— by Joseph Murphy —
My first thought upon reading the Orcas Issues article detailing the lavish all-day celebration of veterans on November 13 [at the public school district] was:
“Does this mean that on the next commemorative national holiday honored by our publicly-funded school district – that would be the Martin Luther King Jr Holiday on January 13 – will the OISD be restaging the Pettis Bridge Crossing, bring[ing] a few police dogs and overweight sadists to bear down on a blackface populace? Maybe ICE would hire out some agents for the day to give the festivities the real ring of authenticity by busting a few Mexican and Guatemalan heads”
Then I got angry.
Veteran’s Day, November 11, was instituted to remember the Doughboys who perished in the trenches for the fifteenth-century trade war fought with airplanes and mustard gas that was called WW I. Over there the Yanks proved their ability to fight for economic position with the rest of the world’s squalid capitalists.
And now, nearly a century later, my service-age son and his buddies of like age who have lived their entire lives under the shadow of America’s pillage crusades find themselves heartily disillusioned with what is on offer. Good on them.
As a veteran of the 1960s who argued matters of war and peace each night over the dinner table with a Jesuit-trained attorney and who grew up next door to what is now the largest military base on the West coast –(Joint Base Lewis/McChord) that expanded early in the twentieth century by seizing treaty land from the Nisqually nation for those aforementioned doughboys.
As Thucydides put it some two millennia earlier: “The strong do what they can and the weak do as they must.“
Perhaps, but if we can’t do better than sentimentalize Uncle Billy and cousin Bob for their “service” in propping up the bottom line of Boeing and Northrup and General Dynamics while autocrats dismember journalists, hoarrders prosper and the air becomes unbreatheable while raising a generation of children who see through the chimera, then I am really not interested in participating in public rituals of death.
Especially on the public dime.
I gave my boy Howard Zinn’s masterful and truthful, “A Peoples History of the United States,” when he was nine. He put down the video game controller long enough to read it cover to cover. No one will fool him about America’s wars.
I only wish as much could be said for the victims of Tuesday’s “K-12” extravaganza.
**If it wouldn’t cause you financial distress to take out a modestly-priced, voluntary subscription (HERE), you’d be doing a real service. If it would, then no worries, we’re happy to share with you.**
No one. Ever. Wants war.
My father fought in WWII. He was 18 when he went to fight in the Pacific. All my life he opposed war. War is horrific. And my father, who was awarded the Purple Heart twice would agree. I would agree. I have protested every military incursion in my lifetime.
Transparency: I am on the OISD school board. Transparency: I never respond to comments. But…
What you have said, however, is offensive. To every veteran who has — whether they agree or disagree — has served this country.
Yes — no one will “fool you” — or your “boy” about America’s wars. Nor should they. But to say that honoring those who have served this country at the school for an hour and a half (not ALL DAY) — for WHATever reason — is naive. And, (as I said before) offensive.
I agree with you with my whole heart that we as a country should not condone war. But when you say: On Martin Luther King’s birthday is the OISD: “…restaging the Pettis Bridge Crossing, bring[ing] a few police dogs and overweight sadists to bear down on a blackface populace…?” you have lost all credibility.
The OISD is having a breakfast and an assembly to honor those who have served. I don’t agree with war. My father didn’t. Yes, we are in a time when we SHOULD question any military action. It is political. But I will not question honor. Or children who want to respect honor.
Janet Brownell’s comment is well founded.
Wars are political decisions. I would think the politicians should answer for those decisions, not the men and women that go to fight those wars. Those that do serve their country certainly deserve gratitude, respect and honor from all of us.
I understand the Guest’s criticism; I share his implied desire for humanity; but where a razor sharp light shines so critically on the business of war, its source lacks the humility and constraint imposed on us by our non-evolving human condition.
