During this season we would do well, I think, to remember:
We do not honor our troops by using them as photo-ops and praising them in speeches while slashing their pay and benefits and cutting funding to their hospitals.
We do not honor them by sending them to invade countries that haven't attacked us or our allies and, in fact, don't have the ability to do so.
We don't honor their lives by asking them to die for a lie.
And, we have no business sending our children to war with too little equipment and no plans on how to pull them back out. That way lie more and more body bags. Is this how we support and honor them?
***
Here are some links to a few of the old, revolutionary songs that are apropos to the troubles we again find ourselves in today. Why not take a listen?
http://www.brownielocks.com/universalsoldierWAVE.html
http://www.brownielocks.com/eveofdestruction.html
http://www.brownielocks.com/turnturnturnWAVE.html
http://www.brownielocks.com/heaintheavy.html
***
And, remember the words of W.H. Auden:
To save your world, you asked this man to die.
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
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4 comments:
Thanks, TC. For me this was a trip down memory lane to the 1960s when our leaders embroiled us in another illegal, immoral war. To support our troops, we should only use them to defend us and to defend those who cannot defend themselves from aggression. We should never squander their precious lives in a war based on lies.
the point is:
they're being used for way more than combat--which would be bad enough--but, at least that's what they signed up for. they DIDN'T sign on in order to be used for playing politics.
and, as to what's being done to them and their families as far as salaries, benefits, health care, etc. is conscionable.
and the ads that beg our kids to sign up! they're all geared toward the Black kids and the Working Class kids. it's time for the more affluent kids to step up to the plate. past time.
That's why I favor a draft in which the likelihood to be drafted is directly proportional to family wealth.
it IS.
in reverse.
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