Veterans of War Crimes

Today the corporate news sources are assuring us that President Barack Obama is going to okay sending yet another gang of well-armed U.S. murderers to Afghanistan. Using weapons that the Afghan people can't afford, they will try to impose U.S. will on Afganistan. Three years ago a majority of Americans wanted to end the war, and voted in a Democratic Party majority in Congress. Then they elected a Democratic Party hack as President in 2008. Now instead of being hopping mad at their betrayal, they are rationalizing the war crime that is U.S. aggression in Afghanistan. Now it is a Democratic Party war. Now it is okay.

The military-industrial complex understands this process very well. They needed a Democratic Party President in order to continue their lucrative and vainglorious wars. The party machinery quickly narrowed the choices in the Presidential primaries to two: Obama and his now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Heads we win, tails you lose.

Democracy in America is a farce and the Democratic Party is the longest-running part of that farce. It was founded by slave-trading, indian-killing, dog-fighting Andrew Jackson, a greedy lunatic who killed anyone who disagreed with him. He once ordered a sixteen year old boy executed for refusing to salute him.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are far slicker than Andrew Jackson, but they are basically in the same mold. Their job is to do the dirty work of the ruling class while pretending to represent working class people.

The U.S. has no just cause of war against Afghanistan. The former Afgan government did not invade the U.S. or any of its possessions, the only just causes of war. Perhaps it harbored fugitives from U.S. justice, but there is absolutely no precedent for refusing extradition being a cause of war. The U.S. refuses extradition all the time. When a U.S. citizen commits mayhem abroad, especially in the service of the U.S. government, we never hand him over for his just punishment.

I know of no war in American history in which the U.S. had a just cause for entering it, though the beginnings of some wars were murkier than others. That statement may shock most American citizens, but I can stand by it with detailed factual and ethical information in a debate. In other essays at this site I have detailed some of the wars where my statement is most open to attack, like World War I and World War II. As to the War of 1812, it was a war of aggression with the intent to seize Canada. The Revolutionary War was largely about maintaining slavery and invading native American Indian lands. Few honest historians would argue that the Mexican War and the Spanish-American war were anything other than naked agression by the U.S.

When you meet a U.S. military veteran, you meet a war criminal. Of course most don't want to think of themselves that way. Everyone from Private Smith to Commander in Chief Obama has some reason why they are not a war criminal. Obama's reasoning is probably complex and sophisticated. Lower down the rationalization is "we were attacked first" (never true in U.S. history) or the standard, "I was just following orders."

We claim to be a land of individualists, but this is just another big lie, repeated incessantly. We are a nation of people who follow orders.

We are a nation of war criminals. Even I am a war criminal, because I know what is wrong, and do little about it except write an occasional rant.

To change we must admit to what we are. At the age of 14 I could not understand why we did not just obliterate North Vietnam with nuclear weapons. Had I been a few years older, I might have joined the Marines just to get away from my parents, and participated in the war. I was lucky there was an anti-war movement at the time that had an impact on me before I enlisted.