A laudable essay. I grew up in the shadow of American “militarism” born at the time of the battle Stalingrad just a few miles east of Mannheim on the Rhine river. I witnessed the return of uncles from and other Germans who suffered from PTSD and drowned it in alcoholism. They also believed in the “matchless strength” of the German military at the time. More dramatic for me as a young child and youth was having to take into an already overcrowded house bombed out families and individuals. In addition, most of my classmates from the late forties on had no father. My point is that I know personally the real impact of war. Americas have never faced or experienced anything close to what I saw and can’t forget. This will change when American cities lie in ruins, people are buried in the rubble and the bombed out homeless roam across America. This is a possibility if our politicians and military leaders don’t wake up to the fact that bravery, heroism and matchless strength are empty words in the wake of death and destruction across the country. 2024 is not 1945 when America won (with major help from the Red Army) and emerged as the unrivaled power on earth. That realization has lulled America’s leaders into a state of dangerous hubris. This is particularly ironic since none of the recent presidents served in the military. Talk by these individuals is empty rhetoric devoid of any understanding what a bloody mess was actually is.
Karl, I have a neighbor who was a six year old in Frankfurt as the Allies were doing bombing runs to destroy the Opel factory there. She tells of the flames everywhere, of a flying fortress hitting the ground nearby and running to find shelter with her mother and siblings. She says, "I know what war is" and is incredulous at the way the US is behaving. We have an invincibility complex and have nurtured that in Israel, in that sense being truly peas in a pod. Netanyahu may well be replaced but his mindset is rife in the Knesset. I dread getting into a war with Iran but with a microstate believing itself to be invincible, I fear it is only a matter of time.
My grand aunt was quite old when one of those allied bombings took place in 1944. She was severely wounded, taken to a hospital and a few weeks later my grandmother was informed that she had passed away. My family always suspected that the “old” lady was euthanized. My family was fortunate because we lived in a small town and unlike Frankfurt or Mannheim didn’t have major factories. Unfortunately, Americans don’t realize that times have changed and that they may very well have to experience what my family experienced twice in their lifetime.
But of course now we are in a new chapter of warfare that was opened with the advent of nuclear weapons and ICBM's. If the US is to experience real war, that is, one that hits the homeland, it will be at a level beyond anything experienced to date.
It is all a continuation of what General Smedley Butler called a racket. He described how he was sent all over the world to prop up US corporations in foreign lands, starting over 100 years ago. It was all about money then, and it is still all about money now. US corporations are heavily invested in Israel and in Ukraine, and they want their assets protected. The frantic nature of the talk about Ukraine in particular is because very large investments are at risk. This is all happening because of unregulated capitalism gone wild. If we want to end the endless wars for profit, we need to tame unregulated capitalism.
Good points. Yes, corporations have already struck deals to "rebuild" Ukraine once the war ends. But the war is still profitable, so it continues. Perhaps when returns on destruction start to decline and/or Russian victory is too near, serious negotiations will finally take place.
Not sure that negotiations can even proceed at this point considering how NATO backstabbed Russia on the Minsk accords. The west has not given Russia even one iota of a reason to trust the west's word. We lie and cheat, and Russia has had a belly full of it. If I were Putin, I would not go to the negotiating table until the west begged me and offered massive concessions. But western egos and hubris will not permit that, so the war will continue until Ukraine is beaten thoroughly. At that point, I still don't think the west will agree to honest talks. NATO will again pretend they want to talk while trying to rebuild the Ukrainian army in what is left of western Ukraine. Russia knows this and I am fairly certain they are not going to allow it. We forced Russia into this, they did everything they could to avoid it. Now it is up to Russia to finish it.
"capitalism gone wild" is essentially what capitalism is all about - more profit with no limits - which is running wild, isn't it. We have no idea how to control it and don't even admit it needs to be controlled. Whatever dire straits we are in now, the big collapse awaits down the road.
It ought to be a month of recognition of the trauma, death and destruction caused by our weapons and the damage physically and mentally done to our own soldiers who survive our hypocritical adventurism.
we sure could use a lot more restraint today. Our corageous students protesting the horrific crimes we see daily to the Palestinian people are the adults in the room. In the rooms and chambers of government we see children throwing tantrums of miliraty armaments everywhere.
Am I supposed to begin with May the 4th be with you?
In any event, I did not know about military appreciation month. May is a very difficult month for me to get through. The death of my boy, who yes, was a US Marine, and then later in the month Memorial Day, so, I really just push forward to get to June. My other son is in the Air Force, about to retire at 42, and he says, don't thank me on Memorial Day, I'm still alive. Thank me in November. Xo
The truly amazing thing about "official" appreciation of the American military, Bill, is that this is a military that hasn't won a War in 79 years.
Examining this history, one can very safely begin to suspect ~ and then conclude ~ that the purpose and goal of all these Wars America has inflicted upon the rest of the Planet since the end of World War II has not been to WIN them, but simply to HAVE them.
Thus ensuring adequate returns on investment for the Military~Industrial~Congressional Complex and the Secrecy~Security~Surveillance~Censorship~Propaganda Panopticon.
And while losing the current War [or Wars], the principle task becomes laying the foundation for the next War[s] against somebody else someplace else.
JG, when I was a boy, my buddies and I loved to blow things up just to see how big a hole could be made, how much destruction we could produce. While our military has not won wars it has produced destruction spectacles that bring out that old "oh wow!" feeling we boys enjoyed. Even silly Air Force flyovers produce the feeling...the love of power for its own sake. It's another indication that we are a nation of children in the bodies of adults. Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk are definitely "oh wow!" boys.
It may not have won any wars, as You say, Clif. But it sure has made a significant number of Americans quite comfortable financially. If not rich. And thus quite powerful.
My thought is, we should honor all those who work both in this country (doctors, nurses, volunteers, Red Cross, animal welfare workers, etc.) and abroad (Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen, other aid and animal welfare workers, and so on) who truly contribute to the health and betterment of all.
It was 54 years ago today that four young Americans were killed and nine wounded by American military personnel in a place in Ohio called Kent.
One can only wonder when something similar or worse is going to happen as the college campus protests against the American-Israeli War on Palestine and Palestinians continue. Survivors of that day have the same question, as reported by ABC News...:
TROOPS FIRED ON KENT STATE STUDENTS IN 1970. SURVIVORS SEE ECHOES IN TODAY'S CAMPUS PROTESTS by Patrick Orsagos and Michael Rubinkam / AP 3 May 24
KENT, Ohio -- Dean Kahler flung himself to the ground and covered his head when the bullets started flying. The Ohio National Guard had opened fire on unarmed war protesters at Kent State University, and Kahler, a freshman, was among them.
