——– Original Message ——–
Subject:
[ActionGreens] Armistice Day, 2013
Date:
Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:53:55 -0500
From:
Mitchel Cohen
To:
actiongreens@yahoogroups.com
(November 11, 2013) This morning on WBAI, Bob Hennelly advised
listeners to “thank the veterans” for serving the country and
protecting us.
What a crock!
Why only our veterans? If service in a country’s military
is seen
as such a wonderful thing, what about all those in other lands who
fought
for their countries? Isn’t God on our side … only? What
kind of
God would be on our country, only? our city, only?
our white (or brown, or red) people, only? our
team, only?
our family, only? Where do these petty nationalisms end? Why do
radio
commentators and football coaches fall into them so easily? Yayyy,
GO
TEAM!
The fact is in this day and age, no one fights for their country,
regardless. They fight for the interests of those in power (or
hope to
become one!), the capitalist class, who turn them into murderers
and send
them to war on a pocketful of broken promises and lies.
So — contra Hennelly — thank people in the military who resist
orders to kill; thank them when they reject orders to
steal
resources and oppress others. Thank those, in Marine Corps
Commander
Smedley Butler’s words, who refuse to be a hit man for
Wall
Street.
And, thank people when they refuse the call-up, dodge the draft,
flea to
Canada or Sweden, go to prison, turn the guns around (!) to
protect the
real values of America, the America that should be but
never
was.
There’s a reason why today’s holiday used to be known as Armistice
Day —
the day the PEACE was signed to end World War 1. They changed it
to
“Veterans Day”, just as the Department of War was changed to
the Department of Defense — to condition mass-psychology into
accepting
war as natural and those who fight in it as what you do to become
a
“man”. To win, in military parlance, “the hearts and minds
of the peoplem” at home as well as abroad. To conquer us.
Should we help our returning veterans, who have been so
gratuitously
thrown onto the rubble heap and left with physical and mental
wounds
festering, and who have become homeless, jobless, suicides? Well,
yes we
must — not because they’re veterans but because they’re
human
beings, same as for every human being who is suffering those
horrible
fates.
Thank those who spurn the twistories, and celebrate what it means
to be
human in an era of robots.
Forgive me if I turn off the radio to start my day thinking about
that, our great history of resistance, instead of the mealy
mouthed glorifications of the warrior offered this morning on
WBAI.
Mitchel Cohen
TESTIMONY FROM U.S. MARINE CORPS COMMANDER GEN.
SMEDLEY
BUTLER
“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active
service as a member of this country’s most agile military force,
the
Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second
Lieutenant
to Major-General. And during that period I spent most of my time
being a
high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for
the
bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
“I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am
sure
of it. Like all members of the military profession, I never had a
thought
of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained
in
suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups.
This is
typical of everyone in the military service.
“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for the 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.
The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for
the
international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I
brought
light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in
1916. I
helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903.
In
China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way
unmolested.
“During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would
say,
a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given
Al
Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket
in
three city districts. I operated on three continents.”