Whom Should We Honor On Memorial Day?
By A D Hemming
27 May, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Whom should all in the United States honor this Memorial Day
with our highest praise and dedication? How about those who
fought with some giving even their lives for the zeitgeist or
spirit of the 1770s in that war for independence which actually
created this country with the most basic of its principles capturing
the essence of what this country is at its best.
What then is the essence of that zeitgeist and the best and likely the
universal for all time best of what the USA should be? Is it not the
resolute opposition to militarism and imperialism and for keeping
“civil power superior to military power” as the Declaration of
Independence demands? That’s where many including this writer
would start.
Thus some would contend that those who fought in that war for
independence or war of national liberation creating this country
would be one. Another some would insist be the War of 1812.
Then add to that the First and Second World War for others
as well as the US Civil War.
For a sound of said zeitgeist here’s this put to music.
With the revolution which created the new country and was clearly
as Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence said one of
fighting militarism and imperialism and making civil power superior
for all time to military power. Thus this should be a no brainer.
The War of 1812 then was one brought on and fought over the
British navy’s press ganging of US seaman off unarmed US
ships on the open seas forcing them to fight for the militarism
and imperialism of that empire based in London against France
in the “Napoleonic Wars’ as the winning side called it and was
thus clearly against a most egregious militarism and imperialism
which the Sun eventually never sat on with its butcher’s wrapper
for a flag.
The First World War is problematic for some give the imperialism
of such states as Britain and France on the US side. But the more
vicious militarism and imperialism documented to have resulted in
the rape of nuns and the destruction of a Catholic learning sanctuary
in Belgium by the German empire’s war machine in Anthony Cave
Brown’s biography of William J “Wild Bill” Donovan. Add to that the
sinking on the high seas of unarmed ships by the German empire’s
submarines on a routine basis after a certain stage which would make
dozens if not hundreds of 9/11s make it a militarism and imperialism
which any country worth its salt would have to stand up to which in
no way exonerates the government in the US capital for its repression
of those simply protesting against such a war or otherwise opposing
it. This can’t be in the least. Toi honor those fighting militarism and
imperialism should never be a rationale for oppressing those dissenting
from that action and policy no matter how vocal. Eugene Debs and others
such as he sure didn’t deserve incarceration for simply advancing their
opinions. Debs was a very decent man and other dissenters were
likewise decent folks. They surely wanted a world free of the worst of
militarism and imperialism.
The US Civil War would also be one to honor those fighting for the
USA as it was a case of honoring keeping cvil power superior to the
military power of those cutting loose with blasts of artillery at Ft
Sumter.
Now when we come to the Second World War, it becomes less of any
kind of problem to honor those putting all on the line against the worst
form of militarism and imperialism ever in history and even to this date
as well as threat to the very survival of any shred of civil power being
superior to military power ever again had the Third Reich and its
junior partners prevailed in that war. The loss of at minimum 60 million
and over 30 million non combatants killed, with at least of 12 million of
these Russian nationals by the Hilterite gang shows the horror of militarism
and imperialism and absolute threat to all civilization itself that the Third
Reich “master race” psychopaths and gangster stooges for “Satan (Adolph
Hitler as Henry Wallace referred to him) operating in the human form.” An
insane fascist and racist who “set loose upon us the insane” as Wallace put
it so aptly.
This right here shows a bit of the insanity of the Nazi gangster tyranny arrayed
against us.
All other wars and military actions likely don’t qualify with maybe an exception
here or there in history. But not one war or actual military action other than
that carried out as part of the occupation of Germany to fight off a Nazi
underground movement which Perry Biddescombe, a Canadian historian
highly praised by the BBC has revealed went on until at least 1947 with
these mad loonies for the Third Reich blowing up and shooting hundreds
if not thousands of US, B ritish, and other allied occupying troops to death.
But this really was more an extension of the Second World War itself. The
US and allied occupation troops fight against this insane Nazi movement
is revealed here.
Wars the USA fought against the indigenous people largely dishonor the whole
concept of fighting against militarism and imperialism and also seem to put the
whole idea of military power being superior to civil power back into the picture
while adding the the madness in later years of genocide and this is especially
true in the last third of the 19th Century. No honor in this in the least!
AD Hemming, who has been an activist for progressive causes
since the early 1960s, has been a researcher, poet, journalist,
historian and got his feet wet as a progressive in the civil rights
movement in US South as a teenager and who identifies as black
and provides a perspective of a person of color from the US South.
A D Hemmoing is a pseudonym used by this writer on a regular basis.
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