This was written by a friend who is the owner/editor of a couple of small town Texas newspapers. I think it pretty eloquently states what I think a lot of people feel.
[i]On Memorial Day, I will salute, then curse, and then pray.
By Smokey Briggs
Monday is Memorial Day - the day we set aside to honor our fellow Americans killed fighting our wars.
As I sit at my desk, searching for what I want to say about Memorial Day, my eyes come to two objects. Both are scarred by age, and at least one house fire.
One is an ancient and formal-feeling green record book that folds into itself. It chronicles my grandfather’s time in the Navy. Otis Edward Briggs enlisted April 27, 1917. Three weeks earlier America had entered World War I. He was a month past his 18th birthday.
The other object on my desk is a blue, slightly less formal notebook emblazoned with Army parachutist’s wings and the words, “20th Special Forces Group.” It is my father’s jump log. Among other facts, it notes that Sergeant First Class Olin Briggs qualified as a parachutist on August 28, 1965. I was three days old on that day, and I was a toddler during the time he spent in Viet Nam. It was his second war, by the way. He fought through Korea as a young Marine, having enlisted directly after high school. Both aging pieces of history lie next to a rotating wheel of pictures - my son Charlie’s face smiles from a frame. He is three. Behind me, is one of the few surviving vestiges of my enlistment - the white cover (a hat in Marine lingo) that was part of my dress blue uniform. My daughter Carson found it in a box of stored stuff awhile back, and proudly mounted it atop my bookcase.
Lucky for the three Briggs boys in these three generations, none of us were killed. There were not even any bullets flying around when I enlisted in 1984. So, Memorial Day in not about us. But there is a connection. You see, I know why these three young men enlisted to serve their countrymen.
None of them needed a job, or was without prospects. I know they were young, from a long line of men-at-arms, and looking for some adventure. But, above all else, they enlisted with duty in their hearts and minds. Their motivations were clean and good. I’m proud of all three of us, as I am proud of all who went before and came after - men willing to wager their lives in defense of the country.
There, what a nice story about a family of patriots, none of whom had to pay the ultimate price. Now we can proudly go out and salute the flag on Memorial Day, and pay homage to comrades less fortunate, grill a few hamburgers, and call it a day. Right? Wrong. At least for me.
You see, I have studied history for a long time. In the process, I have discovered some things that at times I would rather not know. Especially on days like Memorial Day.
What I have discovered is that every war Americans have fought since my grandfather was born was probably unnecessary. Americans were not threatened, were in no danger, and could have sat these wars out as other fools answered their own empire’s call for war. From WWI to our current folly in Afghanistan, America’s wars have been the offensive wars of Empire - not wars of defense that are the rightful domain of a republic of free men.
Americans were not protected from anything when we sacrificed more than 100,000 men in France during WWI. Even World War II - that war most hallowed in the high school history books - was the result of careful manipulation. Roosevelt checkmated the Japanese into a choice - go to war, or give up their own desires for empire. The Japs chose war - the usual answer when the decision is made by a politician or a king who knows he will not be fixing a bayonet on the end of a rifle, and facing the consequences of his decision.
And Hitler? What of him? He had no ability to harm America. But he would have? Right? Who knows? Could he have been a more fearsome enemy than Stalin’s Soviet Union? We transformed the Soviets into a world power to defeat Hitler. Compared to Stalin, Hitler was a philanthropist. The cure was worse than the disease. Hitler was Europe’s problem, not ours, and our leaders pushed the Japs into a corner hoping for war. Is this the policy of a free republic, or an empire?
Was a free France worth it to the more than 200,000 Americans who died there? If I were 18, and you gave me the choice of death and a free France, or the opposite, I would tell France to fight its own battles.
How about Korea? Would it have mattered to Americans if South Korea fell to North Korea? Was a sovereign South Korea worth it to the more than 35,000 Americans who died there?
Viet Nam? We know Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin. Just as our politicians lied to my grandfather’s generation about the sinking of the Lusitania (the incident that was used to propel American entry into WWI) Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify escalating the war in Viet Nam. And then, 50,000 lives later, we did not even bother to win. We just left. Hey, all you GI’s and Marines and sailors who got killed, sorry about that.
How about Desert Storm (First Iraq)? Was the king of Kuwait’s throne worth a single American life, or even $20 in tax revenues?
Second Iraq? It’s politely acknowledged these days that Bush and company lied through their damn teeth about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Hussien (theirs not ours) did not have any more ability to harm America than Taiwan or Chile.
Afghanistan? A baker’s dozen of Saudi Arabians pilot jet liners into American buildings and we invade Afghanistan? And, we fight this one just like we lost Viet Nam, so even if it were a rational war to defend America, we are still going to lose, which tells me it is not a rational war. If it were, I think we would be fighting like we meant it.
It seems our politicians have learned that the American people will bite hook-line-and-sinker for any good “incident,” but gradually lose interest, and never demand victory in return for the lives of their sons and fathers and brothers. After five or ten years of good war profits, we just quietly bring home the still living troops, wave the flag, erect a memorial, and call it good.
We have not bothered to win a war since 1945, and yet, even though our politicians promised many bad things would happen if we did not send our troops and fight, when we lost and left, nothing bad happened.
So, if we were not fighting to protect Americans, what were we fighting for?
I am afraid that Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery under fire, summed it up after he retired when he wrote, “War is a Racket.” Here is a bit of what Butler had to say about the wars he participated in:
“WAR is a racket. It always has been.It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”
I have come to the conclusion that General Butler was correct. That is a bitter pill for someone who was raised to be a warrior - to serve his country in time of need.
When it comes down to it, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Bush, Bush, and now Obama, and all their cohorts of chair-borne warriors in Washington, are guilty of treason, and murder.
Regular Americans had no interests in any of these wars. We were not defending anything. Maybe other wars would have come along if we had not fought the ones we did. Maybe we would have been attacked. We cannot know. It is pure speculation. But we can know that the wars we did fight were set-ups. We were tricked, massaged with propaganda, and lied to. Our politicians seized upon our most noble character traits and tricked us into doing their bidding - into working as strongmen for a very large mafia. My countrymen have died by the hundreds of thousands fighting wars that had nothing to do with defending their country. This is the rub of Memorial Day, for me.
I have been struggling with this for a number of years. I know that the men who lie in their graves with the Stars and Stripes waving over their headstones went to war with duty and honor in their hearts, just as three generations of my family have signed on the dotted line with those same motivations.
They went for the right reasons, even though they were tricked. Monday we will honor these men, as we should.
Unfortunately, at the same time, we will also glorify the wars they died in as wars worth fighting, which they were not. They were just a waste, where a lot of good men died, and few men got very rich and maybe enhanced their political careers.
So, on Memorial Day, I will deliver a crisp salute to these fallen men, and to the ideals that were in their hearts. Then I will utter a dark curse upon the souls of the men who played on their bravery and sense of honor and duty to get them to fight wars that had nothing to do with protecting America, and everything to do with their own personal gain.
Last, I will offer a prayer, that we as a people gain the ability and the willingness to see through the thin veil of lies we are fed by our government and stop sending our warriors off to fight and die to satisfy the bank accounts of a select elite. Hopefully, before that smiling three-year-old face on my desk follows in the footsteps of his forefathers.[/i]