*Victims of incompetent politicians who would rather use bombs instead of words and gain jingoistic favour by tugging on the heart strings of societies lowest common denominators.
*Victims of the immoral arms trade who turn massacres and maiming into profits for shareholders.
*Victims of warmongering military leaders who use them, and, increasingly, the public as cannon fodder in their war games.
*Victims of a failing education system that provides few options for the less able and allows them to be brainwashed by regular visits from Army recruitment who lie about a glorious career.
There are no heroes in military uniform.
It's wrong to glorify their actions, their killing of civilians, their maiming of children. War cannot be justified.
At remembrance, weep for the waste of life, the loss of possibility, the destruction of families but, please, remember these soldiers were trying to kill and maim; that's their job so that the politicians can get a jingoistic boost, so that arms manufacturers can make a profit, so that the military can justify their existence and so that the education system has a dustbin for its failures.
There are no heroes in the military; just victims and aggressors.
It's sadly true that the west has become obsessed with heroification - turning everyone killed while in the line of duty into a hero, regardless of the circumstances. We've done it here in Canada too, and I find it very difficult to deal with. When a Canadian soldier, ostensibly assigned to "peace keeping" duties (armed to the teeth, mind you) is blown up by an IED how has that turned him into a hero? A tragic figure, yes - without question - and a victim of a feckless system that has turned him into something that is worth less than a can of tuna (in the eyes of the politicians that consigned him/her to that death, thousands of miles away from home) - but - a hero?
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of the stories of the Victoria Cross recipients from WWII - and the Medal of Honor (sic) winners, also from WWII - and what those men had to endure to be awarded those medals. Many of them died saving the lives of their fellow soldiers - men who were fighting the scourges of nationalism - an evil that should be stamped out as it ultimately leads our people to do stupid things, like declare they need more "breathing room" (Germany, 1939).
But - can you imagine how short the wars would have been if the actual leaders - the politicians and their generals - had to do the fighting? Not with guns, not with bombers - but hand to hand combat. Looking their "enemy" in the eye and having to fight them in a ring. It's not so easy to kill someone when you're looking them in the eye - and I doubt precious few politicians would have the guts to put their fists where their rhetoric is.
War is the tool of the cowardly - it is the mechanism by which the weak of mind manipulate the situation to better fit their warped agenda. Hitler used violent aggression because his mental psychosis prevented him from seeing an alternative - violence was a "natural choice" for a man who was unable to feel empathy - he had to be stopped. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the other hand, were not preemptive - they prevented nothing - they were knee-jerk reactions to an attack, and had nothing to do with it. Had Bush really wanted to attack a country that had something to do with 9/11 he would have attacked the Kingdom of Saud - Saudi Arabia - where the majority of the terrorists were from - but that wasn't his intent - war was. George Bush wanted a war, and a war is what George Bush got - two of them. Were he still in power the U.S. would likely be in a third war - against Iran.
This system will not change, however, until it has been replaced - it is too entrenched with the dogma of death - the "Military Industrial Complex" as Eisenhower called it, and the "Terrorist Industrial Complex" as former Sec. State, Gen. Colin Powell called it - it has become a driving force of the economy - war - the business of death - the dogma of disaster - and it has become entrenched as the central core of the capitalist system.