NO RTH
C O A ST
TIM E S
EA G LE
M A Y / J UNE 2004
‘In a dark time the eye begins to see '
-THEODORE ROETHKE
50C E N T S
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ROGER
HAYES
DO DEAD SOLDIERS HAVE SOULS?
BY MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER
‘May is the 6th annual National Military Appreciation
Month — and with 440 thousand m ilitary now deployed overseas,
‘ has special significance. Public events are scheduled across
)e country. ”
-PARADE MAGAZINE 4/25/2004
“Why should we hear about body bags and deaths.. .it’s
lo t relevant. So why should I waste m y beautiful m ind on some-
lin g like that. ”
-BARBARA BUSH
(’GOOD MORNING AMERICA', 3/18/2003)
Americans seem to want to make war but not be
exposed (or responsible) for its consequences. Support
'or the troops is a warcry that enforces their continuance
at war rather than returning them home alive — and it
serves to disparage their deaths when they return home
in flag-draped coffins. Any public display of the coffins is
criticized as debasing the honored dead.
The Pentagon has closed a brief window that
allowed a glimpse of coffins of American war dead from
Iraq, citing that it is not “policy” to permit public display
x access to the dead, or for that matter to the wounded
to stream back to the USA like spring runoff The policy,
Pentagon spokespeople say, is to “respect the privacy of
the families" of the dead — yet the real purpose behind
this banal sophistry might more truthfully be to protect,
as Joyce Maynard writes, “the delicate sensitivities of the
ruling class as Americans die to build them an empire.”
The Pentagon is notorious for dissembling the
horrors it perpetrates. Almost from the time the Pentagon
vas built in 1943, the War Department (Mars) was given a
name change as well as a facelift, becoming the Defense
Department (Mother) — and the more disingenuously
it acted in the half century Cold War that immediately
succeeded World War 2, the more necessary its contra-
lictions required unctuous dissimulation In recent wars
American war casualty tolls are manipulated to obscure
ieir numbers, while inflated casualty counts of an enemy
ire increasingly relied upon as the measurement of
luccess. Even the body bags are euphemized they are
now referred to as “transport containers ’’
when we give free hand to make war. And perhaps it
would be even more pertinent for Americans to also see
the Iraqi dead our war has produced, as Germans were
ordered by the Allies to view the masses of dead of
liberated deathcamps at the end of World War 2.
Unlike the German people, who could claim no
political rights or freedoms other than obedience to the
state during the Nazi reign, Americans are constitutionally
in charge of their government and are responsible for its
doings in their name — and are obliged to pressure their
leaders rather than be coerced when they start acting
Hitleresque.
An essential reason war is universally abhorred
and cautiously perpetrated is the rise of mass media that
has chronicled global aversion toward warfare by ordinary
folk who suffer most from it.
History records the lives and affairs of kings and
generals, and of course their interminable wars. The
hundreds of millions of common people impressed into
wars and whose homes, towns, occupations and lives
were decimated by them have been ignored until only
recently — and only because early mass media began
linking their concerns and pandering to them to sell
newspapers.
The only purpose for armies is the destruction of
other human beings Soldiering is big business, the first
order of every empire as it has been since ancient times,
but soldiers themselves are little more than expendable
pawns, readily discarded
Without soldiers there would be no wars. No
Caesars, no Napoleons, no Hitlers. Soldiers kill, rape,
pillage, burn, and if they are unlucky, stupid or badly led,
they die
MEMORIAL DAY
a black granite wall to rest against
each name an act calling for a re-write
50,000 times rendered under Caesar
50,000 rendered like hot fat on the stove.
Americans should not be allowed to simply view
i coffins of their war dead, but compelled to see the
lasted, dismembered bodies inside to witness exactly
Tat we continence (despite claims of righteousness)
y
-LARRYKERSCHNER
t
Support for the soldiers acts contrarily as a relent
less goad that pushes troops into irreversible horror at the
same time the cheering warcries crush any who would
conscientiously object.
The soldiers feel compelled to carry out what they
perceive as public mandate, and in the belief that any
personal doubts would be met with disapproval, they do
their duty at whatever cost.
Yet the soldiers we are exhorted to uncritically
support can be turned against us, ordered to suppress
dissent and round up political activists. In times like these
such repressive use of soldiers could have wide popular
support.
Quite a few people think dissent is improper once
a war is started and refuse to believe it is more necessary
than ever — their point is that dissent succors an enemy
and betrays American troops fighting the war.
Yet, as realized by the Vietnam War, dissent is
the only way to stop questionable wars. Dissenters are
not responsible for the misuse of the lives of soldiers.
The people who start wars are
The war parties always attempt to capture patriot
ism as their own, and portray dissent against their wars
as sedition and disloyalty. But dissent is the true act of
patriotism and a more sensible way to support the troops
than dispatching them into horror.
America’s self-styled 'War President’ is essentially
a deserter who utilized preferential treatment to stay out of
a war he supported but did not feel compelled to serve in.
He is a fervent believer in “American exceptionalism” and
veins his discussion of the war on terrorism as a “divine
mission” and the “language of righteous empire." He says
“I believe God wants me to be President," and that “our
rights were derived from God.”
A true millenarian whose holy grail is to decimate
in the name of God other millenarians who are of different
cultures, races and creeds He portrays opponents of his
righteous war (and his Presidency) as heretics and traitors
to one nation under God Our ancestors, the traitors who
conceived the nation, feared someone like him would rise
to power and did what they could to prevent the militant
theocracy he espouses with their own secular set of ten
commandments, the Bill of Rights — which he of course
disdains
National Military Appreciation Month is low-scale
agitprop that boilerplates the President’s militant ministry.
Its ironic yet fittingly tragic finale is commemoration of the
heaps of war dead on Memorial Day.
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