What our first historian wrote is wise; Sophocles likewise put into practice the modern anthropological concept of cultural relativism when he mocked Greek rationale justifying war against so-called “barbarians.” Though, wiser ones would not use artifice to set us up for ultimate failure in ignoring “nature” when separating us by “nurture”—e.g., weak v strong.
We hail from one lot, cut from the same cloth. The fact that we’re self-sentient appears to hide the observable reality that every action of a self-centered life form is necessarily violent (were violence accurately defined); this is remarkably (and conveniently) unnoticed—as in deeper observations that remain unobserved. Moral equivocation is not the goal; unfiltered, naked observation of the long arc of human history is; the case is empirically and deductively made.
So, succumb to nature? No. We thread the needle and make “good use” of the evolutionary tool of “discrimination”—to more than just survive.
Janet Brownell threads the needle making the important distinctions between Veterans and Wars, between necessary and unnecessary actions.
It is “we” who do what “we can and must.”
Deeper introspection? Perhaps the wisest use of our larger evolved brains.
Janet, I can see the complication with having had family members engage in violent acts for dubious reasons, but to re-label the deliberate killing of innocents solely for the purpose of enforcing US economic policy “honorable” is an act of (comment edited for civility) doublespeak.
Your quote follows: “Veteran’s Day, November 11, was instituted to remember the Doughboys who perished in the trenches for the fifteenth-century trade war fought with airplanes and mustard gas that was called WW I.
Fact: “Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiegne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War.”
Fact: Veterans Day (originally known as Armistice Day) is an official United States public holiday, observed annually on November 11, that honors military veterans; that is, persons who served in the United States Armed Forces. It coincides with other holidays, including Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, celebrated in other countries that mark the anniversary of the end of World War I; major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect. At the urging of major veteran organizations, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.
Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day, a U.S. public holiday in May; Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans, while Memorial Day honors those who died while in military service.[1] It is also not to be confused with Armed Forces Day.
Your letter was offensive in the extreme. My parents were both in a concentration camp and on Vet’s Day each year (and many days in between) I thank God for the British and American soldiers who liberated that camp. My father would cry when he (rarely) spoke of being lifted and carried by strong American soldiers because he could not walk, and being offered food items out of their own pockets (chocolate bars, which were really not what the starving needed but the 18, 19 and 20 year old soldiers did not know what else to give the emaciated people they saw). Some of the soldiers wept as they helped the survivors. After spending two years in a German displaced persons camp, my parents were fortunate enough to be allowed to come to the U.S., where they prospered and lived without fear. (I am glad they did not live to see Trump get elected.) You are privileged to write as you did because so many young men went off to war.
See — here’s the thing. This is America (so far). You don’t have to go to the school for the event. See how easy that is?
Luther- in all sincerity it’s truly not that simple (not a cliché). The corners rounded and cut to fit a viewpoint truly does create the illusion of being right (or wrong). I hesitate to say more…
Mable- you speak of deep pain caused by the very core of our specie’s defect. Your pain could be a curative mirror. But will we look? So far, the answer is a resounding NO.
I appreciate the efforts of Veterans for Peace for working for the last 10 years to re-establish Nov. 11 as Armistice Day, which was observed in the U.S., until it was changed to Veterans Day in 1954, as a day to remember the horrors of war, honor those who died and were injured, and contemplate peaceful ways to live in a peaceful world.
I think it’s fine to honor people who have put their lives in harm’s way, and also to honor people who work constantly, for no pay, for peace, and to question every act of aggression for which the U.S. government has used (or misused) the U.S. military since WWII. I wonder if our public schools do any sort of event for the International Day of Peace on Sept. 21. I think that would be a powerful thing and I would love to be involved in that.
On this day, the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, I want to be clear that I say none of this to slight anyone who has served in the military. I do think that we need to honor other kinds of service that seek to prevent violence and keep our troop out of harm’s way unless there is an absolute good reason for it. I’ve been saying since 2003 “Support our troops – bring them home now” and I have meant it every time.
What self indulgence and provocative baiting using extreme Hyperbole…I will ALWAYS honor and RESPECT those who fought in any of the wars that America has waged. I do not always agree with the US policy or worldly situation that put military service people into conflict. The warriors/veterans had very little choice in the matter of participating and they went anyway. Some voluntarily some not, doesn’t matter. Respecting their service is the least any self respecting ‘American’ can do… Respect their service debate the policy… I’m glad the world isn’t really left to the cynics lens as described above and some below because with those versions the world is a complete dystopian nightmare with little hope of improvement. The glass is half full not the other way round. That’s part of what they fought for. It’s the Hope for a better world they were fighting for.
These comments fall into the erroneous categories of good vs. evil.
You’re deflecting the larger reality in which each is expressly complicit.
No matter what you believe, we started out as single cell organisms (domain: Eukaryotes) about 3.5 billion yrs ago; we ended up in trees and came down on 2 feet about 2 million years ago; modern sapiens evolved from about 200k years ago and our brains haven’t changed in size in the last 50k years when language was introduced. We foraged, hunted and gathered 99% of our homo erectus/sapien existence. Between 12-23k years ago we began to farm. This led to surplus. This led to significant growth in the human population. We’ve been manipulating and plundering the planet’s resources ever since; we wiped out any life form necessary if it served our purpose and still do (humans too). We’re violent. We were balanced and egalitarian before agriculture; not because of our nature, but because of our stage of evolution; we did what was necessary to survive; we cooperated. Whatever we could do, we did. No holds barred. The evidence is clear; it’s long. Globally, today, roughly 30 trillion machines are classified as Fossil Fuel Slaves. Yes, you did that! Worry about that! Not a veteran who fought a war you don’t like.
Soon you’ll be fighting wars over water, not oil. Wars aren’t the extinction level threat. Peaceful loving humans going about their daily lives are.
It’s Ego! We’re self-centered. Confront what that means.
And yet this discussion without fear of reprisal is testament to our veteran’s dedication to the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution but found nowhere else on earth. Not so? Name the place that allows more liberty. Mr. Murphy, “I wholly disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”, is mis-attributed to Voltaire, but captures the essence of my family’s and my fellow veteran’s service and sacrifice for the greater good. Ms. Hastings, you understand me perfectly when you tell Mr. Murphy and Mr. Bliss “You are privileged to write as you did.”
Ms. Abreu, the armistice was not peace; it was a “stand down” order. “Peace” came at Versailles and paved the way to the Second World War. No one who has served in a war wants to see it again, but at what price peace? The words of Patrick Henry are answer enough for me “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace, but there is no peace….. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? ….. Iknow not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
Ms. Brownell, thank you for so eloquently “threading the needle”. Mr. Owens and Mr. Graham, you understand that war follows when politics fail. Mr. Erly, – Semper Fi!
Unfortunately wars follow because we believe in “things” without objective foundation, because we refuse to acknowledge the unavoidable violence that our self-centered action generates.
Only those deep in denial could irrationally rationalize away the trajectory we’re on. It’s never changed direction from day one. What more proof of our predicament do we need?
Closer self-observation and rational thought are the only possible ways to mitigate our natures and survive—perhaps better than ever in the past.
But that would require giving up believing in beliefs about ourselves, our divinity and see the far greater beauty and possibilities in a rational, liberated and more peaceful mind and body.
As long as we keep mis-identifying the internal underlying causes of our externally generated violence (and by extension all wars)—like blaming war and violence on politics instead of actions derivative of a self in unobserved and inescapable conflict— we behave similar to alcoholics (or other addicted slaves) replying to one who offers treatment: “why are you being so negative?”
Liberation is giving up the ghosts quite literally and seeing rationally, withholding judgment, and learning to live in peace without the need for conclusions or absolutes.
This requires coming to terms with what we really are. What we can be is quite elegant and amazing, in fact…far more so than the fantasies and stories we’ve writen about ourselves (which end serving as reasons to kill).