M1 rifle rounds hit the ground all around him. “And then I got hit,” Kahler recalled, more than 50 years later. “It felt like a bee sting.” But it was far worse than that — a bullet had gone through his lung, shattered three vertebrae and damaged his spinal cord. He was paralyzed.
Four Kent State students were killed and Kahler and eight others were injured when National Guard members fired into a crowd on May 4, 1970, following a tense exchange in which troops used tear gas to break up an anti-war demonstration and protesters hurled rocks at the guardsmen. It was a watershed moment in U.S. history — a violent bookend to the turbulent 1960s — that galvanized campus protests nationwide and forced the temporary shutdown of hundreds of colleges and universities.
Now the shootings at Kent State and their aftermath have taken on fresh relevance, with students demonstrating against another far-off war, college administrators seeking to balance free-speech rights against their imperative to maintain order, and a divided public seeing disturbing images of chaotic confrontations.
Kent State is planning a solemn commemoration Saturday, as it does every May 4, with a gathering at noon on the commons, near where troops killed students Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder in a 13-second volley of rifle and pistol fire.
Kahler, meanwhile, is keenly watching this new generation of college students demand an end to military action, and wondering if colleges are making some of the same mistakes.
“I question whether college administrators and trustees of colleges have learned any lessons from the ’70s,” Kahler said in an interview at his home outside Canton, Ohio. “I think they’re being a little heavy handed, a little over the top."
More than 2,400 people at dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have been arrested in recent weeks as police break up demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war, according to an Associated Press tally. Police in riot gear have dismantled tent encampments, cleared protesters from occupied buildings and made arrests, mostly for refusing orders to disperse, although some have been charged with vandalism, resisting arrest or other offenses.
Things have been much quieter at Kent State, a large public school in northeastern Ohio where officials say they have long strived to promote civil dialogue.
“Largely driven by our history, we’re always and consistently about a couple of things. One is, we embrace freedom of speech," said Todd Diacon, the university's president. “And another thing is, we understand what happens when conversations, attitudes become so polarized that someone that doesn’t agree with you becomes demonized — that that can lead to violence.”
Kent State has leaned into debates about the war in Gaza, inviting students from opposing sides to share perspectives, said Neil Cooper, who directs Kent State’s School of Peace and Conflict Studies.
“There can be a temptation to try and not to talk about these issues because they’re too difficult, too challenging, and, you know, there’s a concern that talking about them will make them worse,” Cooper said. “Our approach has been very different.”
The demonstrations at Kent State have been peaceful, but there's still an undercurrent of tension, and there are both Jewish and Palestinian students who don't feel safe, said Adriana Gasiewski, a junior who has covered them for the school newspaper.
Gasiewski worries about the powder-keg atmosphere at schools like Columbia University, where the current wave of protests originated last month and New York City police have repeatedly clashed with demonstrators. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, has called on the National Guard to be deployed to Columbia, although New York officials have said police can handle the protests. President Joe Biden said Thursday he does not want troops to be deployed to campuses.
“My biggest fear is ... they bring the National Guard to Columbia and that it’s like history repeating itself with May 4," Gasiewski said.
Temple University historian Ralph Young is seeing clear echoes of the Vietnam war protest movement.
“I think they do compare in scale and impact,” said Young, whose books include “American Patriots: A Short History of Dissent.” Just as in the 1960s and '70s, he said, the current crackdowns “only get more and more people angry and I think it’ll just magnify the protests, and spread them further into other campuses.”
The parallels don't end there.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said “outside agitators” are fomenting antisemitic protests. In 1970, Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, who made the decision to send National Guard troops to Kent State, accused external groups of spreading terror, calling them “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”
Students then were furious that President Richard Nixon was bombing Cambodia instead of winding down the war as he had promised. Days before the shootings, demonstrators had clashed violently with police in downtown Kent, and the university's ROTC building was set ablaze.
Then, on May 4, Chic Canfora joined several hundred fellow students on the commons, protesting not only the war but the presence of troops on campus.
Canfora escaped injury. Her brother, Alan Canfora, was shot and wounded. Now a journalism teacher at Kent State, she worries that campus administrators elsewhere are using the “militant actions of a few” to paint all protesters “as violent and worthy of the kind of heat that they want to send in to these situations.”
“I think that all university campuses should get together and figure out how to allow students to be what students have historically been, the conscience of America," Canfora said.
Gregory Payne, an Emerson College scholar and expert on the Kent State shootings, said Vietnam-era protesters certainly worried about getting drafted, but they also took a moral stand, as are today's protesters who see the U.S. as complicit in the disproportionate death toll of Palestinians resulting from Israel's response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“They’re protesting, you know, a war that is atrocious for all sides involved. And I think that they’re attempting to bring attention to it. People can question some of the strategies and tactics. But I think there will be a legacy and there will be a defining characteristic about this era, too,” Payne said. "My hope is that there is not death and bloodshed like we saw in Kent State."
Bill, how did someone of your intelligence and sensitivity manage to spend 20 years of your life on active duty in the military?
I would probably have written the same thing to Smeller Butler if he were living today. He did write a great book and I am sure you have done so as well.
Of course, I'm critical of the U.S. military, but my criticism is part of my continued service to my country, if that makes any sense. Because the military helped to make me who I am. I got to go to JHU and Oxford on military scholarships. I got to teach history for six years at the AF Academy because of a military that I believed was open to self-criticism.
Increasingly, the military is warrior-driven and consumed by greed for more and more power. You either go along with that or you leave. I left about 20 years ago and I can't say that I miss it. I miss old friends, but not the military.
Don't forget that there are vets of the IDF who are vocal in opposition to what the IDF does. The group is called Breaking the Silence. The trick is to find enlightenment while in the service, to question everything even if one does not defy commands. I would call WJA a serviceman in the double sense that he served in the armed forces and he serves us all now.
I guess I preferred to stay out of a situation where I would have to resort to clever tricks in order to survive. I knew enough about service in the imperial army to be unable to avoid moral injury if I had joined. My father was a partially disabled World War II veteran and I had three brothers who “served “ in army, marines, and navy. I just knew too much.
The most interesting finding for me ~ with a thought to “None Of These Candidates” ~ was the response to the question "Who do You trust more to handle the war between Israel and Hamas: Biden, Trump, or Neither?"
And the results were: Trump 37%, Biden 29%, and NEITHER 33% [EMPHASIS added]. For context: In Election2020, 33.3% of all Registered Voters did not vote for anybody to be the next President. And in 2016, 38.6% did not vote for the next POTUS.
"Velly Intellesting," as Charlie Chan used to put it, eh?
