"defending our freedom": a lie we tell ourselves?

[maxsolomon]

as memorial day rolls around, the flag waving canards get dusted off & put back in circulation. how about a column or cartoon chastising citizens for vacationing & forgetting the meaning of the day? or how about this one, repeated by president pre-senile dementia this morning: the troops are "defending our freedom"?

i've been thinking abou this one a lot, because it is the ostensible reason we have armed forces. a short list of america's wars (excluding the native genocide & various latin american interventions on the behalf of the united fruit co. et al.) & freedom defended or not:

1. revolution: yes
2. 1812: yes
3. mexican: no
4. civil: N/A
5. spanish: no
6. ww1: no
7. ww2: yes (pearl harbor was not an attack on our "freedoms", it was an attack on our offensive capacity in the pacific. although the british may consider our intervention too late in coming, we did act to defend other's freedom from fascism. but there never were attacks on the american mainland. still, our finest hour)
8. korea: no
9: vietnam: no
10: gulf wars 1 & 2: no

we talk a lot of shit for a country that has never been invaded.

[unhappycamper]

1. IIRC, we were invaded during the War of 1812. The Brits burned

White House, amongst other things.

[maxsolomon]

3. that's why i said "yes" on that one.

[htuttle]

6. Of course, we started that one when we invaded Canada first

It's just that we got our asses kicked all the way back to Washington, DC.

[Kipling]

7. Oh, it went both ways.

It started with a border disagreement between Canada and the USA. The Brits, who were angry with the Americans to start with for supporting the French, invaded the USA burning and looting. They were then caught off-balance by the USA invading Canada and attacking British trade routes - remembering Napoleon's "offense is defense" advice. Thousands died on both sides. By this time the border thing was more or less sorted, so everyone went home and settled it over a nice cup of red wine and a Sunday lunch. Moral of the story: don't live in the 1810's.

[dhinojosa]

2. what sayeth you about afghanistan? nt

[maxsolomon]

11. i sayeth thusly

i wrote this all out yesterday before the board crapped out:

the taliban harbored al queda. it was appropriate to flush out that viper's nest, but it was NOT "defending freedom", as our attacking our "freedom" was never the objective of 9-11. OBL explicitly stated that (in his fucked up fundy mind) 9-11 was intended to give the american people a taste of the humiliation & terror that we, and our proxies in israel, inflict on the faithful every day. and we completely missed the point.

so ok, root out al queda, that's fine. but since we never declared war on afganistan, it is not a "war", and we laid down with dogs (warlords) to do it.

[htuttle]

4. What do you mean by 'we', kemosabe?

War is a racket.
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

(snip)

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

(snip)

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for 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 benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. 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 districts. I operated on three continents.

Full text of the book, "War is a Racket", by Major General Smedley Butler:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

[bemildred]

5. Yes. It's called "propaganda".

[Sapphire Blue]

8. We'll defend our freedom by getting 'president pre-senile dementia'

... out of the WH & in prison where he belongs... along with the rest of his cabal.

[Bigmack]

9. I've been on the verge...

of ranting all day. I was gonna do a vanity post, but you got to it first.

Every fucking thing I hear on the media sounds like Orwell-speak!

The "War On Terror"... WTF is that about? This is a war against Iraq... a country that didn't do shit to us!

"Defending our Freedom"... WTF does this has to do with Iraq, or Vietnam or the others you mentioned. Our freedom has never been threatened by most of the wars we've been in.

Bush has the fucking balls to publicly read the "last letters" of the young kids his fuckups have killed ... for nothing!

I heard two minutes of Medved today. He's doing a thing about "The Lies Liberals tell about Vietnam". That fucking chickenhawk crapweasel avoided the draft and now he's gonna tell me - somebody who was there - how I'm LYING!

I'm to the point that I hope this country falls on it's ass. This kind of arrogance cannot go on.

[ContraBass Black]

10. I tell myself no such thing.

In a similar and more alarming vein, consider "tactical" nuclear weapons. Politicians might still call them "deterrents," but they are meant to be used.

[maxsolomon]

12. the collective "we"

the american people AS A WHOLE are "we", even if many of those porting here are an exception.

"we" chose bush, sort of, twice.

mundus vult decipi.