{"id":363087,"date":"2018-05-28T05:36:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T04:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ray-mcgovern-on-how-to-honor-memorial-day\/"},"modified":"2018-05-28T05:36:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T04:36:38","slug":"ray-mcgovern-on-how-to-honor-memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ray-mcgovern-on-how-to-honor-memorial-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray McGovern on How To Honor Memorial\u00a0Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>How best to show respect for the U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their families on Memorial Day? Simple: Avoid euphemisms like \u201cthe fallen\u201d and expose the lies about what a great idea it was to start those wars in the first place and then to \u201csurge\u201d tens of thousands of more troops into those fools\u2019 errands.<\/p>\n<p>First, let\u2019s be clear on at least this much: the 4,500 US troops killed in Iraq so far and the 2,350 killed in Afghanistan [by May 2015] did not \u201cfall.\u201d They were wasted on no-win battlefields by politicians and generals cheered on by neocon pundits and mainstream \u201cjournalists\u201d almost none of whom gave a rat\u2019s patootie about the real-life-and-death troops. They were throwaway soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>And, as for the \u201csuccessful surges,\u201d they were just P.R. devices to buy some \u201cdecent intervals\u201d for the architects of these wars and their boosters to get space between themselves and the disastrous endings while pretending that those defeats were really \u201cvictories squandered\u201d all at the \u201cacceptable\u201d price of about 1,000 dead US soldiers each and many times that in dead Iraqis and Afghans.<\/p>\n<p>Memorial Day should be a time for honesty about what enabled the killing and maiming of so many US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and the senior military brass simply took full advantage of a poverty draft that gives upper-class sons and daughters the equivalent of exemptions, vaccinating them against the disease of war.<\/p>\n<p>What drives me up the wall is the oft-heard, dismissive comment about troop casualties from well-heeled Americans: \u201cWell, they volunteered, didn\u2019t they?\u201d Under the universal draft in effect during Vietnam, far fewer were immune from service, even though the well-connected could still game the system to avoid serving. Vice Presidents Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, for example, each managed to pile up five exemptions. This means, of course, that they brought zero military experience to the job; and this, in turn, may explain a whole lot \u2014 particularly given their bosses\u2019 own lack of military experience.<\/p>\n<p>The grim truth is that many of the cr\u00ebme de la cr\u00ebme of today\u2019s Official Washington don\u2019t know many military grunts, at least not intimately as close family or friends. They may bump into some on the campaign trail or in an airport and mumble something like, \u201cthank you for your service.\u201d But these sons and daughters of working-class communities from America\u2019s cities and heartland are mostly abstractions to the powerful, exclamation points at the end of some ideological debate demonstrating which speaker is \u201ctougher,\u201d who\u2019s more ready to use military force, who will come out on top during a talk show appearance or at a think-tank conference or on the floor of Congress.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sharing the Burden?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We should be honest about this reality, especially on Memorial Day. Pretending that the burden of war has been equitably shared, and worse still&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/AWCBlog\/~3\/nv838Rauumg\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How best to show respect for the U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their families on Memorial Day? Simple: Avoid euphemisms like \u201cthe fallen\u201d and expose the lies about what a great idea it was to start those wars in the first place and then to \u201csurge\u201d tens of thousands of more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2519,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-363087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}