Let's tell the truth this Memorial Day

Memorial Day 2022. I  am re-posting this from Memorial Day 2019 as, with the exception of a few names and events, it is as relevant today as then.

 

By Richard Mellor

From 2014: source

Afscme Local 444, retired

"And I long to see the day when Labor will have the destiny of the nation in her own hands and she will stand as a united force and show the world what the workers can do." --- Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, 1830-1930

An FB friend of mine once posted a piece on his Facebook page commenting on those people who can’t understand that you can oppose a war but support the troops. But the idea that you can’t support the troops and oppose the conflicts the ruling class sends them to is a trick. It is the war they want us to support.  The troops are just incidental cannon fodder.

“One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war propaganda, all of the screaming lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia

The military of any country based on class rule is like society as a whole. The generals and top brass, the ones we see with all the paraphernalia and fancy medals on their chests in pictures—the ones that don’t do the fighting----- are all from ruling class families or linked to them through marriage, business interests and other such connections; the chances of them breaking these links are very small.  Those who put their lives on the line are from working class and poor families, some are children of the middle class, from small community businesses and the like. The rich don’t fight wars and workers and the poor are not trusted enough to lead.

Why would the children of moneyed parents or the 1% go fight some war against people who pose no threat to us whatsoever? They have too many alternatives----the family business, Harvard, Wall Street etc.  Poverty and unemployment, situations that most of these above never find themselves in is a good condition for recruiting young men and women to go fight US capitalism’s wars.  I lived near a large US base in England and my parents had many American friends. It was here that I met white workers, often rural people from the Midwest and south and African Americans, Latinos and other ethnic minorities. I never met the children of millionaires ever.

I am not a pacifist, but If my child was to die in the present predatory US ventures aimed at enriching US capitalism and its corporations I would be very angry but not at those that took his life opposing invaders, but at those that profit from it. 

I cannot with all honesty claim on this day that those Americans that have died in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else, died defending us. We have not been threatened by any nation, especially not Iraqis who have seen their country destroyed and millions of their population made homeless, killed or maimed. Not to mention the sicknesses and birth defects that have occurred due to the use of depleted uranium and other agents like white phosphorous.  There is no threat to the US from Iran either, the Mullah's are well aware that this would be suicidal. After losing some three million people during the predatory invasion of their country by US imperialism, Vietnamese children are still being born deformed due to the spraying of dioxin on their food supply by US planes.  The US government even sprayed it on their own troops.

Some 67,000 Americans died in Vietnam.  By some accounts, the political wrangling that Kissinger and Nixon entered in to in order to make political gains over their Democratic colleagues cost an extra 20,000 US lives that could have been saved. This is not made an issue of in the main stream media. (See Christopher Hitchens, the Trial of Henry Kissinger). When we add the widows, fatherless children and parents of the killed in action we are talking about hundreds of thousands affected, a war that decimated a whole generation of American families. A waste of lives and the orchestrator's of this carnage are free, rich and important respected members of society.  It is the unnecessary loss of so many live we must memorialize.

We do not dishonor the dead by telling the truth, instead we free ourselves from the lies that they died for democratic principles or to protect us from a foreign invader.  I would go so far to say that to not admit that those lives lost in these corporate wars were lost in vain does them a disservice. I am angry that these young Americans lost their lives in this way. The millions upon millions of victims of these wars are victims of mass murder on a global scale.  We should not forget that US imperialism is the only force in history that has dropped massive nuclear weapons on a defenseless civilian population.

All their patriotic talk on days like this is phony. Meanwhile they deny veterans benefits, they argue like a used car salesman about which procedure is genuine and which is not in case “shady” veterans try to wrangle some extra services from the government coffers. Huge numbers of the homeless are veterans; it’s a disgrace. More veterans have died by suicide than in US capitlaism's wars. There’s none of that negative talk when they’re sending them out, only when they come back damaged psychologically and physically. After all, that’s money out. And people like Schwarzenegger and Stillone who make millions by exploiting war make me sick. Stillone spent part of the Vietnam war working at a girls school in Switzerland.  War is not nice, it’s not like Hollywood propaganda portrays it. John Wayne is not a hero. It’s an insult to veterans if there ever was one.

