What I Meant When I Said "Serve"

[unhappycamper]

What I Meant When I Said "Serve"
by Daniel Joseph Black
Tue, 07/03/2007 - 10:13pm


I concur completely with David Kalbfleish’s post, “‘Why did you join?!’” but wish to elaborate on a few of his points.

When, at the tender age of 17 years and 2 days, I swore to defend this country with everything up to and including my life, I had in mind the values and pride instilled in me throughout a 13 year career of public education. I believed that two short centuries ago, the Declaration of Independence established the freest state the world had known, and that state’s citizens’ rights were established and protected by the Constitution, a people’s victory without historical precedent. Relinquishing the very statutes outlined in that sacred document was the farthest thing from my thoughts. The ranks of brave and heroic individuals I was about to join had wrestled for themselves freedom and independence from an oppressive imperial empire by driving them off this continent and back across the Atlantic by means of force, and so I took the oath.

I could not have imagined that just three short years later, I’d become the component of an oppressive imperial empire attempting to wrestle freedom and independence from ranks of brave and heroic individuals who, in turn, were trying to drive me off their continent and back across the Atlantic by means of force. From retrospective meditation, I came to understand that our forefathers’ generation, the very generation that inspired me into military service, had so much in common with the insurgents that our generation gunned down. The only difference is the home team will probably lose this fight because of the stubbornness of their invaders, a stubbornness our leadership is able to maintain because of the moral disengagement of our people. With all the hostile and unintelligible rhetoric that’s come to characterize this issue, proclaiming mutual humanity with Iraqis, as I have done above, is regarded as collusion, treason. Proclaiming so only emboldens war supporters with a heightened sense of self-righteousness and licenses them to continue because they’ve discovered “new enemies.” The voices of skepticism and devil’s advocacy, so indispensable a component of any authentically democracatic process, are shunted aside by the mantras of national groupthink, even when these voices come from those who themselves defend the democratic society.

So we’re enmeshed in this cruel irony of “the oath.” This very oath, along with “the contract” each of us signed, has ossified into our prewritten epitaph. Simply by our agreement to serve in uniform, we’d resigned our privilege to protest; any hope or desire we have for sympathy or attentive ears from the patriotic war-loving few that still cling to Bush’s underbelly are surrendered, ipso facto.

That the original justification for going to war has repeatedly been falsified is irrelevant; if the truth mattered at all, it would have enabled meaningful change a long time ago. These individuals, so predisposed to antagonize our resistance, must be understood as unreachable by rational arguments or civil dialogue. Their continued support for this war, and the subsequent contempt and scorn that they heap upon us, derives not from reasoned politics but merely from patriotism so entrenched and indomitable it might be more accurately termed “religion.” This ideation of the noble fight: us unconditionally good Americans against those incorrigibly evil guys; is alarming in its theistic overtones. It is, quite clearly to me, a pathology, a sickness of the mind, to so unreservedly and cheerfully support a campaign crafted and executed by a war criminal who claims to act on orders received from his god.

The evidence against Bush, Cheney, et. al. has been comprehensively gathered, copiously presented, published and republished time and again for years. I feel that we are past these phases of our work. It is safe to assume that anyone who still reproaches an anti-war activist, as happened to David and presumably many others, does not do so because they are responsible, conscientious citizens but were, for the past few weeks while the horrific truth was unearthed, coincidentally out of town and out of touch. Although it isn’t clear to me what strategy we ought to implement next, I feel confident saying that the ones that have failed from the beginning to yield results will probably not work in the future either. While this perspective is admittedly discouraging, I believe it is worthy of our reflection, nevertheless; I think on it frequently, myself, though I don’t despair.


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[jody]

1. Military personnel are the only employees in the U.S. who are prevented by law from resigning their

jobs upon threat of punishment including execution in some circumstances.

I understand the need for that policy when congress actually represents the people and declares war to defend our great nation but I find that policy abhorrent when a corrupt president and do-nothing congress order a soldier to Iraq for a fifth tour. It really galls me when only a few of those elected politicians have served in the military nor will their relatives and friends.

[TahitiNut]

2. That's why 'We The People' MUST assert our sovereignty. That's OUR job.

Anyone who serves is placing their civil liberties in escrow - in the custody of their countrymen. That's the sacred trust. The "buck" REALLY stops at the feet of the people and nobody else. When we deny our responsibility and wallow in blame and finger-pointing, we're merely postponing the inevitable: a final accounting of our political will.

If it's a Bad Thing that so few "elected politicians have served in the military" -- and I agree that it is -- it's an equally Bad Thing that so few citizens have done so ... or even contemplate it.