It would be interesting to see how Americans think, feel, and believe about America's proxy War with Russia in Ukraine, eh?
Or if they see conflict ~ or even War ~ with China anytime soon. And if they do, who would they like to see in the Oval Office as Commander In Chief when that happens.
As far as I can figure, Dennis, there are three primary Objections to NOTC being a choice on ballots in Election2024.
Objection #2 is, as You asked: "Well~ not that it would or could ever possibly happen - but what happens if 'None Of These Candidates' actually wins an election? Or forces a run-off? Then what?"
And the answer to that question is: Then come up with a brand new slate of candidates and run the election again, with NOTC remaining a choice. Presumably the fact that NOTC either won the election or forced a run-off would [or at least could] send a very loud and clear message to the RPC that their reign of unbridled power ~ at least when it came to this particular federal election ~ is over. At least for now.
ICYI, Objection #1 goes like this:
1. The biggest objection will no doubt come from the Ruling Political Class itself with the denunciation of the effort to the effect that "If You don't like our candidates and the platforms, programs, and promises they are proposing, then do like we did, get organized, find money, and come up with Your own." le, start another Third~ or is it fourth, fifth, or sixth~ Party [sec Objection 3 below].
To which the rest of us can simply respond:
"Look. We all have neither the interest in, nor the time nor inclination for all that simply because we all have much, much more important things to do besides come up with candidates and their platforms. We are all too busy trying to live our lives, pay our bills, plan for our futures, and deal as best we can with the total mess You people and Your politicians and all their non-elected bureaucrats, appointees, advisers, and other experts have made of this nation, its government, its system of governance, its economy, and civil society. We are particularly busy paying our taxes, for which we Citizens are getting an increasingly less and less of a suitable return on our ‘investment' in our governments than ever.
"Plus, it is not our job to come up with suitable candidates and platforms. After all, that's what we have a Ruling Political Class for, isn't it?"
And Objection 3 ~ the weakest Objection ~ goes like this:
A third~ and the weakest~ objection could be from those who would claim that NOTC would undercut efforts by Third Parties to have a real impact in elections, and thus government and governance, by taking support and votes away from them, their candidates, and their agendas.
At this point~ and with very, very few exceptions as far as actually, really impacting the outcome of any election over the past 120 years~ any votes for any and all Third Party Candidates are essentially wasted, other than providing the voter with the personal satisfaction of voting her or his conscience, and of, somehow, "sending a message." That is a principal reason that the PRC would be so quick to recommend it, as noted in Objection I above.
And in present day America, no Third Party built on any particular ideology and focused on any specific issues, by itself, is in a position to have any effective impact whatsoever on any election whatsoever, let alone on how the government is run after the election.
If, on the other hand, NOTC was a choice on all ballots; and if all Third Party voters would add their vote to all those Americans who reject both of the major party's candidates by voting NOTC; and if the RPC had to then go back to the drawing board for another election with different candidates and a different set of promises: If all that happened, Third Partiers would have a much bigger say in how things are run in this country than they do now, or have ever had in the past.
.......
Does that answer Your question about NOTC becoming POTUS, Dennis?
Also, who exactly are “us proletarians”? i’m curious as to how You define that term.
Dennis: You were the one who asked the question, "What would happen if NOTC got elected POTUS?"
And if i can get as many people to believe and act upon my "chimera" ~ as You call it ~ as Karl Marx got on his, some very interesting things could and would happen.
It is November, 1969. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese and thousands of Americans are killed. Among the Americans is a young helicopter pilot from Van Nuys, California. His name is Larry. He leaves behind a widow bride, and two elderly parents paralyzed with grief... .
One Saturday nite, walking over the howling, bitter, driven, wind-swept empty nite cobblestones ~ a church pealing haunting tributes to nites more silent and rocks more permanent ~ I am struck with the metaphor that my living speaks with such stinging and affective allusion to my life. My friend Larry is dead. ~ Nite of Notification, December, 1969
At the funeral in the following January -- four months and a day before four more Americans were to be killed in a place called Kent, Ohio -- in a massive, solemnly packed Russian Orthodox cathedral ablaze with emblems of patriotic fealty and fervor, many words are spoken. Among those words are these by a young soldier, the only enlisted man in the church. He was a door gunner who’d flown with Larry down in the Mekong Delta back in 1967-68. They’d survived Tet together. And more. Lots more. Too much more….. :
EULOGY
It is difficult, my friends. Very difficult. I know none of you, yet I call you my friends. Thank you for being here, for sharing this, for enabling me to bear it. After two years of this war, I have finally lost someone I love. Buddies? There’s been plenty. Never, until now, someone I love.
It is said that tragedy is the fire that tempers the soul. I can only hope that my soul, and my heart, and my mind, and my life is tempered and forged from this nightmare into a design of dedication NOT to the forces and elements that killed him -- rage, hate, lust for violent revenge, a mindless, headlong flight into, through, and finally submerged by insanity.
Not to that, but to the ideals and principles that should have been the forces and elements at work that could have kept him, you, me, us all nowhere near Vietnam, or Biafra, or Suez, or Korea, or Normandy, or Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, and on and on back thru the ages and the Battlefields, back to the beginnings of Time, the beginnings of Man, the beginnings of War.
The ideals, principles, forces and elements of understanding, concern, love, peace, and the knowledge of our status as but “the family of Man, fellow-passengers on the Spaceship Earth…. .” And how empty and vapid these words sound and are tonite. But a man’s words are really nothing more than indicators, the elements of the metaphor that his living is, as it seeks to explain to him, and to us, his life.
Perhaps these moments of futility, emptiness, and tragedy are the price we must pay for having had the privilege of his company, the strength of his presence, the happiness of his warmth and joy, the security of his being. We have all lost something. A friend, a husband, a son. But there is a greater loser, a more tragic victim from all this than we, his wife, his parents, his family, and his friends. And that victim, my friends, is the World.
It is this World…this World that murdered him, that is the big loser.
The terms I think it might understand are that he is no longer at its disposal; that he is free and no longer subject to the prices that the world and mankind demand from its children as they attempt to struggle as individual human beings, with individual lives and loves, concerns cares, projects, goals, and plans, and wins, losses, and rainouts.
The world requires that you be more than a man or a woman -- which, until death, is impossible. It requires that citizens of nations become us all. Citizens of nations, and pawns to realities revolving around such grandiose, eloquent, pompous terms, tenets, and ideas as ideology and power, and economics and politics, and treaties and diplomacy, and on and on ad nauseam…: the vocabulary of Government.
And much more real, final, and meaningless terms as enemy and bodycounts, and hot LZ’s and .50-caliber machine gun positions, and frozen rotor blades at 300 feet, and notification of next-of-kin….: the vocabulary of the logical conclusion of the rhetoric of Government, the vocabulary of War.
