Remembrance Day

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-10-14 1969-03-28 age:78)

Six reasons why I despise Remembrance Day

1. Remembrance Day is when everyone pretends there is no difference between the vets of WWI (World War I), WWII (World War II), Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq. They pretend the vets of our illegal aggressive (first strike) wars were identically motivated to those in WWII defending our homeland from attack. They refuse to acknowledge, even once, that those who aid or abetted any of the aggressive wars indeed committed a capital (death penalty) war crime. They refuse to acknowledge those who participated in the aggressive wars are even more guilty that those who fought for Hitler in WWII because today’s soldiers were much better informed than the Germans about the illegality and immorality of what they were doing. Unlike the Nazis, Canadian and American soldiers all eagerly volunteered to go half way around the world to Afghanistan (or Iraq) to hunt fellow humans who were no threat to them or their families. They were not pushed or threatened in any way. Just following orders is no excuse both because of Nuremberg and because nobody ordered them to enlist. They did not need a Hitler to lie to them. They lied to themselves to excuse their own sadistic behaviours. The public often excuse them on the grounds they are such losers they could not get another job. Does that also excuse those who sign up with the Mafia, another better paying hirer of would-be serial killers? The public refuses to acknowledge the unspeakably evil motivations and intentions of those soldiers who enlisted which had absolutely nothing to do with defence of home or democracy. They will believe any nonsense about what motivated those soldiers except the truth namely soldiers enlist because they like killing, bullying, hurting, torturing and/or sometimes sexually abusing children, women and/or men. It is obscene to speak of them in the same breath with the vets of WWII.
2. Remembrance day was created to remind future generations of just how horrible war is and that we must strive mightily to avoid a repeat. The next world war will be the last. But unscrupulous people, most notably Prime Minister Stephen Harper, have twisted it 180 degrees instead to glorify war, for various nefarious purposes such as excusing his deliberately wasteful military expenditures, hiding corruption and whitewashing the illegal Afghan war.
3. It is the day of the year when the media transform war into something Dickensian and heartwarming, something that brings out the best in people. All contrary voices are silenced. Everyone who died in any battle, even if they were a child rapist or a torturer, receives a temporary halo.
4. As at Christmas, I have to turn my radio off to escape the 24/7 kitsch and propaganda that swamps the holiday in maudlin treacle.
5. It glorifies the Canadian Legion, a band of drunken louts, thugs and war criminals who strut about like pigeons while everyone adulates them.
6. When it comes to the vets of the Afghan war, we are like Nazis celebrating our past victories and mourning our lack of success. It is utterly disgusting. The Afghan war is the most shameful chapter in Canadian history.

Why the Vets of the Afghan War Should Not Be Honoured

Vets of the Afghan war are war criminals, in the strict, literal, legal sense, who have all openly committed a capital crime, even if they just aided and abetted the war without killing anyone. Just as we do not fête admittedly guilty criminals on death row, we have no business honouring Afghan vets, alive or dead. We should treat them the same contempt we treat civilian child murderers and rapists.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

In WWI and WWII, Canadian, American and British men enlisted motivated to protect their countries which were under attack. That motive does not apply to the Afghan war because we attacked them first and they have no means to invade us. (Even George W. Bush said that the Taliban had no rôle whatsoever in 9/11.) So what possible motives could motivate men to enlist for the Afghan (or Iraq) wars?

1. They like killing and/or torturing people.
2. They like rape. They can rape men, women, children or animals without legal repercussions or public shame in Afghanistan.
3. They are such losers, even Walmart or McDonald’s won’t hire them. The military is the employer of last resort.
4. They have an conscious or unconscious suicide wish.
5. They are motivated like Crusaders of old, by bigotry to exterminate anyone of the Islamic faith or a dark skin.
6. The master/slave dominance/submission culture of the military turns them on something fierce.
7. They are clinically paranoid and fear Afghan goat herders hiding in their closets.

