Just a harmless theoretical scenario.
Let’s imagine that the worst fears of many liberal conspiracy theorists come true. A staged terrorist attack leads to a fascist coup, and in the confusion Dick Cheney becomes President of the United States. Of course, not everybody takes this lying down, so Cheney turns the military and police directly against the people of America. Civil war. Within a couple of years, a million Americans are dead– about two thirds of them adult men, the other third women and children. Millions more are injured, maimed, or shell-shocked by the destruction of all they held dear; roaming the land, squatting in burnt out suburbs, dispossessed, starving, homeless. Bodies of the dead line the highways.
After a while, the situation stabilizes some. Cheney steps down, but his neocon coterie still control the guns. Quasi-democratic elections resume, but the winning parties always serve at the pleasure of the military. Resistance and even peaceful dissent is dealt with mercilessly, with imprisonment and torture, er, ‘enhanced interrogation’ of the offending parties. There are frequent whispers of rape and race-driven arrests, and the only judicial oversight is in the form of rubber stamp kangaroo courts.
If you were a civilian in a situation like this, would you be one to “Support the Troops”? If people you knew had been killed by the military? Friends? Your parents? Your children?
After all, it’s not any individual soldier’s fault what they are commanded to do. And many of them, as young men and women, had no other path forward out of economic misery. A large percentage joined up before the military coup and thought they were just going to be defending their own country in a more traditional manner. Perhaps you have friends or family who are soldiers, not just victims. Does it really do any harm to attend parades celebrating the troops? To simultaneously wear black armbands to remember the dead, and yellow ribbons to give moral reassurance to the ones who killed them?
Let’s leave fantasy land and come back to reality. The real question is: Does revering the troops no matter what only serve to uphold the status quo?
If not, why not?
There is something that bothers me slightly on this post, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. After all, I was being careful not to confuse an amorphous support of “The Troops” and with support for individual people who are soldiers.
Maybe it’s because, in a post named “Memorial Day”, I seem to have missed the point of the occasion, which is to remember the dead, right?
But really, I haven’t. I am not at all meaning to say “Don’t remember the dead soldiers”, but rather “Do remember the soldiers– and remember everyone else, too.”
Ah, and with that I believe I’ve put my finger on it. I have no problem with revering the troops; I think we should. Because I want us to revere everyone. It’s when we are selective with our reverence that the problems begin.
Revere the dead. All of them. The soldiers, the victims, the soldier victims, the women, the children, the men. If we all, as Americans, thought of all of them, and wept for all of them, and put up monuments to all of them… Well, once again, I’ve invented a fantasy land.
But one that’s nice to imagine.
I sometimes wonder if we’re doing this wrong, on Memorial day, as if we’re glorifying the dead as opposed to remembering. War is disgusting and tragic, but instead of showing that, we get nice speeches about heroics and people decked out in dress uniforms and colorful ribbons. I sometimes wonder if it shouldn’t be speeches about filth and disease, and people should wear muddy fatigues.
My sister recently joined the National Guard and I’ve been waiting to see if my opinion would change, if I would start to become knee-jerk supportive out of deference to my sister/fear of my sister’s death. But if anything, I was even more pissed off on Memorial Day because I will want my sister alive and making moral decisions more than I would ever want an anonymous holiday in honor of her wasted life after a few months/years of doing horrendous things to other people.
Nice idea, Antigone. I also liked the suggestion that we spend the day rolling a boulder up a hill to watch it roll down again, over and over, until we drop. Me, as I said, I think it would the perfect time to meditate on all of the victims of war.
Rachel, here’s hoping your sister stays on the domestic end of things.