The world required this of him, and he agreed to pay his portion of the price. Tonite, however, the world’s account is overdrawn. Tonite, there is the matter of revenge. No, not revenge. Avenge. Avengeance. aVengeance… revenge without vengeance or violence.
Is it to be directed against those people and places and principles that killed him? Against other young – and old -- men and women from other nations who, too, are but paying their price as their world -- our world, this world -- demands? They are but pawns as we. And as long as pawns keep fighting -- and paying for -- all these wars, there will be war.
What, then of the kings and queens and bishops and rooks and generals and knights and such? They, too, are but pawns. Their bloodshed is not their own; rather, it is of those that they like to call “their Peoples’.” These, too, however, are paying a price: the price of being those most directly associated with the true killers -- the ideas, and terms, and tenets, and vocabularies. And, having to live with them, by them, and for them, they thus become the emptiness, the insanity, the impotence, the wretchedness that these words are.
No. It is neither the pawns nor the princes -- the presidents, premiers, and propagandists -- that are to be sought out and made to give retribution for Larry. It’s not the people who are directly, and thus apparently responsible for his having been there, and thus being no more.
Rather, it is those who are truly, though indirectly responsible. It is those that could have stopped it, could have prevented this spectre from becoming the spectacle that it is.
It is, indeed, those who permit the world to make them pawns and slaves, and legions to, of, by, and for these ideas and words. Those who permit themselves to go and become but the bit-players in this passion play, the finale of which is the death of their brothers, their sisters, their selves.
A death as meaningless, as senseless, and as empty as their lives. Lives spent under the tyranny of ideas, killing and thus dying under their effect. Lives lived under the anarchy of this self-imposed despotism, rather than in and through the fulfillment that is to be found in the truth, the beauty, the reality of the mind’s products -- ideas -- as they are used instead to eliminate the trials, tragedies, and traumas of man, rather than, as today, propagating, perpetrating, and perpetuating them.
HUMANITY is the object. HUMANITY and LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth. We live now in the insanity of man being the vehicle, and terms, tenets, vocabularies, ideologies, and ideas being the object. The object that man has permitted to become, at not only his expense and thus life’s, but at the world’s, as well.
The guilty, my friends, is you and me and him and her and everyone. Each and every one of us all. Including Larry. And we begin, now, to pay the price for this. We have lost someone for whom Man and Life was the object.
Larry, as the rest of us, the young, was at but the beginning of this realization, at the beginning of this work. Because those of us that could have helped, long ago, to prevent what has happened did not, we are paying the price. The question, again, is “How?”
If, in fact, a man is ready to die when he knows himself completely, I am at last ready. With this experience, with these words, I have come now to know and to understand the meaninglessness of the meaning I have permitted the world to attach to my, to your, to Larry’s, to everyone’s being.
And knowing this, I swear… No more.
aVengeance will be mine. I pray, my friends, yours as well. The question, at last, is “How?” This we will learn. With help….. .
Your memory serves You correctly, Dennis; I have posted this to BV before.
And i’m glad You found it distressing reading. That was its purpose and intent when it was written and delivered as a Eulogy at that military funeral 54 years ago. And if You were lucky to have never been called to be killed for Your country, You are even luckier to have never been called to KILL FOR YOUR COUNTRY.
And no need to apologize, Dennis; and no, it’s not an “emotional and tough question” for me at all. And yes, we’ve had this discussion before. It’s on BV someplace, but I don’t have time to hunt it down.
But as i said then, i had then ~ and have now ~ No Problem At All with those who risked the end of their lives as American Citizens by becoming Outlaws by refusing to fight in an UnConstitutional and thus illegal and totally immoral War, and said Fuck This, and headed North. As far as I’m concerned, that took a great deal of conviction and courage.
The people i have problems with are those who did whatever they could to avoid being drafted NOT because they objected to the War; but because they ~ as Dick Cheney put it then ~ “have more important things to do.”
i particularly object to those who got extended, endless deferments from military service for various “legitimate” reasons ~ educational, medical, etc ~ who have, since then have been, and are now placed in positions of ultimate authority over the Armed Forces of the United States as the President of The United States. As in Clinton, Cheney, Obama, Trump, and Biden. And Bush the Lesser if You include getting into the Texas Air National Guard courtesy Daddy Bush when nobody else could. And i also object to anybody up at the other end Pennsylvania Avenue in the US Congress who also avoided military service during Vietnam by questionable deferment.
And, in the first place, Dennis: i didn’t have to make that decision about going to Canada then. At that time when I enlisted in December 1965, i enlisted with the specific purpose of going to Vietnam because ~ at that time ~ i thought that what America was doing there was good, right, moral, and just; and wanted to be part of it. And, at age 77, I’m not going to have to make any decisions about any kind of military service.
And if i had a Son, and the US had reinstituted the Draft, i would hope that he would be on the front lines FIGHTING against that Draft, and that i would be right there with him. Whether it’s to put boots on the ground in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, or East Asia and the South China Sea, or America’s Southern Border, or anyplace else..
And i’m not sure what sleeping dogs are lying and where, or what the “situation” is that could be “interfered with” by waking them. Perhaps You can explain.
And finally, to be perfectly honest, Dennis: i have enough problems keeping up with and sorting out all the Bullshit Trump and his Team and Biden and his Team are putting out without worrying about the Bullshit Galloway is putting out. i will get interested in him when he is able to make England stop supporting Ukraine, Israel, and anybody else it is supporting in lockstep with what America instructs it to do.
And how old is Galloway? My guess is that he couldn’t fight anybody for anything at this stage; making his claim that he wouldn’t fight for the current PM rather meaningless, doesn’t it? What’s he say about fighting for The King? Anything?
In any event, America ~ and the entire Planet ~ needs less people like Galloway, Trump, and Biden, and the rest of their species. A LOT less.
A laudable essay. I grew up in the shadow of American “militarism” born at the time of the battle Stalingrad just a few miles east of Mannheim on the Rhine river. I witnessed the return of uncles from and other Germans who suffered from PTSD and drowned it in alcoholism. They also believed in the “matchless strength” of the German military at the time. More dramatic for me as a young child and youth was having to take into an already overcrowded house bombed out families and individuals. In addition, most of my classmates from the late forties on had no father. My point is that I know personally the real impact of war. Americas have never faced or experienced anything close to what I saw and can’t forget. This will change when American cities lie in ruins, people are buried in the rubble and the bombed out homeless roam across America. This is a possibility if our politicians and military leaders don’t wake up to the fact that bravery, heroism and matchless strength are empty words in the wake of death and destruction across the country. 2024 is not 1945 when America won (with major help from the Red Army) and emerged as the unrivaled power on earth. That realization has lulled America’s leaders into a state of dangerous hubris. This is particularly ironic since none of the recent presidents served in the military. Talk by these individuals is empty rhetoric devoid of any understanding what a bloody mess was actually is.
