My feelings and thoughts on the U.S. military are hard to write about. Yesterday's Atlantic article about Mafia Mulligan's many insults to dead and living soldiers made me want to try to sort them out.
I have not been in the military. My dad was a Marine in the early 1950s and was on a ship to Korea when the armistice was signed. Instead, he ended up on a base in Japan just in case the peace fell apart, but never was in battle. He did, however, have to be on the front line of a U.S. nuclear test in Nevada.
One of my nephews was in the Army in Iraq and his brother was in the Army Reserves, serving a tour in Iraq and then later Afghanistan. Neither brother was physically injured but each has emotional damage. I think it's fair to say they both signed up at least in part to get access to educational benefits. Another nephew is a currently serving Army lieutenant, having joined through ROTC. He's active-duty but not in an active combat unit. But nephews are not yourself, or your child. I know I don't know what that feels like.
I don't believe in an Israeli-style draft, and I don't believe in the current economically exploitative "volunteer" recruitment system we have in the U.S. either. As you might expect, I don't want our existing military industrial complex to exist at all. I'm kind of with Dwight Eisenhower on that. If I had my druthers, I'd go back to the Founding Fathers' idea of not having a standing military at all, but I have no idea how to get to that in our current worldwide geopolitical situation.
I'm angry that women in the military are not safe from their supposed comrades in arms. And that men are sexually assaulted by other men as well. And that there is a culture of silence and the chain of command is used to suppress all of this.
I'm afraid that some unknown number of current military service members are being recruited into white supremacist organizations.
I know that veterans who served in combat zones almost always have PTSD and other conditions and our country is responsible for helping them, even though we shouldn't have put them in that situation in the first place, especially because we shouldn't have put them in that situation in the first place. (See how that's consistent with the idea of reparations?) I know that veterans are disproportionately represented among the homeless, so housing the homeless will help veterans most of all.
But I gag at all the symbolic genuflection to the military and veterans that has become required in politics over the last few decades. It rings hollow to me when soldiers are sent off, seemingly willy-nilly, to defend oil. I'm pretty firmly in the "Support the Troops, Bring Them Home" school of thought, I would say.
Remember the Peace Dividend? Yeah, there should have been one, but that didn't work for big business.
All of that said, the part of the Atlantic article that made me the most outraged was this:
On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery... He was accompanied...by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security... The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
I honor the dead and wounded, especially if I'm standing in a cemetery. I honor service and the bond that soldiers feel for each other. Clearly, Mulligan feels none of that.
I felt like I wanted to start to get this down in words after reading this from Jared Yates Sexton. I know I'm not being very coherent. It's just some thoughts.
Here's what Jared had to say:
Donald Trump and wealthy elites on the Right have always spouted shallow, surface-level, insincere praise for soldiers while cutting their benefits, throwing them into meaningless wars for profit, and viewing them as disposable guards of their power and fortunes.
For decades we have watched the Right wrap themselves in faux-patriotism, the meaninglessness of flags and symbols, and rabidly attack the Left as traitors, all while using our military and tax dollars to help their own business interests.
It’s a scam. It’s always been a scam.
What Trump has done is make clear the “patriotism” of the Right was never real. It was a cudgel. A lie told to advance their political and economic interests. It’s always been hollow and it’s always reeked of opportunism and fascism.
It’s time to move beyond it.
The Right hides behind the rhetoric of faux-patriotism because it’s a winning strategy. It scorches political discourse, breeds conspiracy theories and fascism, but it taps into the poisonous myths of America. It’s a lie, a toxic lie. And it will destroy us if we don’t reject it.
Flags are meaningless. Songs are meaningless. They’re symbols that only exist to represent something real. The Right is just peddling hollow symbols for power and profit and selling it as patriotism. It’s not. It’s narcissism and fascism dressed in star-spangled robes.
What Donald Trump said about veterans and soldiers who have died is what the Right has been saying and thinking for years. It's the worldview that there is a strict hierarchy, with the wealthy and powerful at the top and a bunch of suckers, losers, and dupes there to serve them.
In closing, I'll just mention two things: one of my favorite organizations, Veterans for Peace, which has an active chapter in the Twin Cities and is often seen at demonstrations on a wide range of topics (the climate crisis and stopping pipelines and Black Lives Matter are two that come to mind), and the recently published book I Ain't Marchin' Anymore: Soldiers Who Dissent, 1754–2008, by Chris Lombardi. Being a soldier or a veteran doesn't mean just one thing.
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