been given free reign in Europe, we should never have joined the war there, in defense of our allies, because the horror of a tank manufacturer making a profit is too terrible to consider?
excerpted from:
IF YOU LOVE FREEDOM, THANK AN ANARCHIST
"In what war in living memory was the freedom of Americans at stake? Without u.s. military action, were Japanese or German troops – let alone Italian, Vietnamese, Korean, Panamanian, Afghani, or Iraqi ones – really going to be marching though Times Square? If anything, given the notorious ratchet effect whereby wars tend to produce permanent increases in government power, it seems more probable that u.s. military action has contributed to a diminution of our freedom."
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