Karl, I have a neighbor who was a six year old in Frankfurt as the Allies were doing bombing runs to destroy the Opel factory there. She tells of the flames everywhere, of a flying fortress hitting the ground nearby and running to find shelter with her mother and siblings. She says, "I know what war is" and is incredulous at the way the US is behaving. We have an invincibility complex and have nurtured that in Israel, in that sense being truly peas in a pod. Netanyahu may well be replaced but his mindset is rife in the Knesset. I dread getting into a war with Iran but with a microstate believing itself to be invincible, I fear it is only a matter of time.
My grand aunt was quite old when one of those allied bombings took place in 1944. She was severely wounded, taken to a hospital and a few weeks later my grandmother was informed that she had passed away. My family always suspected that the “old” lady was euthanized. My family was fortunate because we lived in a small town and unlike Frankfurt or Mannheim didn’t have major factories. Unfortunately, Americans don’t realize that times have changed and that they may very well have to experience what my family experienced twice in their lifetime.
But of course now we are in a new chapter of warfare that was opened with the advent of nuclear weapons and ICBM's. If the US is to experience real war, that is, one that hits the homeland, it will be at a level beyond anything experienced to date.
And don't forget BioWarfare weapons, eg: The COVID Event.
It is all a continuation of what General Smedley Butler called a racket. He described how he was sent all over the world to prop up US corporations in foreign lands, starting over 100 years ago. It was all about money then, and it is still all about money now. US corporations are heavily invested in Israel and in Ukraine, and they want their assets protected. The frantic nature of the talk about Ukraine in particular is because very large investments are at risk. This is all happening because of unregulated capitalism gone wild. If we want to end the endless wars for profit, we need to tame unregulated capitalism.
Good points. Yes, corporations have already struck deals to "rebuild" Ukraine once the war ends. But the war is still profitable, so it continues. Perhaps when returns on destruction start to decline and/or Russian victory is too near, serious negotiations will finally take place.
Not sure that negotiations can even proceed at this point considering how NATO backstabbed Russia on the Minsk accords. The west has not given Russia even one iota of a reason to trust the west's word. We lie and cheat, and Russia has had a belly full of it. If I were Putin, I would not go to the negotiating table until the west begged me and offered massive concessions. But western egos and hubris will not permit that, so the war will continue until Ukraine is beaten thoroughly. At that point, I still don't think the west will agree to honest talks. NATO will again pretend they want to talk while trying to rebuild the Ukrainian army in what is left of western Ukraine. Russia knows this and I am fairly certain they are not going to allow it. We forced Russia into this, they did everything they could to avoid it. Now it is up to Russia to finish it.
"capitalism gone wild" is essentially what capitalism is all about - more profit with no limits - which is running wild, isn't it. We have no idea how to control it and don't even admit it needs to be controlled. Whatever dire straits we are in now, the big collapse awaits down the road.
I deeply appreciate your persistent opposition to perpetual war, Bill.
It ought to be a month of recognition of the trauma, death and destruction caused by our weapons and the damage physically and mentally done to our own soldiers who survive our hypocritical adventurism.
Yes, you were! Jingoism was so alive and well where I used to live, I just had to grin and bear it.
we sure could use a lot more restraint today. Our corageous students protesting the horrific crimes we see daily to the Palestinian people are the adults in the room. In the rooms and chambers of government we see children throwing tantrums of miliraty armaments everywhere.
People Planet Peace Please
Am I supposed to begin with May the 4th be with you?
In any event, I did not know about military appreciation month. May is a very difficult month for me to get through. The death of my boy, who yes, was a US Marine, and then later in the month Memorial Day, so, I really just push forward to get to June. My other son is in the Air Force, about to retire at 42, and he says, don't thank me on Memorial Day, I'm still alive. Thank me in November. Xo
The truly amazing thing about "official" appreciation of the American military, Bill, is that this is a military that hasn't won a War in 79 years.
Examining this history, one can very safely begin to suspect ~ and then conclude ~ that the purpose and goal of all these Wars America has inflicted upon the rest of the Planet since the end of World War II has not been to WIN them, but simply to HAVE them.
Thus ensuring adequate returns on investment for the Military~Industrial~Congressional Complex and the Secrecy~Security~Surveillance~Censorship~Propaganda Panopticon.
And while losing the current War [or Wars], the principle task becomes laying the foundation for the next War[s] against somebody else someplace else.
They say a perpetual motion machine is impossible, Jeff. But we've managed to create a perpetual destruction machine. How about that?
JG, when I was a boy, my buddies and I loved to blow things up just to see how big a hole could be made, how much destruction we could produce. While our military has not won wars it has produced destruction spectacles that bring out that old "oh wow!" feeling we boys enjoyed. Even silly Air Force flyovers produce the feeling...the love of power for its own sake. It's another indication that we are a nation of children in the bodies of adults. Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk are definitely "oh wow!" boys.
It may not have won any wars, as You say, Clif. But it sure has made a significant number of Americans quite comfortable financially. If not rich. And thus quite powerful.
Truer words have never been spoken
My thought is, we should honor all those who work both in this country (doctors, nurses, volunteers, Red Cross, animal welfare workers, etc.) and abroad (Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen, other aid and animal welfare workers, and so on) who truly contribute to the health and betterment of all.
Happy May 4 Massacre Day, BV.
It was 54 years ago today that four young Americans were killed and nine wounded by American military personnel in a place in Ohio called Kent.
One can only wonder when something similar or worse is going to happen as the college campus protests against the American-Israeli War on Palestine and Palestinians continue. Survivors of that day have the same question, as reported by ABC News...:
TROOPS FIRED ON KENT STATE STUDENTS IN 1970. SURVIVORS SEE ECHOES IN TODAY'S CAMPUS PROTESTS by Patrick Orsagos and Michael Rubinkam / AP 3 May 24
KENT, Ohio -- Dean Kahler flung himself to the ground and covered his head when the bullets started flying. The Ohio National Guard had opened fire on unarmed war protesters at Kent State University, and Kahler, a freshman, was among them.
M1 rifle rounds hit the ground all around him. “And then I got hit,” Kahler recalled, more than 50 years later. “It felt like a bee sting.” But it was far worse than that — a bullet had gone through his lung, shattered three vertebrae and damaged his spinal cord. He was paralyzed.
