I Thank You For Your Service to our Country and our People.

[ConsAreLiars]

I say this to the man and woman who picked up my recycle bin and hauled the contents away for sorting. I say this to the woman who took my film for processing and told me she had taken a second job to make ends meet. I say this to the cop who wrote me a speeding ticket a few years ago (I said thank you to him at that time as well). I say this to the Korean immigrants who run the small store where I get my smokes and beer.

But for the poor troops whose lives are being sacrificed and who have slaughtered a million or so in Iraq and Afghanistan, I can only say I am sorry, but you are not serving the people of the US or the world. I cannot thank you for your service, because you are serving an evil master. I know that was not your intent. I can respect your willingness to serve in the defense of the nation, but you are being used instead to invade and subjugate the people of other countries who have done the people of this country no harm at all. And I know that fact makes your suffering even more intolerable. So I can only say, I am sorry we let this happen to you and those you have hurt. It is not your fault any more or less than mine.

The masters of war now rule our world. The absolutely and literally heartless monsters, the mega-corporations, and their lackeys who do their bidding, will continue to rampage across the planet until we defeat them or they destroy themselves by destroying the very host whose blood they suck. Until their rule is ended, mass murder, mass starvation, mass suffering will be the fate of the great many.

[JeffR]

1. K & R

and thank you.

[ConsAreLiars]

4. Thanks JeffR.

It takes me a few days usually to put my thoughts into a form I consider adequate, excepting of course late night drunken brawls on GD. I get irritated by the knee-jerk "thank you for your service" that gets said with little so regard for the meaning. I know progressives who utter what has become a mindless banality mean something along the line of what I said, but the phrase often implies an endorsement of imperialism, as if the invasions were somehow just.

[JeffR]

5. The phrase has been bled of meaning through rote repetition

A happy circumstance for Bush & Cheney, who are still busy making sure American soldiers continue to die for lies. They and their mouthpieces and their enablers can always trot out their phony "Support the Troops" mantras, even though the last thing in the world they want to do is to get the troops the hell out of a deliberately provoked civil war.

Once and for all, we can honor men and women in uniform by ceasing to use them as pawns in a geopolitical chess game.

And, as you've said eloquently, we must honor the sacrifice of millions who do so much day in and day out to keep this precarious American experiment going, whatever their role. They're heroes, if the concept really means anything anymore.

[Rick Myers]

2. Excellent!!!!

k and r and Happy Thanksgiving!!!

:kick:

[liberalmuse]

3. The way I see it...

it is the responsibility of the American people to make sure our troops never, EVER go to war needlessly. We have failed. We should have started ousting this tyrannical, despotic, treasonous, facist government on December 9, 2000. Instead, Americans have sit back and watched while Bush slaughtered millions in our names, and crapped on The Constitution. I'm not going to blame a select group of Americans who happen to be the ones (other than the people of Iraq and Afghanistan) who have suffered the most. We're all to blame in some way. But you are right. I hate when people say the troops are fighting for my freedom and I should be grateful. I'll fight for my own freedom and would never want another human being to die for me.

[ConsAreLiars]

6. Well said.

Blaming the soldiers for an unjust war is as irrational as supporting the war because the soldiers are in it. The focus has to be on who caused it, and why, and why did we (the people) fail to stop it. It says something about the state of our "democracy."

[The Stranger]

11. I agree up to a point.

I don't think anyone joining this war crime voluntarily can ever be considered blameless in its commission and in the deaths of so many innocents.

Quite the contrary.

[ConsAreLiars]

13. There are always some murderous psychopaths like Lt. Calley and Oliver North,

but the vast majority are just caught in a situation they are not responsible for nor understand accurately. They are mere labor, not management.

[The Stranger]

16. That they are "labor, not management" does not exonerate them from the crime.

It may be a mitigating circumstance, but a war crime is a war crime.

[ConsAreLiars]

17. The war is a crime, but we apparently disagree on who are the criminals.

I regard the troops as cannon fodder, victims. The criminals are the ones who initiated the war of aggression. Nuremberg definitions.

[The Stranger]

20. What would happen if you used the "terrorism" models to determine the troops' relative blame?

Under the "War on Terror" re-writing of criminal law, someone can be held criminally liable for terrorism even if they had no fucking clue what they were doing was somehow going to support what some would call a "terrorist" act.

Then take the troops. Now, understandably, troops train for months, carry guns, shoot small arms as well as numerous types of high-powered ordnance that obliterates the bodies of those with whom it comes in contact, missles, etc. and bomb and shoot civilians sometimes.

Yet the former are blameworthy and the latter are not?

[ConsAreLiars]

21. Of course, both you and I know that that "terrorism model"

is a product of murderous psychopaths and craven cowards. We both reject it. No rational or moral person would adopt that view of culpability.

[The Stranger]

22. I agree, but it is illustrative of such an incredible dissonance, that it really must be addressed.

[mvccd1000]

7. I can't thank those people.

I don't support smoking or drinking, so I can't support thanking the Koreans who run that store.

[ConsAreLiars]

8. Is there a "Missing the point completely" award being offered somewhere?

But thanks for the kick anyway.

[mvccd1000]

9. You're welcome :)

You choose to thank the people who agree with your ideals, and skip the ones who don't.

The rest of us aren't allowed the same freedom?

[ConsAreLiars]

10. Thanksgiving eve kick (nt)

(edit typo)

[Basileus Basileon]

12. If you actually say that to people at convenience stores, you must get

many strange looks through your day.

[ConsAreLiars]

14. Cute, aren't you?

And predictable as well.

[Basileus Basileon]

15. You'd think so.

But yet whenever people say "I bet you believe X," they're almost always wrong.

[WilliamPitt]

18. The troops haven't failed us. We failed them. (w/ edit)

We are in charge of politics and policies, and I say "We" in reference to the American voting public. "We" let this happen to men and women who volunteered because that was their ticket to an education, or a ticket out of poverty, or for all sorts of reasons that don't have anything to do with "serving evil."

And they'll always get my thanks, because they didn't sign up to work for Bush & Co., but they're the ones who got stuck with the tab. The least I can do is say thanks, or else I can at least say nothing. This shit wasn't their idea, and they go to places like Leavenworth for a long time if they don't jump when Sarge says "Frog."

How many of your friends and co-workers died this year? How many died in front of you? How much of their blood and tissue got on you? Did you have to hold them as they wept and screamed and bled out into your lap?

My answer for all of the above, for the record, is none, none, none and no.

So. We agree.

[SharkSquid]

19. A kick

in the nuts and no rec, sorry I cant support you in the same way you cant support me...


:kick: