Cadfael wrote:
This is the most intelligent thing you have posted recently. Quite true.
The fact of the matter is this:
No society in human history has been able to survive long without a lot of young men willing to fight and die for that society.
There is even a small group of islands part of India that have avoided modern contact because they kill everyone who lands on their islands.
When a society becomes corrupt, the leaders exploit the altruism of these young men by sending them to die for genocide, imperialism and corporate greed. Look at our Indian wars, or the Mexican American War or the genocide in the Philippines or the invasion of Haiti to retrieve assets for Citibank.
Yet we honor our brave men who fought for United Brands, oops I mean the United States. We also honor brave men who fought against us. There are graveyards of German soldiers in Russia, for example.
Why? Because our nation, as pure as it is or as corrupt as it is, cannot survive without these brave young men.
That is why we have the Wall in DC with the names of the American soldiers who died in Vietnam. That was a truly horrible war. We killed millions of people for a failed cause of Imperialism. Yet we very properly honor the brave men, and in some cases women, who paid the unlltimate sacrifice for the dishonorable leaders of our country.
I had ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War. I had close friends who were Vietnam War vets. I despise the Confederacy, and I despise what we Americans did in Vietnam. Yet I think the soldiers in our lost war deserve honor. Yet I think the soldiers of the Lost Cause deserve honor. The dead soldiers deserve the most honor, because they sacrificed their lives for their society.
When I was growing up in Arkansas in the 60s and 70s I couldn’t understand why many southerners couldn’t get over the Civil War after more than 100 years. Now I wonder why many Madisonians, especially our elected leaders, cannot get over a war fought more than 150 years ago.
