Who do we HONOR today?

Honor the men (and some women) who have acted as the bully police enforcers for the U.S. empire corporate rule around the world?

And so will there come a day that we honor the Atlanta police also for acting as the enforcers of corporate rule here in Atlanta?

Are we so dazzled by the spell of the mighty Military Industrial Complex that depends on us, the public, supporting the lie that veterans are "serving" our country that we cannot speak the truth: that soldiers/veterans have been used as the cannon fodder, the instruments of death, torture, rape, destruction for countries that are filled with Black and Brown peoples, that the true "service" they are performing is the service of our corporations, the wealthy, that are helping themselves to the resources of these nations?

These are the men who, at the very cusp of adulthood, have their youthful idealism exploited, their naive at best views of the world & the U.S. manipulated, their bodies and spirits severely damaged, maybe beyond repair, by their "service" for our mighty Military Industrial Complex.

These are the men who have agreed to be trained as killers, who have been willing to pick up more and more horrendous weapons, to engage in crueler and more inhuman acts against mostly physically small, grossly under-armed and/or unarmed, poor (as in severely lacking both the resources and the desire to greedily conquer the world), mostly people of color.

We should "honor" the men who have irreparably harmed these people of the world and their lands, our Mother Earth?

These are the men who have been willing to commit or committed acts so inhuman that more Vietnam Veterans have ended up committing suicide than were actually killed in combat?

What kind of bravery are you talking about here? How "brave" does one have to be to belong to the police force of the richest nation of the world who has spent MORE money on the military, weapons, training, etc., then EVERY OTHER SINGLE NATION COMBINED?  How "brave" does one have to be to blindly follow orders from "higher ups", to never be held accountable for making decisions that result in terror, to act with impunity under the shield of the Military Industrial Complex?

I suggest we honor the true warriors: the Conscientious Objector, the mothers' sons who refuse to harm another mothers' sons, those who stand against the mighty Military Industrial Complex and the war machine.

I suggest we reclaim the true intent of this day, Armistice Day, before it was co-opted by the Military Industrial Complex, to mark the END of all wars.

I suggest we liberate veterans from the spell of the Military Industrial Complex that forces them to justify all manifestations of military violence as not just 'normal' but 'honorary' behavior; when in fact, it is behavior that no human being should ever engage in.

Until we are willing to confront and engage in the work we need to do to dismantle both the Military Industrial Complex and the Prison Industrial Complex - which are the true driving forces behind our economy, our empire, our oppression - our occupy movement will merely replicate what we already have.