With the recent passing of Veterans Day social media, TV shows, commercials and Google Doodles were singing the praises of the brave men and women who defend America.
Reading or listening to some of the praises heaped upon them, one would think that America would long ago have been overrun by barbaric hordes intent on enslaving and pillaging the entire country.
Yet, such statements betray a lack of critical thinking on the part of those from whose lips such profuse praise pours forth.
When people thank soldiers for their service, does anyone stop and ask what the service being rendered is? Are the soldiers stopping hosts of invaders from sweeping in and destroying life as we know it?
Rather, these soldiers are either on garrison duty domestically, deployed internationally to maintain the United States so called strategic interests in places such as Germany, Japan, Korea, Bahrain or Italy or they are fighting insurgencies in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, in order to spread American global hegemony.
The story goes that the troops are hunting down dangerous terrorists and enemies of the United States who would attack us here at home.
Yet, why would people want to attack us? If confronted with this question many people would simply reply that terrorists (communists, fascists, whoever else needs to be fought) hate us for our freedoms and our ways of life.
However, like most things in life, the truth is more difficult than an easy falsehood. The truth is that very few of the people who wish to harm the inhabitants of the United States wish to do so because of the supposed freedom said inhabitants supposedly enjoy.
However, people are willing to die to defend themselves, their families and their society when they perceive it to be under attack. It is very clear that many of the people who wish to harm the United States perceive themselves to be under attack.
The people of the United States do not truly know their enemy, and for the most part they do not truly know themselves, the government’s foreign policy has been nothing but one long stream of disasters after another.
If you really care about someone, you tell them the truth. And the truth is that rather than protecting America, soldiers are making America less safe by carrying out the self-serving foreign policy of the ruling class. This cycle of violence benefits no-one but the special interests who profit from war and the political lap-dogs the special interests support.
That is the hard truth people must face if they really want to support the troops. The truth is they are not making America safer.
The hard truth is that the soldiers who have died, have died in vain, for no purpose other than to continue the cycle of violence in order to profit the special interests of the ruling class.
Unless people are willing to accept these hard truths and do something to change them, American soldiers will continue to have their lives stolen from them so that the few may profit at the expense of the many.