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So they lie to you. Constantly.
People often counter this notion by pointing at World War 2, about which a case for the possibility of heroism in war can indeed be made. But the fact that this argument needs to reach back 73 years to the very brink of living memory in order to find a justifiable US war tells you everything you need to know about the weakness of that argument. Since 1945, when human civilization looked completely different and America itself was still an apartheid state, we have seen the US military spread around the globe, collapse nations, and butcher millions upon millions of people, all at the expense of the lives of US military personnel, and all without just cause.
The people whose lives have been used like Kleenex and discarded by the US war machine did not die for a good cause. They did not die fighting for freedom or democracy. They are not heroes. They are victims.
We need to talk about this. The way we can be shamed into silence for saying such things is truly toxic, because it prevents us from addressing the very real problem that the United States starts unjust wars constantly and spends soldiers' lives like pennies. It probably is nice for the families of war victims to tell themselves comforting stories about how their loved one died fighting to make the world a better place, and normally I'd be happy to let them harbor that personal fantasy without saying anything to disrupt it, but people are dying here. Human lives are more important than the psychological comfort of those who would prefer to lie to themselves, whether it's a grieving widow or just someone who doesn't like thinking about how evil their government is.
Many of the men and women who fight and die advancing the depraved agendas of America's unelected power establishment do so with good intentions. Many of them honestly, sincerely believe that they are forces of good in the world. But the longer we allow the delusion to continue that US military personnel are participating in something heroic, the longer we are necessarily perpetuating the delusion that acts of US military aggression are good and noble, and the more of these people will be needlessly killed, wounded and psychologically destroyed while enacting the corrupt will of evil people.
The correct response to news of a US serviceman or woman dying in combat is not gratitude and patriotism. The correct response is rage at the people who put them in harm's way. The longer we continue pretending that their deaths are a glorious, noble sacrifice and not an unforgivable outrage, the longer those flag-draped coffins will keep flying home.
General Wesley Clark's revelation has been coming true, but not in quite the way it was spelled out for him. The 9/11 attacks gave rise to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which has enabled the United States to build up a military presence inside the borders of any nation deemed to have terrorists in it, which has in turn been made much easier as the regime change destabilization inflicted upon places like Iraq and Libya have caused terrorism to run rampant and widespread.
The violence in Somalia has continued largely because of a US destabilization campaign. Now it is full of US troops, and its president is a dual US citizen from Buffalo, New York.
US troops shouldn't be there. US troops shouldn't be anywhere but the US. People join the military with the understanding that they are doing it to protect and serve their country, not that their lives will be needlessly placed in harm's way securing the belt of oligarchic imperialism. It's time to stop pretending that globalist military expansionism and neoconservative power grabbing is a heroic cause to serve, and begin calling it what it is: the depraved misuse of a defense force that is causing the needless, meaningless deaths of human beings.
And it's time to start getting angry about it.
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