Anti-War Haiku
Soldiers’ Soon Enough Epiphany
Needing illusion,
they trust one cares there on high
brass totem. Dream on.
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enough.
Under coffin's lid
lies still another stiff kid
lied to by country.
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Peace, Hegemony-style
Redacting conscience,
vulture culture blasts lives gone. Raped
land left napalm calmed.
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David Gregory's Faux Gauntlet
As war-sell generals
Sundays "Meet the Press", how many
minions meeting death?
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A Soldier's Sky
As fretful clouds roam,
branches claw solace from full,
inscrutable moon.
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Young Blood
Citizens ignore
war’s revolving door to horror
young soldiers must brave.
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Defense Spending
Quagmires of blood, fed
troops by Congress-whores for goals
of Vampire Lobbies.
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D.C. and The Bull of Wrongs
What wise forefathers
once gave, Gucci-loafered faux
fathers take away.
----------------------
Unnecessary End
Sky falling down soon.
Avaricious idiots
ruin Earth and Man.
---------------------------------
Excerpts from "War Is Not for Soldiers" by David Swanson:
[August 17, 2010, Alan Grayson Email:]
“In Congress, I am one of the most outspoken opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before I was elected, I spent years prosecuting war profiteers. So I know what I’m talking about.
“In Congress, I am one of the most outspoken opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before I was elected, I spent years prosecuting war profiteers. So I know what I’m talking about.
“Unlike chickenhawk Kurt Kelly. On Fox News (where else?) Kelly said this about me: ‘He put our soldiers, and our men and women in the military in harm’s way, and maybe he wants them to die.’
“Yes, Kurt. I do want them to die: of old age, at home in bed, surrounded by their loved ones, after enjoying many Thanksgiving turkeys between now and then. And you want them to die: in a scorching desert, 8000 miles from home, alone, screaming for help, with a leg blown off and their guts hanging out of their stomachs, bleeding to death.” [end of Grayson quote]
snip
snip
... Their role was to obey orders, and if lying to them helped get them to obey orders, then that was best for all of us. We never said we trusted or respected them, only that we loved them. Perhaps it would be more accurate for people to say that they love the fact that it is the troops out there willing to stupidly kill and die for someone else’s greed or power mania, and not the rest of us. Better you than me. Love ya! Ciao!
snip
... you almost never hear a war planner speak in public about the reasons for keeping a war going without claiming that it must be done for the troops, to support the troops, in order not to let the troops down, or so that those troops already dead will not have died in vain.
Of course, if they died in an illegal, immoral, destructive action, or simply a hopeless war that must be lost sooner or later — and the majority of them die from suicide — it’s unclear how piling on more corpses will honor their memories. But this is not about logic.
snip
... [peace activists] we want to support those troops by not giving them illegal orders, not coercing them to commit atrocities, not sending them away from their families to risk their lives and bodies and mental well-being.
snip
Anyone opposing a war is a bad troop who has turned against his or her Commander in Chief, country, and the other troops — the good troops. Never mind if the war is destroying the country, bankrupting the economy, endangering us all, and eating out the nation’s soul. The war is the country, the whole country has a wartime leader, and the whole country must obey rather than think. After all, this is a war to spread democracy.
snip
The media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) noticed in March, 2003, as the War on Iraq began, that media outlets were doing something peculiar to the English language. The Associated Press and other outlets were using “pro-war” and “pro-troops” interchangeably. We were being offered the choices of being pro-troop or anti-war, with the latter apparently necessitating that we also be anti-troop:
snip
snip
This media practice does not outright call one side of a debate “anti-troop,” but neither does it call one side “pro-war,” despite that side’s clear purpose of promoting war. Just as those defending the right to abortion don’t want to be called pro-abortion, war supporters don’t want to be called pro-war. War is an unavoidable necessity, they think, and a means toward achieving peace; our role in it is to cheer for the troops. But war proponents are not defending their nation’s right to wage war if needed, which would be a better analogy with abortion rights. They’re cheering for a specific war, and that specific war is always a fraudulent and criminal enterprise. Those two facts should disqualify war proponents from hiding behind the label “pro-troops” and using it to slander war opponents, although if they’d like to start using the label “anti-peace” I wouldn’t protest.
snip
When a troop’s time in war is done, if the military wants him or her to stay longer, it “stop losses” them and sends them right back into a war, regardless of the terms in the contract. And — this will come as a surprise to anyone who watches congressional debates over war funding — whenever our representatives vote another hundred billion dollars to “fund the troops,” the troops don’t get the money.
snip
The fact is that the last thing war makers care about — albeit the first thing they talk about — is the troops. There’s not a politician alive in the United States who hasn’t uttered the phrase “support the troops.” Some push the idea to the point of requiring the slaughter of more troops, and the use of troops in the slaughter of more non-Americans. When the parents and loved-ones of those troops already dead denounce the war that has harmed them and call for its termination, war supporters accuse them of failing to honor the memory of their dead.
snip
Supporting the troops” is often expanded from meaning that we need to keep troops in a war longer to meaning that we also need to communicate to them our appreciation for the war, even if we oppose it. This could mean anything from not prosecuting atrocities, pretending the atrocities are extreme exceptions, pretending the war has succeeded or met some of its goals or that it had different goals more easily met, or sending letters and gifts to troops and thanking them for their “service.”