Four Kent State students were killed and Kahler and eight others were injured when National Guard members fired into a crowd on May 4, 1970, following a tense exchange in which troops used tear gas to break up an anti-war demonstration and protesters hurled rocks at the guardsmen. It was a watershed moment in U.S. history — a violent bookend to the turbulent 1960s — that galvanized campus protests nationwide and forced the temporary shutdown of hundreds of colleges and universities.
Now the shootings at Kent State and their aftermath have taken on fresh relevance, with students demonstrating against another far-off war, college administrators seeking to balance free-speech rights against their imperative to maintain order, and a divided public seeing disturbing images of chaotic confrontations.
Kent State is planning a solemn commemoration Saturday, as it does every May 4, with a gathering at noon on the commons, near where troops killed students Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder in a 13-second volley of rifle and pistol fire.
Kahler, meanwhile, is keenly watching this new generation of college students demand an end to military action, and wondering if colleges are making some of the same mistakes.
“I question whether college administrators and trustees of colleges have learned any lessons from the ’70s,” Kahler said in an interview at his home outside Canton, Ohio. “I think they’re being a little heavy handed, a little over the top."
More than 2,400 people at dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have been arrested in recent weeks as police break up demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war, according to an Associated Press tally. Police in riot gear have dismantled tent encampments, cleared protesters from occupied buildings and made arrests, mostly for refusing orders to disperse, although some have been charged with vandalism, resisting arrest or other offenses.
Things have been much quieter at Kent State, a large public school in northeastern Ohio where officials say they have long strived to promote civil dialogue.
“Largely driven by our history, we’re always and consistently about a couple of things. One is, we embrace freedom of speech," said Todd Diacon, the university's president. “And another thing is, we understand what happens when conversations, attitudes become so polarized that someone that doesn’t agree with you becomes demonized — that that can lead to violence.”
Kent State has leaned into debates about the war in Gaza, inviting students from opposing sides to share perspectives, said Neil Cooper, who directs Kent State’s School of Peace and Conflict Studies.
“There can be a temptation to try and not to talk about these issues because they’re too difficult, too challenging, and, you know, there’s a concern that talking about them will make them worse,” Cooper said. “Our approach has been very different.”
The demonstrations at Kent State have been peaceful, but there's still an undercurrent of tension, and there are both Jewish and Palestinian students who don't feel safe, said Adriana Gasiewski, a junior who has covered them for the school newspaper.
Gasiewski worries about the powder-keg atmosphere at schools like Columbia University, where the current wave of protests originated last month and New York City police have repeatedly clashed with demonstrators. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, has called on the National Guard to be deployed to Columbia, although New York officials have said police can handle the protests. President Joe Biden said Thursday he does not want troops to be deployed to campuses.
“My biggest fear is ... they bring the National Guard to Columbia and that it’s like history repeating itself with May 4," Gasiewski said.
Temple University historian Ralph Young is seeing clear echoes of the Vietnam war protest movement.
“I think they do compare in scale and impact,” said Young, whose books include “American Patriots: A Short History of Dissent.” Just as in the 1960s and '70s, he said, the current crackdowns “only get more and more people angry and I think it’ll just magnify the protests, and spread them further into other campuses.”
The parallels don't end there.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said “outside agitators” are fomenting antisemitic protests. In 1970, Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, who made the decision to send National Guard troops to Kent State, accused external groups of spreading terror, calling them “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”
Students then were furious that President Richard Nixon was bombing Cambodia instead of winding down the war as he had promised. Days before the shootings, demonstrators had clashed violently with police in downtown Kent, and the university's ROTC building was set ablaze.
Then, on May 4, Chic Canfora joined several hundred fellow students on the commons, protesting not only the war but the presence of troops on campus.
Canfora escaped injury. Her brother, Alan Canfora, was shot and wounded. Now a journalism teacher at Kent State, she worries that campus administrators elsewhere are using the “militant actions of a few” to paint all protesters “as violent and worthy of the kind of heat that they want to send in to these situations.”
“I think that all university campuses should get together and figure out how to allow students to be what students have historically been, the conscience of America," Canfora said.
Gregory Payne, an Emerson College scholar and expert on the Kent State shootings, said Vietnam-era protesters certainly worried about getting drafted, but they also took a moral stand, as are today's protesters who see the U.S. as complicit in the disproportionate death toll of Palestinians resulting from Israel's response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“They’re protesting, you know, a war that is atrocious for all sides involved. And I think that they’re attempting to bring attention to it. People can question some of the strategies and tactics. But I think there will be a legacy and there will be a defining characteristic about this era, too,” Payne said. "My hope is that there is not death and bloodshed like we saw in Kent State."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/troops-fired-kent-state-students-1970-survivors-echoes-109913917 .
Memorial Day remembers America’s War Dead.
Unless and Until we remember that there are other War Dead
(both military and, increasingly, civilian and non-combatant) besides just American,
there will be new American War Dead to be remembered
with every new Memorial Day.
And more non-American War Dead to be forgotten.
Bill, how did someone of your intelligence and sensitivity manage to spend 20 years of your life on active duty in the military?
I would probably have written the same thing to Smeller Butler if he were living today. He did write a great book and I am sure you have done so as well.
Of course, I'm critical of the U.S. military, but my criticism is part of my continued service to my country, if that makes any sense. Because the military helped to make me who I am. I got to go to JHU and Oxford on military scholarships. I got to teach history for six years at the AF Academy because of a military that I believed was open to self-criticism.
Increasingly, the military is warrior-driven and consumed by greed for more and more power. You either go along with that or you leave. I left about 20 years ago and I can't say that I miss it. I miss old friends, but not the military.
You wrote "my criticism is part of my continued service to my country, if that makes any sense."
That makes perfect sense, Bill. Thank You for expressing it so clearly, concisely, and forcefully.
Don't forget that there are vets of the IDF who are vocal in opposition to what the IDF does. The group is called Breaking the Silence. The trick is to find enlightenment while in the service, to question everything even if one does not defy commands. I would call WJA a serviceman in the double sense that he served in the armed forces and he serves us all now.
I guess I preferred to stay out of a situation where I would have to resort to clever tricks in order to survive. I knew enough about service in the imperial army to be unable to avoid moral injury if I had joined. My father was a partially disabled World War II veteran and I had three brothers who “served “ in army, marines, and navy. I just knew too much.
I apologize for a few mistake due to bad eyesight and old fingers.
EXACTLY, Bill; well said. From a Regular Army Vet (RA) served 1961 - 1964.
It appears that Americans are quite divided on their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the Israel-Hamas War.
Here are the results of an ABC News Ipsos poll conducted 25-30 April: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-views-divided-us-policy-israel-hamas-war/story?id=109879453 .
