April 24, 2007

• One Million Blogs for Peace

  

  I was late jumping onto this bandwagon, got here during its second week of existence.  I am even later getting to this level of participation.  Each of the four weeks I have been part of this effort, Tuesday has rolled around and slipped by without my thinking about what day it was or connecting it to the “Tuesday Topics.”  This week, when I went to find the latest topic, no new one had been added.  I haven’t addressed any of them yet, so I suppose it is acceptable for me to address last week’s topic now, especially since it sparked so many ideas in my mind as I read it:

  Fifth Tuesday Topic
  Tuesday, 17 April 2007
  When asked about the antiwar movement during Vietnam and at the time, during 2003, Kurt Vonnegut (who passed away last
  week) said the following:

  
  “When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in
  Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and
  actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with
  everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three
  feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.”

  
  And so it is with antiwar protests in the present day. Then as now, TV did not like antiwar protesters, nor any other sort
  of protesters, unless they rioted. Now, as then, on account of TV, the right of citizens to peaceably assemble, and petition
  their government for a redress of grievances, ‘ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit,’ as the saying goes.”

  
  What do you think of this quotation?
  
  
  How do you think the modern antiwar movement can rise above the value of a pitcher of warm spit?

  What I think of the quotation from Vonnegut is that the man was there, as I was.  He was a keen observer and had a fine flair for interpreting and expressing what he saw.  We made a mess, and most of the mess got on us.  We didn’t stop the war.

  We had a slogan back then.  You could see it everywhere:  “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”  But the young men kept coming.  Some volunteered as an alternative to going to jail, as a means to acquire a higher education, or as a way to get the Class Q Allotment for a young wife and the free medical care for her and their babies.  Those socioeconomic forces continue to supply a stream of volunteers to the services. 

  Other young men back then were drafted against their will because they lacked the grades or the funds to get the deferment for going to college, and/or they had ties to home too strong to let them flee to Canada.  We don’t have the draft now, but we do have many young women volunteering for the same socioeconomic reasons as their male counterparts.  It balances out, after a fashion, but the armed services are short enough of new volunteers that they are extending the enlistments of people who expected when they joined to be in and out already by now.

  If the volunteers stopped coming now, and too many of the already extended enlistees were to become dead meat, the government still has the power to conscript troops.  I think they’ve held off on it this long out of a fear that it could spark a revolution, but they might have other reasons I haven’t considered.  It could be that they find it fiscally expedient to tighten the economic screws and increase the pressure of the threat of incarceration so that the underclass will continue to consider it expedient to volunteer to kill, maim, be maimed, and risk death rather than face the certainty of poverty, homelessness, or prison.

  Once the military get their hands on a young person, the indoctrination begins.  Actually, it begins even before that in the recruitment PSAs and the hype and the often empty promises they hear from recruiters.  Mind control techniques have continued to improve since the Vietnam era.  Training and indoctrination build interpersonal bonds of loyalty among the troops so strong that wounded soldiers are eager to get out of the hospital and back under fire with their units.

  The power of a civil antiwar movement to sway the minds of potential volunteers and dissuade them from volunteering is minuscule compared to the government’s power to entice or compel them to serve it.  Our potential influence on the government itself is even less. Senior officers have resigned their commissions and broken ranks to criticize the Iraq war.  Junior officers have faced courts martial for declining posting to Iraq for reasons of conscience.  If the Commander in Chief hears their protests or ours, he does not care.

  During the Vietnam war, Joan Baez, some other celebrities, and many less public people chose not to pay their taxes because they would not be party to the slaughter.  They didn’t stop the war, either.  Their money was a drop in the bucket.  Recently Halliburton Company, one of the major profiteers in the Iraq war, moved its corporate offices to Dubai so that the corporation can avoid paying taxes.  That’s more than just a little drop out of the U.S. Treasury’s bucket, but I don’t hear loud protests from the top level of our country’s “leaders” whose personal fortunes are most likely tied to those of Halliburton.

  My eyes burn right now with unshed tears because try as hard as I might I cannot see a way to back away from war — for the conscientious, spiritually evolved peace-loving segment of our society to battle greed, hatred, ignorance, apathy, and superstitious fear.  How do we fight our way out from under the power of corrupt and insane bosses who push from the rear and don’t lead from the front, who enforce their commands with punishment rather than leading by example?  It seems to me that the only workable way to achieve peace is to let the war, all wars, and the war mentality, go “over the top” until the destruction sickens and repels enough people for us all to come together and put an end to war.

  That said, I don’t think we should give up the effort to recruit more souls to the antiwar movement.  Keep talking, writing, singing and protesting.  Be a visible presence even if mainstream media ignores us.  Be a Blogger for Peace.  Post one of the link graphics on your site.  Get the message out, in graphic terms, about how ugly, ungodly and ultimately inhuman war is.  Post pictures.  Keep in everyone’s faces about it.  Make apathy untenable.  Push this battle over the top.

  It is sad enough at home.
  
  
  He can’t see and she doesn’t want to.
  
  Do you want to see?
  Warning:  the pictures get uglier and more graphic as you scroll down.
  
  
   
  
   
  
  I dare you to keep scrolling.
  
  

  

  

  • 6:08 pm
  • 11 Comments