snip
No matter how much government officials talk about the troops as their motivation for action, they fail to take action to care for veterans who’ve already been deployed. War veterans are abandoned rather than supported. They need to be treated with respect and to be respectfully told that we disagree with what they did, and they need to be provided healthcare and education. Until we can do that for every living veteran, what business do we have creating more of them? Our goal, in fact, should be to put the Veterans Administration out of operation by ceasing to manufacture veterans.
snip
Blogger John Caruso collected a list of news items reporting things he especially did not support, things that get brushed aside as too inconvenient when we delude ourselves into believing that wars are fought on behalf of the soldiers fighting them. Here’s part of the list:[xi]
From the New York Times :
From the New York Times :
“We had a great day,” Sergeant Schrumpf said. “We killed a lot of people.”
But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.
“I’m sorry,” the sergeant said. “But the chick was in the way.”
From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.
“I’m sorry,” the sergeant said. “But the chick was in the way.”
From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
The 20-year veteran of the Marine Corps said he found the soldier after dark inside a nearby home with the grenade launcher next to him. Covarrubias said he ordered the man to stop and turn around.
“I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head,” Covarrubias said. “Twice.”
Did he feel any remorse for executing a man who’d surrendered to him? No; in fact, he’d taken the man’s ID card off of his dead body to keep as a souvenir.
From the Los Angeles Times:
“I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head,” Covarrubias said. “Twice.”
Did he feel any remorse for executing a man who’d surrendered to him? No; in fact, he’d taken the man’s ID card off of his dead body to keep as a souvenir.
From the Los Angeles Times:
“I enjoy killing Iraqis,” says Staff Sgt. William Deaton, 30, who killed a hostile fighter the night before. Deaton has lost a good friend in Iraq. “I just feel rage, hate when I’m out there. I feel like I carry it all the time. We talk about it. We all feel the same way.”
[cross-posted on correntewire]
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R&R
If you get pissed off at your own misery there is no doubt aa great satisfaction in wiggling your forefinger in murdering the cause of your misery. It is a quick solution and when two groups of opposing forces can find great relief for their miseries and hatreds and the conviction that they are solving complex problems merely by multiple forefinger wiggles there is great appreciation of the major technical accomplishments of their species. And, of course, there is great joy in the ranks of those manufacturing the gadgets for making forefingers so powerful since it is so profitable. And, as military research makes rapid advance the forefinger's power magnifies astoundingly until that final forefinger solves all the problems of the world with one godlike wiggle.
LIBBY'S SOLDIER
the apple-cheeked kid
a soldier now
will learn to kill
them others
and breaking fast
greedily drink the blood and
dine upon the strewn intestines
of his best friend
then, long past the time of inner death
he, surprised at having become such evil,
will do what the other at his worst
could not. His mother won't know why.
.
the apple-cheeked kid
a soldier now
will learn to kill
them others
and breaking fast
greedily drink the blood and
dine upon the strewn intestines
of his best friend
then, long past the time of inner death
he, surprised at having become such evil,
will do what the other at his worst
could not. His mother won't know why.
.
Have I told you three lately how dear you are to me with your support and comments for me on open salon so often?
jmac, thanks for rating and reading this anti-jingoism veterans' day offering!
jan, as usual brilliant and chilling. the ultimate finger wiggle!!! please, God, and fellow humans, let something give to prevent that.
sky, wow. thank you so much for this. brilliant. yes. the horror and the tragedy!
best, libby
jmac, thanks for rating and reading this anti-jingoism veterans' day offering!
jan, as usual brilliant and chilling. the ultimate finger wiggle!!! please, God, and fellow humans, let something give to prevent that.
sky, wow. thank you so much for this. brilliant. yes. the horror and the tragedy!
best, libby
Someone sent me this link today for this film by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro about the true face of war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA4Xb2G09bw&feature=youtu.be
Ever read Mark Twain's brilliant "War Prayer"? Here's the link:
http://warprayer.org/
This is the subtext declared by an old stranger of the prayer on their soldiers winning offered by a congregation:
“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
http://warprayer.org/
This is the subtext declared by an old stranger of the prayer on their soldiers winning offered by a congregation:
“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
Thanks, Stuart. Listening to the beginning with the hypocritical Congresspeople talking about authorizing war on that youtube so far. Robert Byrd is now talking about manufacturing consent by scaring the people.
The Tomas Young story!
I can't believe how automatic it is now to declare war that kills thousands of people. There is no conscience. No discussion of morality. Marching orders from neocons and Israel.
Tomas Young, what a fiercely courageous young man facing down so much. Integrating Young's physical problems with the propaganda coming out of the mouths of the senators voting for war.
Rep. Barbara Lee should be commended!
Will watch the full movie asap.
best, libby
The Tomas Young story!
I can't believe how automatic it is now to declare war that kills thousands of people. There is no conscience. No discussion of morality. Marching orders from neocons and Israel.
Tomas Young, what a fiercely courageous young man facing down so much. Integrating Young's physical problems with the propaganda coming out of the mouths of the senators voting for war.
Rep. Barbara Lee should be commended!
Will watch the full movie asap.
best, libby
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