Whole generations are lost in these ventures.  US foreign policy is a disaster. Invading Iraq was a disaster, Afghanistan is a disaster and the constant terrorizing of the Iranian people is a war crime in itself. The US ruling class and its political representatives would make a deal with Iran's ruthless Mullah's in a minute if they'd just share more of the loot. The Mullah's misogyny, their antidemocratic, anti-union policies would be no obstacle if they would cooperate. It's not just US foreign policy that is a disaster, we at home are in the forefront of the assault on living standards as well. Detroit, the Bronx, West Virginia and the entire social infrastructure of the United States is a disaster. The military that they claim is defending us from assault is in actuality on the offensive, defending US capitalism, its multi-national corporations and the tiny elite that control and profit from them.  There are US troops and military throughout Africa ensuring that the natural resources and wealth of this rich continent finds its way in to Wall Street.

This is another form of colonial oppression in the sense that US banks, what are storage houses for capital, simply refuse to release this national asset in the event that the government that owns it opposes US policies.

On this Memorial Day we should not fall in to the trap demanded by the propaganda of the movers and shakes at the Pentagon in their media. We must not let the draft dodger Trump or the other one John Bolton drag our young people and the US taxpayer in to another murderous assault on a weaker nation.  We must make it clear we are angry at them, that our young people sent to kill and be killed in the defense of profits that are of no benefit to us, deserve a better deal.  It dehumanizes them as was so evident in the Collateral Murder video that was allegedly leaked by Chelsea Manning to Wikileaks showed. They deserve most of all a long, secure and productive life contributing to the well being of all of us. People like Chelsea Manning and other veterans, many in Iraq Veterans Against the War are brave people, not the unpatriotic cowards that the 1%’s media try to portray them as.  And let’s not forget Pat Tillman.  He was a hero until he refused to tell the lies. Take the time to watch TheTillman Story.  He is another heroic figure that lost favor with the US war hawks who want to erase him from history. We must not let them do that.

My father spent three years and nine months working for Mitsubishi as a prisoner of war. He was taken in Hong Kong in 1939 and spent the entire war in Tokyo and beore that in prison in Hong Kong.  We did not agree on the causes of what I refer to as “Imperialist” wars, the struggle for global market dominance between the capitalist classes of competing nations, but he never glorified, it. He never taught me to hate the Japanese. He always understood that grunts like him were dragged in to the conflict by powers greater than himself. He ran away from home at 16 and joined up to be with horses. He too had to fight the power to get what he deserved on his return.

So on this day we can pay tribute to those Americans that have died and respect that under circumstances not of their own creation they did what they could to survive.  But we must be honest that these wars are not about defending our democratic rights and ideals we hold dear, they are about profits and the global struggle for markets. For many, were there better options they would have taken a different road.  The children of the wealthy don’t have to join the military to get an education. The children of the wealthy go to Harvard instead.

Memmorial Day Massacre 1937 Source

Lastly, we should remember another Memorial Day. For this is the 78^th anniversary of the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937. During the Little Steel Strike, ten workers were murdered by police at the Republic Steel factory in Chicago.  Here is a description of that event:

A dozen marchers falling simultaneously into a heap. The massive sustained roar of the police pistols lasts on the sound track perhaps two or three seconds.

. . . the police charge on the marchers with riot sticks flailing. At the same time tear gas grenades are seen sailing into the mass of the demonstrators and clouds of gas rise over them. Most of the crowd is now seen to be in flight.

. . . a number of individuals either through foolish hardihood or because they have not realized what is in progress around them remained behind . . . groups of policemen close in on these individuals and go to work on them with their clubs, hi several instances from two to four men are seen beating one man.

On the front line during the parley with the police is a female [Mrs. Lupe Marshall] not more than five feet tall . . . . Under one arm she is carrying a purse and some newspapers. After . . . the shots she turns to find that her path is blocked by a heap of fallen men. She stumbles over them . . . then she is seen going down under a . . . blow from a policeman's club . . . . She gets up, and staggers around. A few minutes later she is shown being shoved into a patrol wagon, blood cascading down her face and spreading over her clothing . . . .

The camera shifts to the patrol wagons in the rear; men with bloody heads are being loaded in. One, who has apparently been shot in the leg, drags himself . . . into the picture with the aid of two policemen. An elderly man . . . holding one hand to the back of his head clambers painfully up the steps of a patrol wagon and slumps . . . .

Far off toward the outer corner of the field, where they [the marchers] came from originally, the marchers are still in flight, with an irregular line of police seen in close pursuit, clubbing. http://libcom.org/history/memorial-day-massacre

We must take Mother Jones’ words above to heart. The most important war we face is the one at home.