Honor the Warrior: Stop the War
Honor the Warrior: Stop the War Rally – NOT!
NO! I HATE this mentality, that we can separate the soldier from his deeds, his work. We cannot. We must not.
I agreed last week to drive the truck down to Santa Barbara with Rae, who has been asked to speak at this rally – prior to knowing this theme.
The bottom line is, if there were not soldiers willing to fight, rich men could not have wars – no one would be there to fight them.
We want to think humans have fought wars for just and noble causes – even those of us who are left-leaning or liberal democrats, or even just average Americans, want to believe there have been even a few wars that have been for ideals.
How often have white men chuckled condescendingly to inform me that if there had not been war, I would not be free to be American & worship my god. They are of course, referring to the revolutionary war against England way back in the day.
I don’t recall the Church of England or the Pope or whomever sending troops here to march folks off to church. I seem to recall the protest was against paying taxes to England. They held a tea party, not a communion party, as I recall – white men dressing up as native men so they’d have yet another reason to kill native men should they get caught. But that’s yet another book.
I saw a quote the other day that said we fought the American Revolution for the right to pay taxes to rich men living here, rather than rich men living overseas.
Then there’s WWII, the one where I lost most of my biological family, the one that made my mother a refugee, an exile from the only country she ever knew. People love to claim we entered that war to save Jews – HA! We entered that war to protect our interests in Hawaii and around the world. We had MANY opportunities to stop Hitler before it even got to war – as we have had many opportunities to stop Bush.
I can no more honor the soldier and not the killing then I can honor the gun and not the bullets. Soldiers are doing a horrific job of a horribly failed society, ‘work’ that should not be glorified or hyped into some honorable, desirable, valiant thing.
But the other bottom line, prior to the soldier, is this idealizing of this horrific act to the point of even calling him a ‘warrior’. Our whole social mentality, that it is acceptable to train our children to be willing to kill and/or be killed, is really the bottom line. The responsibility for war begins and ends with each one of us.
Rae has assured me we can go & deal with this, among those people who are our allies in ending this war.
It is cold, dark and rainy as we set out this morning. The rain has begun; the fog has settled; dark escorts us out the city south and to this action as we search for words to express our honor for the real warriors.
NO! I HATE this mentality, that we can separate the soldier from his deeds, his work. We cannot. We must not.
I agreed last week to drive the truck down to Santa Barbara with Rae, who has been asked to speak at this rally – prior to knowing this theme.
The bottom line is, if there were not soldiers willing to fight, rich men could not have wars – no one would be there to fight them.
We want to think humans have fought wars for just and noble causes – even those of us who are left-leaning or liberal democrats, or even just average Americans, want to believe there have been even a few wars that have been for ideals.
How often have white men chuckled condescendingly to inform me that if there had not been war, I would not be free to be American & worship my god. They are of course, referring to the revolutionary war against England way back in the day.
I don’t recall the Church of England or the Pope or whomever sending troops here to march folks off to church. I seem to recall the protest was against paying taxes to England. They held a tea party, not a communion party, as I recall – white men dressing up as native men so they’d have yet another reason to kill native men should they get caught. But that’s yet another book.
I saw a quote the other day that said we fought the American Revolution for the right to pay taxes to rich men living here, rather than rich men living overseas.
Then there’s WWII, the one where I lost most of my biological family, the one that made my mother a refugee, an exile from the only country she ever knew. People love to claim we entered that war to save Jews – HA! We entered that war to protect our interests in Hawaii and around the world. We had MANY opportunities to stop Hitler before it even got to war – as we have had many opportunities to stop Bush.
I can no more honor the soldier and not the killing then I can honor the gun and not the bullets. Soldiers are doing a horrific job of a horribly failed society, ‘work’ that should not be glorified or hyped into some honorable, desirable, valiant thing.
But the other bottom line, prior to the soldier, is this idealizing of this horrific act to the point of even calling him a ‘warrior’. Our whole social mentality, that it is acceptable to train our children to be willing to kill and/or be killed, is really the bottom line. The responsibility for war begins and ends with each one of us.
Rae has assured me we can go & deal with this, among those people who are our allies in ending this war.
It is cold, dark and rainy as we set out this morning. The rain has begun; the fog has settled; dark escorts us out the city south and to this action as we search for words to express our honor for the real warriors.
posted by Xan @ 5:27 AM
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