The most interesting finding for me ~ with a thought to “None Of These Candidates” ~ was the response to the question "Who do You trust more to handle the war between Israel and Hamas: Biden, Trump, or Neither?"
And the results were: Trump 37%, Biden 29%, and NEITHER 33% [EMPHASIS added]. For context: In Election2020, 33.3% of all Registered Voters did not vote for anybody to be the next President. And in 2016, 38.6% did not vote for the next POTUS.
"Velly Intellesting," as Charlie Chan used to put it, eh?
It would be interesting to see how Americans think, feel, and believe about America's proxy War with Russia in Ukraine, eh?
Or if they see conflict ~ or even War ~ with China anytime soon. And if they do, who would they like to see in the Oval Office as Commander In Chief when that happens.
As far as I can figure, Dennis, there are three primary Objections to NOTC being a choice on ballots in Election2024.
Objection #2 is, as You asked: "Well~ not that it would or could ever possibly happen - but what happens if 'None Of These Candidates' actually wins an election? Or forces a run-off? Then what?"
And the answer to that question is: Then come up with a brand new slate of candidates and run the election again, with NOTC remaining a choice. Presumably the fact that NOTC either won the election or forced a run-off would [or at least could] send a very loud and clear message to the RPC that their reign of unbridled power ~ at least when it came to this particular federal election ~ is over. At least for now.
ICYI, Objection #1 goes like this:
1. The biggest objection will no doubt come from the Ruling Political Class itself with the denunciation of the effort to the effect that "If You don't like our candidates and the platforms, programs, and promises they are proposing, then do like we did, get organized, find money, and come up with Your own." le, start another Third~ or is it fourth, fifth, or sixth~ Party [sec Objection 3 below].
To which the rest of us can simply respond:
"Look. We all have neither the interest in, nor the time nor inclination for all that simply because we all have much, much more important things to do besides come up with candidates and their platforms. We are all too busy trying to live our lives, pay our bills, plan for our futures, and deal as best we can with the total mess You people and Your politicians and all their non-elected bureaucrats, appointees, advisers, and other experts have made of this nation, its government, its system of governance, its economy, and civil society. We are particularly busy paying our taxes, for which we Citizens are getting an increasingly less and less of a suitable return on our ‘investment' in our governments than ever.
"Plus, it is not our job to come up with suitable candidates and platforms. After all, that's what we have a Ruling Political Class for, isn't it?"
And Objection 3 ~ the weakest Objection ~ goes like this:
A third~ and the weakest~ objection could be from those who would claim that NOTC would undercut efforts by Third Parties to have a real impact in elections, and thus government and governance, by taking support and votes away from them, their candidates, and their agendas.
At this point~ and with very, very few exceptions as far as actually, really impacting the outcome of any election over the past 120 years~ any votes for any and all Third Party Candidates are essentially wasted, other than providing the voter with the personal satisfaction of voting her or his conscience, and of, somehow, "sending a message." That is a principal reason that the PRC would be so quick to recommend it, as noted in Objection I above.
And in present day America, no Third Party built on any particular ideology and focused on any specific issues, by itself, is in a position to have any effective impact whatsoever on any election whatsoever, let alone on how the government is run after the election.
If, on the other hand, NOTC was a choice on all ballots; and if all Third Party voters would add their vote to all those Americans who reject both of the major party's candidates by voting NOTC; and if the RPC had to then go back to the drawing board for another election with different candidates and a different set of promises: If all that happened, Third Partiers would have a much bigger say in how things are run in this country than they do now, or have ever had in the past.
.......
Does that answer Your question about NOTC becoming POTUS, Dennis?
Also, who exactly are “us proletarians”? i’m curious as to how You define that term.
Under this system, I'm changing my name to NOTC.
:-)
Dennis: You were the one who asked the question, "What would happen if NOTC got elected POTUS?"
And if i can get as many people to believe and act upon my "chimera" ~ as You call it ~ as Karl Marx got on his, some very interesting things could and would happen.
Is that what they call Marx and his Theories about Economic Truths?
It is November, 1969. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese and thousands of Americans are killed. Among the Americans is a young helicopter pilot from Van Nuys, California. His name is Larry. He leaves behind a widow bride, and two elderly parents paralyzed with grief... .
One Saturday nite, walking over the howling, bitter, driven, wind-swept empty nite cobblestones ~ a church pealing haunting tributes to nites more silent and rocks more permanent ~ I am struck with the metaphor that my living speaks with such stinging and affective allusion to my life. My friend Larry is dead. ~ Nite of Notification, December, 1969
At the funeral in the following January -- four months and a day before four more Americans were to be killed in a place called Kent, Ohio -- in a massive, solemnly packed Russian Orthodox cathedral ablaze with emblems of patriotic fealty and fervor, many words are spoken. Among those words are these by a young soldier, the only enlisted man in the church. He was a door gunner who’d flown with Larry down in the Mekong Delta back in 1967-68. They’d survived Tet together. And more. Lots more. Too much more….. :
EULOGY
It is difficult, my friends. Very difficult. I know none of you, yet I call you my friends. Thank you for being here, for sharing this, for enabling me to bear it. After two years of this war, I have finally lost someone I love. Buddies? There’s been plenty. Never, until now, someone I love.
It is said that tragedy is the fire that tempers the soul. I can only hope that my soul, and my heart, and my mind, and my life is tempered and forged from this nightmare into a design of dedication NOT to the forces and elements that killed him -- rage, hate, lust for violent revenge, a mindless, headlong flight into, through, and finally submerged by insanity.
Not to that, but to the ideals and principles that should have been the forces and elements at work that could have kept him, you, me, us all nowhere near Vietnam, or Biafra, or Suez, or Korea, or Normandy, or Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, and on and on back thru the ages and the Battlefields, back to the beginnings of Time, the beginnings of Man, the beginnings of War.
The ideals, principles, forces and elements of understanding, concern, love, peace, and the knowledge of our status as but “the family of Man, fellow-passengers on the Spaceship Earth…. .” And how empty and vapid these words sound and are tonite. But a man’s words are really nothing more than indicators, the elements of the metaphor that his living is, as it seeks to explain to him, and to us, his life.
Perhaps these moments of futility, emptiness, and tragedy are the price we must pay for having had the privilege of his company, the strength of his presence, the happiness of his warmth and joy, the security of his being. We have all lost something. A friend, a husband, a son. But there is a greater loser, a more tragic victim from all this than we, his wife, his parents, his family, and his friends. And that victim, my friends, is the World.
It is this World…this World that murdered him, that is the big loser.
