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They Died in Vain; Deal With It
By Ray McGovern
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28783.htm
August 08, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Many of those preaching at
American church services Sunday extolled as "heroes" the 30 American and 8
Afghan troops killed Saturday west of Kabul, when a helicopter on a night
mission crashed, apparently after taking fire from Taliban forces. This
week, the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) can be expected to beat a steady
drumbeat of "they shall not have died in vain."
But they did. I know it is a hard truth, but they did die in vain.
As in the past, churches across the country will keep praising the fallen
troops for protecting "our way of life," and few can demur, given the tragic
circumstances.
But, sadly, such accolades are, at best, misguided - at worst, dishonest.
Most preachers do not have a clue as to what U.S. forces are doing in
Afghanistan and why. Many prefer not to think about it. There are some who
do know better, but virtually all in that category eventually opt to punt.
Should we fault the preachers as they reach for words designed to give
comfort to those in their congregations mourning the deaths of so many young
troops? As hard as it might seem, I believe we can do no other than fault -
and confront - them. However well meaning their intentions, their
negligence and timidity in confronting basic war issues merely help to
perpetuate unnecessary killing. It is high time to hold preachers
accountable.
Many preachers are alert and open enough to see through the propaganda for
perpetual war. But most will not take the risk of offending their flock
with unpalatable truth. Better not to risk protests from the
super-patriots - many of them with deep pockets - in the pews. And better
to avoid, at all costs, offending the loved ones of those who have been
killed - loved ones who can hardly be faulted for trying desperately to find
some meaning in the snuffing out of young lives.
Best to Just Praise and Pray
Far better to pray for those already killed and those who in the future will
"give the last full measure of devotion to our country." In sum, by and
large, American preachers are afraid to tell the truth. They lack the
virtue that Thomas Aquinas taught is the foundation of all virtue - courage.
Aquinas wrote (to translate into the vernacular) that all other virtue is
specious if you have no guts.
Writer James Hollingsworth hit the nail on the head: "Courage is not the
absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more
important than fear." Like the truth.
Those who often seem to ache the most in the face of unnecessary death are
mothers. Many mothers do summon the courage to say - and say loudly -
ENOUGH. Yes, my son (or daughter) died for no good purpose, they are strong
enough to acknowledge, painfully but honestly. He (she) did die in vain.
Now we must all deal with it. Stop the false patriotism. And, most
important, stop the killing.
Cindy Sheehan, whose 25 year-old son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, is
one such mother. She and others have tried to put a dent into the strange
logic that attempts to translate unnecessary death into justification for
still more unnecessary death. But they get little air or ink in the Fawning
Corporate Media. Rather, what you will hear in the days ahead from the FCM
is well honed rhetoric not only about how our troops "cannot have died in
vain," but also that Americans must now redouble our resolve to "honor their
sacrifice."
President Barack Obama set the tone on Saturday:
"We will draw inspiration from their lives, and continue the work of
securing our country and standing up for the values they embodied."
Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, also primed the
pump for the FCM, saying Saturday, "All of those killed in this operation
were true heroes who had already given so much in the defense of freedom."
And Joint Chiefs Chairman went even further in professing to know "what our
fallen would have wanted" us to do - namely, "keep fighting." Mullen added
that, "it is certainly what we are going to do." All this was duly reported
in Sunday's Washington Post and other leading U.S. newspapers -without much
comment.
Over the next several days, TV viewers will get a steady diet of this kind
of disingenuous logic from talk show hosts feeding on the grist from Obama,
Mullen, Allen, and others. After all, many pundits work for news
organizations owned or allied with some of the same corporations
profiteering from war.
Too bad CBS's legendary Edward R. Murrow is long since dead; and the widely
respected Walter Cronkite, as well. Taking the CBS baton from Murrow, who
had challenged the "red scare" witch hunt of Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cronkite
gradually saw through the dishonesty responsible for the killing of so many
in Vietnam. He finally spoke up, and said, in effect, any more who die will
have died in vain.
(The very long hiatus between Cronkite and Scott Pelley, newly appointed
"CBS Evening News" anchor, has been particularly painful. The jury is still
out, but I harbor some hope that Pelley may try to follow CBS's earlier,
prouder tradition, if by some miracle his corporate bosses allow him to.
Given today's prevailing atmosphere of obeisance to Establishment
Washington, Pelley certainly has his work cut out for him. We shall have to
wait and see if he has it in him to take the risk of rising to the
occasion.)
