Memorial Day and the Rising Gorge: More than I Can Take
By Fred Reed June 3, 2017
Apparently I have missed Memorial Day by being on the road in Guanajuato. I gather I should have thanked Our Boys for their service to the exceptional nation. I will pass. My tolerance for nauseating twaddle has diminished with the years.
To begin with, “Our Boys,” so affectionately denominated, are not our boys but suckers of the ruling rich. Think not? Think again. Ending the draft protected the sons of the well-off from military service and the military from anti-war movements. If you draft the moneyed elegants of Princeton, you get resistance. Instead, the oligarchs send the expendable children of the lower orders. Who volunteer.
Further, the soldiers are not heroes but mercenary killers morally indistinguishable from hitmen for the Mafia. A kid joins the military, perhaps never having heard of the Pentagon’s next target country–Iraq, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, wherever. It doesn’t matter. They are just countries.
Then one day come orders from Washington to go kill people in the country du jour. The kid does it. He doesn’t know the people he kills, who have done nothing to him and threaten neither him nor the United States. If ordered, he would as readily attack Switzerland–or Americans.
Guido and Vito. You tell me the difference.
“Our Boys” are not patriots. A recruit signs up because he needs a job, or from boredom, or thinks being a soldier might get him laid in Asia, or wants college money, or to prove himself. Patriotism is an aftermarket bolt-on. It can get you free drinks in a lot of bars. Especially if you have a wound. Wounds usually come from bad luck or incompetence, but you can peddle them for drinks.
The public, middle class and up, does not “support the troops.” The majority do not serve, do not know anyone who does, and avoids soldiers as sex-crazed riffraff. Which is not too far off the mark.
I grew up aboard Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, a naval weapons-development base on the Potomac in Virginia. The daughters of the mathematicians, physicists, and officers were strongly discouraged from dating sailors. They were, though no one quite said it, dirt. Can you imagine Ivanka Trump going out with an enlisted Marine? To Billy Bob’s Rib Pit?
How many of those celebrating Our Boys atBreitbart or National Review have been to a Legion hall recently? Ever? Carried a rifle? Know what one is?
Our Boys are not making sacrifices for America. They are being sacrificed, used to promote the interests of Big Oil, Israel, the Neocons to the extent that there is a difference, the arms industry, and the imperialists. They are certainly not defending America, which is in no danger at all from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Afghanistan, or the rest. Do you wake up shuddering in fear of attack by Yemen?
Our Boys do not fight because they want to but because we force them to. If they choose not to, they are called “deserters” and “traitors” and face heavy jail time. A few men enjoy war and go back, tour after tour–I know several of these–but most, given the chance to come home without penalty, would be gone yesterday. If you don’t believe me, make them the offer and see what happens.
American soldiers are not good guys, decent people, armed Boy Scouts promoting democracy and policing the world to rid it of evil. They start as normal lower middle class kids, yes, no worse than anyone else, but training soon brings them around. They learn how to place a bayonet in an enemy’s kidneys so that the shock and agony will drop him. At least we did in Parris Island in the summer of ‘66. They learn how to take out a man’s face with a vertical butt stroke. Chiefly they lose the normal aversion to killing. All of this is necessary for soldiers. Our Boys.
The abandonment of all human decency is the soul of military culture, and a needed abandonment. A pilot bombing Baghdad knows that he is splattering people, that they have done nothing to him or his, that he is leaving children screaming at what is left of Mommy with funny things coming out of her middle and gurgling. He knows this because it is impossible not to know what five-hundred-pound bombs do. But he does it anyway. He doesn’t care. If he did, he wouldn’t do it.
In the age of PR, the military will speak of “surgical strikes” and “collateral damage.” Officers, who are liars and politicians, become angry if pressed on what they are really doing. They don’t care, at least don’t care enough, or they wouldn’t do it, but they know that disemboweled kids play badly with the public. That you see no photos of bleeding viscera in the media is a measure of the control of the press by those profiting from war.
Soldiers are evil. They don’t start that way, but the military changes them. If you read military history you will find that, from Joshua to yesterday, armies have butchered whole cities, looted, raped, burned, tortured. It is what armies do. Dresden, Hamburg, Nanjing, Hiroshima. How can you not think this evil?
Having been trained to kill, they do. Seeing their friends die horribly after stepping on the mine, they come to hate the dinks, slopes, sand niggers, Krauts, gooks. Revenge has a powerful appeal. Seeing a lot of mutilated corpses, cartilage glistening white, produces numbness. Another dead gook. So what?
It happens easily. The day I arrived at the Amtrac compound at Danang in 1967, a VC had been killed the night before outside the wire. They brought him in, I don’t know why. He was lying on the ground, apparently having taken a full magazine of 7.62, arm almost cut off with bone sowing and flies crawling on open eyes going cloudy.
Several other Marines were taking turns holding his head up by the hair for trophy photographs. So what, I thought. He was dead. It wasn’t an atrocity. Just guys kidding around.
