Honoring the Fallen

Complete column continued below from the Big Horn County News Nov 17, 2010---

Honoring our Fallen

The courage of those who leave home and family to serve in the armed forces cannot be questioned. We must honor and respect their sacrifice for all of us. But it’s both morally reprehensible and economically foolish to shed human blood outside our borders unless we have examined carefully, honestly, and rigorously why we are doing it. We have, as a nation, neglected that quest. The primary purpose of honoring our fallen and wounded veterans should be restored: to find and follow better ways to combat the evil that besets our nation, ways that are far less prone to bloodshed.

Note last week’s release from the bipartisan presidential deficit commission:

“The arithmetic is compelling. This debt is like a cancer that will truly destroy this country from within if we don’t fix it.”

Totally omitted in the conversation is the $3,000,000,000,000.00 tab on our last wars, and the cost ticks on. But it ticks differently; we are not paying as we go, thanks to Republican tax breaks. Previous wars were paid as we went, through tax increases and bonds that distributed the burden throughout the citizenry, in the present. But in our recent wars, the financial sacrifice is postponed to future generations, and the blood sacrifice occurs now. That means our families get a double whammy in America for our humongous war making and debt hiding. It is by far the biggest drain on our economy and society, present and future. And it remains unexamined in the commercial media, government, politics, and private sector.

The commission is right on the debt. But wrong to ignore the trillions tumbling down the debt hole. And also wrong to ignore the long history of nations seeking empire-style world wide military control. They all collapsed economically and socially from within, with huge drains of resources and bloodletting in military campaigns without.

It seems our government has joined Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and the Axis in blundering distortions to sell our last three wars to the families of our own nation. Our families are the ones who desire to honor our nation as we honor our dead. And it’s our family members who can call our nation to a higher honoring of our lost loved ones:

Open the closed conversational box about the true cost of war.

Demand the truth of why we are asked to shed blood.

Bring to light the researched alternatives to mortal combat in each theater.

See our families as the economic foundation for our nation.

Found our national security on our traditional values instead of on our control of the world’s energy resources.

Study the waging of peace instead of war to bring security and vitality back to our nation.

God help us avoid the tragedy of past nations seeking the empire solution to security and economic woes! And God will help us, as we link with families of unfriendly nations who share with us our distrust for our government. It takes only a little research to find that the Tea Party hatred of our government pales in the face of many foreigners’ view of our government. Only by linking with those families, in nations where our government is distrusted or outright hated, can we begin addressing the root cause of mortal conflict and terrorism in our world today: loss of the means of human survival. And that’s economics. What drives our ambitions as a nation into self-destruction policies? Excessive profit. Good capitalism gone sinister. Check out this web link from the alternative media:

http://www.alternet.org/story/148786/

That’s why Jesus talked and walked economics more than prayer. That’s why today, honoring our fallen means pursuing the many options to mortal combat, including economics.

Back in the 60’s, I remember when our national ignorance of options to combat this world’s evil was the focus of Dr. Martin Luther King’s last speeches and campaign against the Viet Nam war. He founded this focus firmly and directly on his faith in Jesus. So it was Jesus, Dr. King’s example and Lord, who pioneered and practiced God’s Way for nations in his advocacy of those suffering from war and its associated economic and health deprivations. This advocacy is implied or explicit in nearly all his miracles of healing, and it led politicians to designate him, God’s Son, as enemy combatant. They had Jesus crucified AD 33 for sedition, as documented in the Gospels, and in Roman history (see Josephus, primary secular historian of ancient Rome in 1^st century Palestine wars).

Economics for waging peace instead of war has been the focus of many of our most able and talented national leaders.

Column continued below

from “Honoring our Fallen” in the Big Horn County News Nov 17, 2010---

Leading the effort to fill the information gap on alternatives to current wars is the organization “Veterans for Peace.” Many veteran memorial services nation wide this month have included information gathered by this organization. Many members are Christian veterans, with a sound Biblical basis for their peace efforts. (http://www.veteransforpeace.org/).

I cannot understand why we have a blackout on this discussion in the main media, both from the religious and the scientific research facets. The NY Times posted an opinion regretting this neglect. Unfortunately, Obama has kept to his promise not to “question our national defense” in his economic policy proposals. Now this is weird. Though hated personally by most Republicans, every member of his deficit commission, Republican and Democrat, has fallen in line rubberstamping his decision.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/politics/29war.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1)

Unless we spare no resource to employ our best and brightest in the quest for the more powerful alternatives in defense of our national security, we are doomed to unending warfare that will only stop when our resources are exhausted. That would come quickly for us were the Chinese, holding title to much of our trillions indebtedness, to demand repayment on loans we our citizens should be holding. This information is readily available from many news outlets. Just search “national debt China”

It’s foolish to degenerate our fine military tradition into the world’s secret police, guiding bombs from Colorado to destroy households in Afghanistan in order to assassinate one citizen who hates America It’s far better to use the many proven alternatives. We can hold our heads high with the values of fairness and compassion that founded this nation as we daily continue to honor our veterans. After all, they are our American families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/us/politics/29war.html?_r=1&nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1

I have on my shelf the complete speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King. Contact me if you would like to borrow some, or look them up on line. Here’s one:

http://www.mlkonline.net/vietnam.html

Senator Mark Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, is one among many of our national and Montana leaders who had the courage to pursue alternatives to the drumbeat of war to solve our problems

Now I'm not a pacifist, I'm not anti-military. I think there's a very legitimate, important role the military plays in our overall security. What I'm saying is until we see our national security made up of a number of components -- education, housing, diet, job opportunities, etc., etc. -- they're all part of our national security. But every president has been seduced into believing that you measure your national security by the megatons in your arsenal and ignore these people needs, the spiritual needs, and all the other parts that make up a total nation. I don't understand why that is so elusive in people's thinking.

(http://www.cdi.org/adm/1027/):

· See Nir Rosen’s new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World. An independent journalist, he has been covering the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this new book, he writes in length about Iraq, the U.S. occupation, the civil war, and how the war affected the broader Middle East, from Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. Rosen also writes about Afghanistan and his time unembedded with the Taliban, as well as the role of independent media and the failures of the U.S. press. Nir Rosen’s experience in Afghanistan parallels that of Greg Mortinson. See also his first book, Three Cups of Tea.

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David Graber
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org