Corporal Shank & Specialist Kirkland
Five years ago I was giving talks in Missouri, when the body of 18 year-old
Cpl. Jeremy Shank of Jackson, Missouri (population 12,000) came home for
burial. He was killed in Hawijah, Iraq on September 6, 2006 while on a
"dismounted security patrol when he encountered enemy forces using small
arms," according to the Pentagon.
Which enemy forces? Two weeks before Shank was killed, Stephen Hadley,
George W. Bush's national security adviser, acknowledged that the challenge
in Iraq "isn't about insurgency, isn't about terror; it's about sectarian
violence." Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Makiki added, "The most important
element in the security plan is to curb the religious violence."
So was Shank's mission to prevent Iraqi religious fanatics from blowing up
one another? What do you think; was that worth his life?
On September 7, 2006, the day after Shank was killed, President Bush, in
effect, mocked his unnecessary death by drawing the familiar but bogus
connection between 9/11 and the "war on terror," of which he claimed Iraq
was a part. Bush said, "Five years after September 11, 2001, America is
safer - and America is winning the war on terror."
Flowery Funeral Words
Back at the First Baptist Church in Jackson, Missouri, Rev. Carter Frey
eulogized Shank as one of those who "put themselves in harm's way and paid
the ultimate sacrifice so you and I can have freedom to live in this
country."
Correction: It was not Cpl. Shank who put himself in harm's way; it was
those who used a peck of lies to launch a bloody, unnecessary war - first
and foremost, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, not to mention the craven
Congress that authorized it and most of the FCM that led the cheerleading
for it.
Was separating Shia from Sunni a mission worth what is so facilely called
the "ultimate sacrifice," or - for other troops - the penultimate one paid
by tens of thousands of veterans trying to adjust to life with brain injury,
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and/or missing limbs?
Despite the self-serving rhetoric about "heroes," the young, small-town
Shanks of America stand low in the priorities of Establishment Washington.
They are pawns in the war games played by generals and politicians far, far
from the battlefield.
Even in the Army in which I served, troops were often referred to simply as
"warm bodies;" that is, at least before they became cold and stiff. But
that term was normally not accompanied by the mechanistic disdain reflected
in the memo by a Fort Lewis-McCord Army major that came to light last year.
On March 20, 2010, Specialist Derrick Kirkland, back from his second tour in
Iraq, hanged himself in the barracks at Fort Lewis-McCord, leaving behind a
wife and young daughter. Kirkland had been suffering from severe depression
and anxiety attacks, for which he had to bear severe ridicule by his
comrades.
Expendable
As for his superiors, it was Army policy to do everything possible to avoid
diagnosing PTSD. And so, Kirkland ended up becoming a new entry on a
little-known statistical table; namely, the one that shows that more
active-duty soldiers are currently committing suicide than are being killed
in combat.
Not a problem for Maj. Keith Markham, Executive Officer of Kirkland's unit,
who put the prevailing attitude all too clearly in a private memo sent to
his platoon leaders. "We have an unlimited supply of expendable labor,"
wrote Markham.
And, sadly, he is right. Because of the poverty draft (aka the
"professional Army"), more than half of U.S. troops come from small towns
like Jackson, Missouri and the inner cities of our country. In both these
places, good jobs and educational opportunity are rare to nonexistent.
I suspect that one factor behind the very high suicide rate is a belated
realization among the troops that they have been conned, lied to - that they
have been used as pawns in an unconscionably cynical game. I would imagine
that corporals and specialists, as well as high brass like the legendary
two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Marine Gen. Smedley Butler,
often come to this realization belatedly, and that this probably exacerbates
the pain.
Butler wrote "War is a Racket" in 1935, describing the workings of the
military-industrial complex well before President Eisenhower gave it a name.
It is not difficult for troops to learn that the phenomenon about which
Eisenhower warned has now broadened into an even more pervasive and powerful
military-industrial-corporate-congressional-media-institutional-church
complex. Small wonder the suicide rate is so high.
And for what? Please raise your hand if you now believe, or have ever
believed, that the White House and Pentagon have sent a hundred thousand
troops to Afghanistan for the reason given by President Obama; namely, "to
disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" the 50 to 100 al-Qaeda who U.S. intelligence
agencies says are still in Afghanistan.
And keep your hands up, those of you who fear you might throw something at
the TV screen the next time Gen. David Petraeus intones that wonderfully
flexible phrase "fragile and reversible" to describe what he keeps calling
"progress" in Afghanistan.