Can you think of any others? With motivation like that, it is obscene that so many treat Afghan vets as equally heroic as those who served in WWI or WWII.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nobody in the USA in one bit safer because of the war in Afghanistan.
~ Robert Greenwald (1945-08-28 age:72) director of Rethinking Afghanistan

My parents, who lived through WWII, told me that the whole point of Remembrance Day was to remind everyone just how horrible war is and that we must do whatever it takes to avoid repeating the folly.

However, unprincipled people like Prime Minister Harper, have twisted its purpose 180 degrees. He exploits it to glorify war and to celebrate hoary victories. His wants Canadians to permit him to divert billions of dollars to his backers for inappropriate or useless military hardware and illegal foreign wars. He hopes a general reverence for war will help him do that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

I get angry with the Remembrance day poppies and the endless lugubrious TV commercials glorifying soldiers. What are doing is Pavlovian conditioning. They are trying to transfer the worship of WWI and WWII vets to the war criminals of today involved in the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The motivations of today’s soldiers are quite different from yesteryear. Today’s soldiers are mostly would be serial killers, bigots, sadists, rapists and child molesters who have calculated they can get away with their crimes and get paid for it if they just enlist.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

If you ask a Canadian or an American Was Hitler’s invasion of Poland legal?,
a history buff might respond: Participating in an aggressive [first strike] war, is a capital [death penalty] war crime. That’s why we tried and hanged the Nazi leaders at the end of WWII including the bureaucrats who issued orders but did not kill anyone personally. We even went after Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, but the coward killed himself before we could hang him. They did lots of other terrible stuff, but we nailed them all with the exact same charge, aiding and abetting an aggressive war.
Or they might say: It might not have been legal, but it certainly was wrong.
However, if you ask them: Was it legal for Canada and America to invade Afghanistan?
they will answer: Why not?
You point out: The Afghan invasion too was an aggressive war. We attacked them first, remember? It was illegal for Hitler, but OK for us? Really?
They might respond: They had it coming. They attacked us on 9/11.
You correct them: Not even Bush claimed the Taliban had anything to do with 9/11. He blamed Osama bin Laden, a Saudi and Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. He did not implicate even a single Afghan citizen in any way. You are conflating the Taliban and Al Qaeda just because they are both Muslims. They are not even both Arab.
They respond Of course, It’s legal if we do it. We attack others for damn good reasons! We’re not like those damn Muslim ragheads who kill you for no reason at all!
You query: Tell me again. Why did Bush attack Afghanistan?
They reply: Because the Taliban refused to catch bin Laden and hand him over for trial. Americans don’t need no steekin’ extradition hearing or extradition treaty.
You observe: Yeah, but that was a pretty unreasonable demand. It took Bush and Obama 9 years, 6 months and 26 days between them to nail bin Laden after you guys had occupied Afghanistan.
They ask: So who’s gonna prosecute us?
You explain: Granted so long as the USA is the #1 superpower, it will shield American and Canadian citizens from prosecution in the World Court, but how long can you count on that? And granted, if you are just a small fish, no one would bother coming after you, unless, of course, you were one the guys who went overboard on torture and rape. Whether waging aggressive war is legal has nothing to do with the probability of escaping prosecution for it. That is like claiming bank robbing is legal just because you have the crown prosecutor in your pocket and you will likely never go to jail yourself for robbing banks.
They typically terminate the argument with a cogent ad hominem: Commie traitor! I hope you die of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) you fucking fag!
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Not a single general or politician has expressed concern the Taliban or the Iraqis will chase the US or Canadian soldiers back home if troops withdraw. Why are they so sure?

• The Afghans did not chase the Russians home when they withdrew.
• Neither the Afghans or the Iraqis have any equipment or money to mount an invasion.
• We started the fight, not the Iraqis and Afghans. They just want us off their backs. It would be madness to finally expel us then restart the war.
• Canada and the USA have overwhelming resources to repel an attack.

