Dying for Freedom?

Sadness For Disingenuous Memorial Days

Dr. RH Bennett

In the brainwashing ritual of a Big Mac slogan, we are ever-present to the mantra of Memorial Day jingles.

·      They died to keep us free.

·      Freedom is not free.

·      Our fighting men bring freedom to the world.

 Some may pause for a half-second to wonder who are the nameless soldiers who died, and I wonder if I know any of them?  Then they immediately move on to the next smartphone post.

 You see we have sanitized war. We no longer look at the caskets and names every night on the news as we did during Viet Nam.  Today, we don't respect and honor the fallen. In fact, we keep it hidden, more effectively than scantily clothed breasts on the TV.

Honoring these sons, daughters, and spouses means we would bust our butts to make sure that the soldiers who risk death, are not put in harm's way for anything other than our true defense.

Do we ever stop and carefully ponder our mindless slogans and this war sanitation? It is doubtful, as it is far too painful.   We would have to realize the death could be mine.   We rationalize, hey they volunteered.   I am not responsible, the ego cries.  In no way am I even indirectly responsible.  I have no control over what the USA does!

My friends died in Viet Nam.  Not a one volunteered to save South East Asia from the “Advancing Red Menace” or to keep the USA safe from Communism, God forbid.   They were forced to become Centurions; it was called the Draft.  And like the Roman Centurions they fought well because like all wars, you kill or be killed.   It was not noble.  This is war and the way it was in Viet Nam, and the other wars decades before my high school buddies got shipped out to “Nam” by the JFK, LBJ or RMN meat grinder express.

My friends got a brief indoctrination on how to kill to get on the line and start giving General Westmoreland his cherished body counts.  This Four Star General thought he could wear out the North by fatal attrition.  A student of French History he was not.

My buddies fought to stop the enemy from killing them.   Nowhere in the meat grinder of jungle war was there one shred of a noble quest for freedom.  It is from this place on constant terror that US hearts perpetuated the horrors of the My Lai Massacre.  The troops were as they are today an armed and deadly brotherhood dedicated to each other with a single purpose, crazed survival, and rightfully so.

“If the war was unnecessary, then “They died for our freedom” can’t be a true statement”.  Matt Hershberger

Then along comes the Axis of Evil via the Bush Doctrine.  Iran had weapons of mass destruction lie and the deceptions of September 11^th, mobilized a make-believe war on terror.  Again boys of my son's age volunteered this time for a noble and false cause. A cause that was the biggest fraud ever perpetrated in the name of freedom.  Rumsfeld said of the war, it would be, “Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." The war and its leaders ignorantly and arrogantly created a Jihad of terror that persists to this day.

Young men and women became the targets of hatred as the most powerful country in the world destroyed sovereign people and nations.  The US has been warring on governments in the Middle East, and elsewhere since the end of  WWI.   It has nothing to do with advancing freedom and democracy and everything to do with resources and money.

If war is one of the least effective ways to assure freedom, then “They died for our freedom” should not be a source of national pride.

The centurions of that war once again fought not to spread democracy or protect freedom but to stay alive.   That survival fight evoked such evil in the hearts of good men and women that PDST and suicides continue to extract an ungodly human price to this day. We must point to the hubris of egomaniacal leaders of the dearth of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, and Rumsfeld to mention a few.  Take heed on this Memorial Day, Bolton has his hand on the trigger once again.  His aim, blessed by the Saudiʻs, is Iran.  History is poised to repeat.

If the war was contrived for financial reasons, then “They died for our freedom” can’t be a true statement.

I am not a religious at all, but my belief the sacredness of all human life and the broken bonds of morality slash at my heart with every story of life and liberty and happiness lost for the acts of violence cloaked and sanitized as the war on terror.  To the innocent people whose lands we invaded, bombed and occupied we are the terrorists.  Like the Minute Men of the Revolutionary War, the people fought in any way they could.  These same innocents live in a crossfire of an Islamic civil war we promote even still.

Memorial Day is important but only if we are willing to do more than jargonistic thinking.  Saying they died for our freedom, is repugnantly self-serving. It is an unprincipled attempt to justify to oneʻs soul that a soldiers death has a purpose. It is to dodge the moral responsibility of personally sanctioned deaths.

Freedom has never been granted at the end of a gun, especially when the weapons and men and women holding them are merely centurions protecting the interests of the global elite.   Let this Memorial Day bring pause to jingle thinking and pray we chose to cease sending young men and women to die for national interests, under the guise of protecting our so-called freedom. 

If the war was contrived in the name of  God, then “They died for our freedom” can’t be a true statement.

Why do people have to die in a war for our freedom?  It is simple, Freedom in this context is a ruse.