Troops returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan know better. It must
be particularly hard for them to hear the lies about "progress," and then be
ridiculed and marginalized for having PTSD. It seems a safe bet that some
of those have read Kipling, and on occasion wish they had found release by
following his morbid advice - awful as it is:
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your gawd like a soldier."
The Establishment Church
I added "institutional church" into the
military-industrial-corporate-congressional-media-institutional-church
complex coined above because, with very few exceptions, the institutional
church is still riding shotgun for the system - and the wars.
I find that most men and women of the cloth avoid indicting "wars of
choice," even though such wars were quite precisely defined at the
post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as "wars of aggression" and labeled the
"supreme" international war crime). They know that in such wars thousands
upon thousands die - civilians as well as military.
But then fear seems to walk in, for preachers all too often fall back on
platitudinous, fulsome praise for those who "have given their lives so that
we can live in freedom." And, as the familiar phrase goes, they say/think,
"I guess we'll have to leave it there."
And there continue to be relatively few outspoken folk like Cindy Sheehan,
painfully aware that courage and truth are far more important than fear,
even when that fear includes the painful recognition that the life of a
beloved young son was ended unnecessarily. There are some who dare to point
out that the mission given our troops has made us less, not more, safe at
home, and ask what is so hard to understand about Thou Shalt Not Kill? The
FCM ignores these Justice folks, so all too few know of what they say and
do.
It is a curiosity that the Bible and the teachings of Gandhi and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., for example, seem to have become OBE (overtaken by events)
and no longer inform the sermons of many American preachers. Odd that the
relevant teachings from this treasure trove seem to have become passé or, as
former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the Geneva Conventions,
"quaint" and "obsolete."
I have this vision of Stephen Decatur smiling from the afterlife as he
watches more and more acceptance being given in recent years to his famous
dictum: "Our country, right or wrong."
Let me suggest that preachers consider drawing material from yet another
source in thinking about the wars in which the U.S. is currently engaged.
Instead of fulsome encomia for those who have made "the ultimate sacrifice,"
they might be directed to Rudyard Kipling for words more to the point, if
politically and congregationally incorrect.
Two passages (the first a one-liner) shout out their applicability to U.S.
misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and - God help us -
where next?
"If they ask you why we died, tell them because our fathers lied."
and
"It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles,
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.
At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;
And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst,
he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National
Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
=================
Olbermann: Bush...worst president in American history
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLpkeDg7uyI
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/coundown-bush-presidency-eight-years-eight
All the reasons given by Bush for the war have proven false or illegal.
Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law, as is war for regime
change. Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, (and violated
Article VI of the Constitution) says Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of
the United Nations
September 16, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305709,00.html
Bush response to 9-11: two illegal immoral unnecessary wars.
Before the invasion of Iraq, what were the facts on the ground? We knew
that there were no WMD, stockpiles or active weapons programs. The UN
Inspectors had free access to all parts of Iraq for four months, using
all the intelligence furnished by the USA, and reported nothing was to
be found. The inspectors were pulled out so Bush could start his "shock
and awe" bombing campaign. Those who read the classified version of the
National Intelligence Estimate concluded that it did not support the
unclassified version, and that Iraq was no imminent threat. There was NO
evidence that Iraq had any connection to 9-11 or to Al Quaeda in spite
of a massive campaign of lies by the Bush administration which made
those claims. The USA was not authorized to use military force by the
UN, and doing so was a violation of the UN Charter and article VI of the
US Constitution. Pre-emptive war is a war crime and a violation of
international law. The attack on Iraq did not meet the historical
standards of a "just war" and was clearly immoral. The war may end up
costing 3+ trillion dollars, all for no valid purpose. A massive waste of
human life, property and loss of world respect. (Documentation is in my
four part research linked below.) Documentation of hundreds of Bush
lies. And more details about the illegal Afghanistan invasion.
The Afghanistan government offered to turn over OBL if they were given
evidence that OBL was responsible for 9-11. Bush was unable or unwilling to
negotiate, and started a war with a government not responsible for 9-11.
Ten years later we are still in this unnecessary war of choice.
http://www.hamiltongirls.com/BushWar.htm
--C Hamilton
C Hamilton
a moderator of
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new-continuum/
adult humor/opinion/pictures
If you want to change what your government is doing,
contact those who are acting in your name:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/misc.html
John Prine -Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore
http://youtu.be/DgRVNjsuycQ
thanks to jsantaella
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