So where do soldiers get off claiming they are killing kids in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect the freedom of Americans and Canadians? That is a monstrous lie. They are killing them because they enjoy killing. The US and Canada fund their mayhem because they want the natural resources in Iraq and Afghanistan. These soldiers are not heroes. They are, to a man, war criminals because aiding or abetting an aggressive (first strike) war is a capital (death penalty) offence. They do not deserve to be honoured on Remembrance Day.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A soldier is a professional who hunts and kills humans of all ages and sexes. He is employed by a government. He is motivated primarily by sadism. A hit man is a professional killer who executes primarily criminals and business owners who refuse to pay protection. He is employed by organised crime. He is motivated primarily by money. The soldier is the more odious because of his choice of victim.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Instead of John McCrae’s maudlin In Flanders Fields, how about an honest war poem to commemorate the day?

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

~ Wilfred Owen (1893-03-18 1918-11-04 age:25) Dulce Et Decorum Est

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is Latin for sweet and honourable it is to die for one’s country.

WWII

There was no Sacrifice

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
~ George S. Patton (1885-11-11 1945-12-21 age:60), General

It is not right to accuse those WWII soldiers of sacrificing their lives. They had no intent of sacrificing their lives. They wanted the enemy to lose their lives. If North American soldiers died in the process, that was just the breaks — not something done deliberately like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots.

Dishonourable Wars

Remembrance day each year becomes more elaborate and more maudlin. The governments of the USA use to whitewash the national shames of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars by trying to trick the populace into conflating those who enlisted to go fight in Iraq out of a personal sense of adventure and sadism with those in WWII who were truly defending their country.

collecting opium from poppies in Afghanistan

collecting opium from poppies in Afghanistan

The proper symbol for those who partook in the Afghan war in the opium poppy. Canada, (with a little help from Britain and the USA) installed the biggest drug lord on the planet, Hamid Karzai as leader of Afghanistan. He took heroin production from almost nothing to the #1 spot, producing $1 trillion worth a year, more than all the world’s junkies could consume. So they started selling the excess as cheese, cheap orange heroin, to elementary school kids in the southern US.

Fêting Evil

For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
~ Matthew 26:52

Anachronism

Remembrance day snubs society’s true heroes, the police, the firefighters, the rescue workers and their families who give up so much on a moment’s notice. They are the ones with the true motivation to serve.

The Canadian Legion

The Canadian Legion is one of my least favourite institutions. Why?

• It managed to trademark the poppy and has been throwing its weight around threatening to sue little old ladies knitting poppies and war protesters wearing white poppies. Trademarking the poppy is as absurd as trademarking the rose, the pumpkin or the Christmas tree.
• Its only quasi-legitimate functions are providing pubs with lax drinking law enforcement in areas that cannot financially support a commercial pub and hosting a monthly meat lottery.
• It glorifies war with grotesquely maudlin and syrupy propaganda trying to convince us that all dead soldiers even psychopaths who raped and tortured children in the illegal Afghanistan war are glorious heroes.

Either End or Transform Remembrance Day

When I was 15, Mr. MacKenzie, the high school principal, asked me to deliver a speech for Remembrance Day to the at the school assembly. The text was a revolting maudlin document. It had been read verbatim every year for decades. I did not want to do this, but back then, there was no way to refuse the principal. He told me, Whatever you do, don’t lose this speech. It is the only copy. I smiled inwardly. I delivered the speech as commanded, but somehow mislaid the paper, saving subsequent generations of students from being subjected to it. You too can protest in your own quiet way.

And he shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
~ Isaiah 2:4

CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news asked people to send it photos of the casualties of war they have been remembering. Most people sent photos of ancestors they had never met. I sent the photo below. Of course, they did not post it because it portrays war as suffering and brutality rather than romantic sepia photographs and sweet sad thoughts of love that might have been. And further, the casualty is one of our victims, not one of us. The photo is not cropped. The entire upper half of the corpse the soldiers are holding up, like a hunting trophy, is missing. Again sending such a photo is a quiet protest to the suffocating media hypocrisy surrounding Remembrance Day.

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