Our boys. Me included.
But atrocities happen, regularly. Some can’t be argued, such as Lt. Calley’s mass killing at My Lai. Many soldiers deny what they have done, or kid themselves. A pilot bombing a village because sniper rounds came out of it will see no atrocity.
Militaries today have learned to be sensitive about these things. They invariably are called “isolated incidents.” An isolated incident is business as usual that has been detected by the press. Countries insist that their soldiers don’t do the things every other army has done since the first human picked up a pointed stick. Germans will tell you about the “clean Wehrmacht.” Yeah.
BWAHAHAHA....reading his biography makes me think you are twins! To believe this joker about anything he says or writes, would show just how gullible the reader is! A true authority on nothing! FAKE NEWS! Dumbler's sources are more believable!!!!
JUST BECAUSE SISSY SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO...BUT HE THINKS IT DOES!!!!! JUST BECAUSE MC1 SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO!!!!!
BWAHAHAHA....reading his biography makes me think you are twins! To believe this joker about anything he says or writes, would show just how gullible the reader is! A true authority on nothing! FAKE NEWS! Dumbler's sources are more believable!!!!
It's not news, it's not a source. It's opinion writing. Fake News?
Never said I buy into anything. Just posting the opinions of a marine and Vietnam Veteran about memorial day.
Are you trashing a veteran?
No proof he is anything other than a looney-tune. Anyone can make claims of being Army, Navy, etc., and war zone, etc. Kinda like the phony claims you always make! Internet is wonderful for people to puff up who they claim to be! D
JUST BECAUSE SISSY SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO...BUT HE THINKS IT DOES!!!!! JUST BECAUSE MC1 SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO!!!!!
No proof he is anything other than a looney-tune. Anyone can make claims of being Army, Navy, etc., and war zone, etc. Kinda like the phony claims you always make! Internet is wonderful for people to puff up who they claim to be! D
If the information in the article was from an anonymous person, you'd be more inclined to trust it as truth. TICK-TOCK
If the information in the article was from an anonymous person, you'd be more inclined to trust it as truth. TICK-TOCK
YAH, considering the information that this supposed Vietnam Vet, supposed many other things is unsubstantiated gibberish from a rubber room escapee, I would give credibility to many other sources first....even you!
JUST BECAUSE SISSY SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO...BUT HE THINKS IT DOES!!!!! JUST BECAUSE MC1 SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO!!!!!
YAH, considering the information that this supposed Vietnam Vet, supposed many other things is unsubstantiated gibberish from a rubber room escapee, I would give credibility to many other sources first....even you!
Your theory is that the writer is a crazy man that escaped the rubber room, and is lying about his military service in vietnam so he can write opinion articles unflattering of the US military? It's a plausible theory.
I guess people can choose not to celebrate a particular day for a number of reasons.
Jehovah Witnesses dont celebrate any holidays/ birthdays or any other day except sunday which can come in handy if you need help getting something done on thanksgiving .
Some other people dont like to celebrate any holidays sponsored by a government but are ok with mothers day valentines day maybe even cinco de mayo birthdays and new year
People are funny now.
100 years ago in Schenectady Giuseppe Garibaldi s birthday was bigger than the forth of july.
Sorry folks...and i'm sure i'll get hammered for saying this............. BUT - Veterans are NOT heroes!! Veterans AND their families are VICTIMS!! Victims of evil, senseless, government created, power driven, greed driven, manipulated wars!!
Men come back from war different than the men that left. Families suffer. And the scars remain for generations.
The twisted government glamorizes it like it's a privilege to loose all sense of being a human being by murdering men, women and children that never did anything to you! It's a twisted, sick commemorative day! And ALL of the past, present and future veterans are victims of this twisted ideology!
Heroes - NO Victims - YES
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Sorry folks...and i'm sure i'll get hammered for saying this............. BUT - Veterans are NOT heroes!! Veterans AND their families are VICTIMS!! The twisted government glamorizes it like it's a privilege to loose all sense of being a human being by murdering men, women and children that never did anything to you! It's a twisted, sick commemorative day! And ALL of the past, present and future veterans are victims of this twisted ideology!
Victims of evil, senseless, government created, power driven, greed driven, manipulated wars!!
Men come back from war different than the men that left. Families suffer. And the scars remain for generations.
Heroes - NO Victims - YES
Hero....no, don't claim it and don't consider being identified as such. Victim...not even close Veterans chose NOT to be victims, but that is a difficult position for you to process, and I can't expect you to because you are not capable of doing so.
Veterans...think about what this country and this world would look like were it not for them. Think about what your own personal life would be were it not for them. Try thinking about their sacrifices so you didn't have to. All of that escapes you because of such a narrow thought process. Thankfully you are in the minute minority. PS - You're welcome!
JUST BECAUSE SISSY SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO...BUT HE THINKS IT DOES!!!!! JUST BECAUSE MC1 SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO!!!!!
Logged
...but jerk did not disappoint! 