The terms I think it might understand are that he is no longer at its disposal; that he is free and no longer subject to the prices that the world and mankind demand from its children as they attempt to struggle as individual human beings, with individual lives and loves, concerns cares, projects, goals, and plans, and wins, losses, and rainouts.
The world requires that you be more than a man or a woman -- which, until death, is impossible. It requires that citizens of nations become us all. Citizens of nations, and pawns to realities revolving around such grandiose, eloquent, pompous terms, tenets, and ideas as ideology and power, and economics and politics, and treaties and diplomacy, and on and on ad nauseam…: the vocabulary of Government.
And much more real, final, and meaningless terms as enemy and bodycounts, and hot LZ’s and .50-caliber machine gun positions, and frozen rotor blades at 300 feet, and notification of next-of-kin….: the vocabulary of the logical conclusion of the rhetoric of Government, the vocabulary of War.
The world required this of him, and he agreed to pay his portion of the price. Tonite, however, the world’s account is overdrawn. Tonite, there is the matter of revenge. No, not revenge. Avenge. Avengeance. aVengeance… revenge without vengeance or violence.
But against whom does one direct it? And how?
Is it to be directed against those people and places and principles that killed him? Against other young – and old -- men and women from other nations who, too, are but paying their price as their world -- our world, this world -- demands? They are but pawns as we. And as long as pawns keep fighting -- and paying for -- all these wars, there will be war.
What, then of the kings and queens and bishops and rooks and generals and knights and such? They, too, are but pawns. Their bloodshed is not their own; rather, it is of those that they like to call “their Peoples’.” These, too, however, are paying a price: the price of being those most directly associated with the true killers -- the ideas, and terms, and tenets, and vocabularies. And, having to live with them, by them, and for them, they thus become the emptiness, the insanity, the impotence, the wretchedness that these words are.
No. It is neither the pawns nor the princes -- the presidents, premiers, and propagandists -- that are to be sought out and made to give retribution for Larry. It’s not the people who are directly, and thus apparently responsible for his having been there, and thus being no more.
Rather, it is those who are truly, though indirectly responsible. It is those that could have stopped it, could have prevented this spectre from becoming the spectacle that it is.
It is, indeed, those who permit the world to make them pawns and slaves, and legions to, of, by, and for these ideas and words. Those who permit themselves to go and become but the bit-players in this passion play, the finale of which is the death of their brothers, their sisters, their selves.
A death as meaningless, as senseless, and as empty as their lives. Lives spent under the tyranny of ideas, killing and thus dying under their effect. Lives lived under the anarchy of this self-imposed despotism, rather than in and through the fulfillment that is to be found in the truth, the beauty, the reality of the mind’s products -- ideas -- as they are used instead to eliminate the trials, tragedies, and traumas of man, rather than, as today, propagating, perpetrating, and perpetuating them.
HUMANITY is the object. HUMANITY and LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth. We live now in the insanity of man being the vehicle, and terms, tenets, vocabularies, ideologies, and ideas being the object. The object that man has permitted to become, at not only his expense and thus life’s, but at the world’s, as well.
The guilty, my friends, is you and me and him and her and everyone. Each and every one of us all. Including Larry. And we begin, now, to pay the price for this. We have lost someone for whom Man and Life was the object.
Larry, as the rest of us, the young, was at but the beginning of this realization, at the beginning of this work. Because those of us that could have helped, long ago, to prevent what has happened did not, we are paying the price. The question, again, is “How?”
If, in fact, a man is ready to die when he knows himself completely, I am at last ready. With this experience, with these words, I have come now to know and to understand the meaninglessness of the meaning I have permitted the world to attach to my, to your, to Larry’s, to everyone’s being.
And knowing this, I swear… No more.
aVengeance will be mine. I pray, my friends, yours as well. The question, at last, is “How?” This we will learn. With help….. .
Your memory serves You correctly, Dennis; I have posted this to BV before.
And i’m glad You found it distressing reading. That was its purpose and intent when it was written and delivered as a Eulogy at that military funeral 54 years ago. And if You were lucky to have never been called to be killed for Your country, You are even luckier to have never been called to KILL FOR YOUR COUNTRY.
And no need to apologize, Dennis; and no, it’s not an “emotional and tough question” for me at all. And yes, we’ve had this discussion before. It’s on BV someplace, but I don’t have time to hunt it down.
But as i said then, i had then ~ and have now ~ No Problem At All with those who risked the end of their lives as American Citizens by becoming Outlaws by refusing to fight in an UnConstitutional and thus illegal and totally immoral War, and said Fuck This, and headed North. As far as I’m concerned, that took a great deal of conviction and courage.
The people i have problems with are those who did whatever they could to avoid being drafted NOT because they objected to the War; but because they ~ as Dick Cheney put it then ~ “have more important things to do.”
i particularly object to those who got extended, endless deferments from military service for various “legitimate” reasons ~ educational, medical, etc ~ who have, since then have been, and are now placed in positions of ultimate authority over the Armed Forces of the United States as the President of The United States. As in Clinton, Cheney, Obama, Trump, and Biden. And Bush the Lesser if You include getting into the Texas Air National Guard courtesy Daddy Bush when nobody else could. And i also object to anybody up at the other end Pennsylvania Avenue in the US Congress who also avoided military service during Vietnam by questionable deferment.
And, in the first place, Dennis: i didn’t have to make that decision about going to Canada then. At that time when I enlisted in December 1965, i enlisted with the specific purpose of going to Vietnam because ~ at that time ~ i thought that what America was doing there was good, right, moral, and just; and wanted to be part of it. And, at age 77, I’m not going to have to make any decisions about any kind of military service.
And if i had a Son, and the US had reinstituted the Draft, i would hope that he would be on the front lines FIGHTING against that Draft, and that i would be right there with him. Whether it’s to put boots on the ground in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, or East Asia and the South China Sea, or America’s Southern Border, or anyplace else..
And i’m not sure what sleeping dogs are lying and where, or what the “situation” is that could be “interfered with” by waking them. Perhaps You can explain.
And finally, to be perfectly honest, Dennis: i have enough problems keeping up with and sorting out all the Bullshit Trump and his Team and Biden and his Team are putting out without worrying about the Bullshit Galloway is putting out. i will get interested in him when he is able to make England stop supporting Ukraine, Israel, and anybody else it is supporting in lockstep with what America instructs it to do.
And how old is Galloway? My guess is that he couldn’t fight anybody for anything at this stage; making his claim that he wouldn’t fight for the current PM rather meaningless, doesn’t it? What’s he say about fighting for The King? Anything?
In any event, America ~ and the entire Planet ~ needs less people like Galloway, Trump, and Biden, and the rest of their species. A LOT less.
Have a Great day.