Tag: Veterans Day

No more Veterans Days

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Ross Caputi

What is the point of Veterans Day?

Veterans support Occupy movement
Veterans support Occupy movement. Photo by Slowking4 used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

I have a proposal. The only sensible goal that Veterans Day could ever have is not to have any more Veterans Days. Veterans Day must become self-defeating.

That this proposal seems shocking to some is evidence that war and the “heroic veteran” have become permanent parts of our culture. They have become traditions in our society.

My proposal will seem shocking to some because we live in a warrior society, where special rights and esteem are given to our warriors, but not to our civilians.

In our society, war is a tradition that veterans have carried on each generation. Civilians no longer look to the day when we no longer have wars, and as a consequence no longer have veterans. This is unimaginable.

The current purpose of Veterans Day is to celebrate this tradition and indoctrinate the next generation, who look up to our society’s warriors and will follow in their footsteps.

This must stop. For veterans to continue to enjoy their special status in our society is self-serving and short sighted. We veterans have a moral responsibility to renounce these traditions.

Veterans Day must become a day when veterans share their experience with civilians, not in search of praise, but to educate about the horrors and injustice of war.

Veterans must ensure that the next generation does not follow in their footsteps.

Ross Caputi

The special status of veterans

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Ross Caputi

Veterans enjoy a special status in American culture. By cultural definition alone, they are regarded as heroes. And on Veterans Day we celebrate these heroes without question.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Photo by Kkmd used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

But is this tradition of Veterans Day sensible? Were the wars that our veterans fought truly heroic? Did they “serve” anyone besides the 1%?

Consider my own experience as a veteran of the occupation of Iraq, for example.

Did I defend America? No. There is now ample evidence that Bush lied to America to justify invading Iraq, which was never a threat to us.

Did I help Iraqis? No. I helped destroy the city of Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury in 2004, in which we killed several thousand civilians, forced 200,000 people to become refugees, and caused a major health crisis.

Was my time in the military a “service” to anyone? Yes. I drove convoys to help government-contracted construction companies make a fortune in Iraq. I helped non-Iraqi oil companies gain access to Iraq’s resources. I tested new weapons in combat situations for weapon manufacturers, which led to large government contracts (paid for with taxpayer dollars), large profits for the weapons manufacturers, and a lot of death and destruction for Iraqis. I “served” the 1%.

Do I deserve free college or free health care because of what I did while I was in the military? No more than any other human being deserves free education and free health care as a right. I certainly did not earn the right to education and health care by participating in an illegal and immoral occupation.

Ross Caputi

Veterans and the Occupy movements

Posted on by kathiemm

Tomorrow, Friday November 11, 2011, is Veterans Day in the United States, and for many it will be a holiday. Unfortunately, as has often been true historically, veterans in America are not doing well. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates and suicides among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are skyrocketing. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycDZFKNAHEM .)

KMM at Iraq War Vets at Occupy Boston
Kathie Malley-Morrison visits the Iraq War Vets tent at Occupy Boston. Photo by Dan Goodwin, used by permission.

Although these wars have generated huge profits for corporations like Lockheed Martin, veterans can have a very difficult time obtaining the benefits that were promised when they enlisted.

In these financially troubling times, perhaps it should not be surprising that many people in power are arguing that veterans are not entitled to all of their entitlements.

It should not be surprising, then, that many veterans groups, like much of organized labor, are very attracted to the movements to Occupy…Wall Street, Boston, Tampa, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, Burlington….the list goes on and on, in the US and beyond.

Most veterans are probably well down near the bottom of the 99% of our society who are suffering from current political policies and economic inequality.

It is not benefits to veterans, all of whom have probably been wounded in one way or another, that have caused the economic problems in this country. It is the bankers and war profiteers, the speculators, the fraction of the 1% at the top for whom profits are king and other lives are dispensable.

Probably the greatest barrier to peace is that many of the people in power have not figured out how to profit from it.

A recent Pew Research Center poll (see report at http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/Pew-Military-Report.pdf  ) finds that 1 in 3 post 9-11 veterans view the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as a waste. What is your view? Where and how can you express it?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

To die for one’s country

Posted on by kathiemm

[Editor’s note:  In honor of Veterans Day today, we share a famous poem by Wilfred Owen, published in 1920. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” means “How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.”]

Dulce et Decorum Est

WWI stretcher bearers carry dead and wounded
WWI stretcher bearers carry dead and wounded. (Photo from U.K. Imperial War Museum, in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Reprinted through the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.