1
The rest / Re: US intervention in foreign lands
« on: February 11, 2019, 09:41:13 AM »
Scheer Intelligence has a very goot interview with Ron Kovic and Danny Sjursen. Ron Kovic is the man who is depicted in the Oliver Stone film "Born on the Fourth of July."
Sjursen: " And I would submit that between Vietnam and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in one sense we, the collective we, this society has learned very little, and made some of the same mistakes. But then in another sense, the foreign policy elites have learned something rather profound. "
"the foreign policy elite, the militarists who run this government, learned a different lesson. And the lesson they learned is that if you conscript people, if you draft people, if you bring the American people along into a war, then there might be protests. There might be people who turn against that war when the time comes. But if you send a small group of volunteers over, and over, and over again, even to fruitless wars that are not in our national security interests—like Iraq, like Afghanistan, like Syria—you can maintain a war endlessly. "
"I went to Iraq first and then Afghanistan—really shattered those illusions that America was a humanitarian force for good. Instead, in Iraq, I saw us shatter a society that went into a civil war, in addition to attacking us. And watched how we had just completely destroyed that country through our ill-advised invasion. And then in Afghanistan, I found an unwinnable war that was probably more similar to Vietnam than the Iraq War was, in the sense that it turned out that all the Afghans were not Americans secretly waiting to jump out of their skins. They didn’t want the American version of government, and they did not see us as legitimate. "
"What I really saw was the results of American messianism in the world, of American exceptionalism, the notion that we could remake societies in our own image. What it really meant was a whole lot of dead children, a whole lot of car bombs, a whole lot of teenagers shooting each other in the night. And then of course, a whole lot of Americans getting killed as well, although less of us than the Iraqis. When I went to Afghanistan three years later, I no longer had any faith in the wars; I was just a professional. "
"what I found there was slightly different from Iraq. It wasn’t so much a civil war as it was a mass insurgency that we were never going to break. And it turns out, we only held the ground we stood on, which probably sounds very familiar to Mr. Kovic. "
Kovic: " I and other veterans who opposed that war [Vietnam] during that time, in the late sixties and early seventies, we knew that every day was important in trying to save lives. We were here back at home, we had come back from the war, but we knew how important it was that we protest that war, do everything possible to speak out until our voices were raw, against that war. And I remember, you know, sitting behind bars; I hated it, I didn’t like—I was already in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, and here I was inside of a jail cell. It wasn’t fun. But all I could think of was, whatever it takes, you know, to stop this war. I had been inspired while in the hospital by Martin Luther King and others. And I knew that that war that I had fought in and sacrificed in was wrong, and we had to do everything possible, and it was hurting my country deeply as well."
Sjursen: " When I was put in front of those cadets and asked to teach American history in the normal patriotic lens, I couldn’t do it. And I think that was the breaking point. And at that point, I decided to do what Ron Kovic decided to do, which is to speak out every day to try to minimize the number of Americans that die in these wars. And that’s where I’m at now, and I wish it would have happened sooner for me, but I can’t go back and change that. All I can do now is bring a new version of patriotism, and that is dissent against meaningless, harmful wars."
The whole article is very, very worth reading:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-great-con-of-american-patriotism/
sidd
Sjursen: " And I would submit that between Vietnam and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in one sense we, the collective we, this society has learned very little, and made some of the same mistakes. But then in another sense, the foreign policy elites have learned something rather profound. "
"the foreign policy elite, the militarists who run this government, learned a different lesson. And the lesson they learned is that if you conscript people, if you draft people, if you bring the American people along into a war, then there might be protests. There might be people who turn against that war when the time comes. But if you send a small group of volunteers over, and over, and over again, even to fruitless wars that are not in our national security interests—like Iraq, like Afghanistan, like Syria—you can maintain a war endlessly. "
"I went to Iraq first and then Afghanistan—really shattered those illusions that America was a humanitarian force for good. Instead, in Iraq, I saw us shatter a society that went into a civil war, in addition to attacking us. And watched how we had just completely destroyed that country through our ill-advised invasion. And then in Afghanistan, I found an unwinnable war that was probably more similar to Vietnam than the Iraq War was, in the sense that it turned out that all the Afghans were not Americans secretly waiting to jump out of their skins. They didn’t want the American version of government, and they did not see us as legitimate. "
"What I really saw was the results of American messianism in the world, of American exceptionalism, the notion that we could remake societies in our own image. What it really meant was a whole lot of dead children, a whole lot of car bombs, a whole lot of teenagers shooting each other in the night. And then of course, a whole lot of Americans getting killed as well, although less of us than the Iraqis. When I went to Afghanistan three years later, I no longer had any faith in the wars; I was just a professional. "
"what I found there was slightly different from Iraq. It wasn’t so much a civil war as it was a mass insurgency that we were never going to break. And it turns out, we only held the ground we stood on, which probably sounds very familiar to Mr. Kovic. "
Kovic: " I and other veterans who opposed that war [Vietnam] during that time, in the late sixties and early seventies, we knew that every day was important in trying to save lives. We were here back at home, we had come back from the war, but we knew how important it was that we protest that war, do everything possible to speak out until our voices were raw, against that war. And I remember, you know, sitting behind bars; I hated it, I didn’t like—I was already in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, and here I was inside of a jail cell. It wasn’t fun. But all I could think of was, whatever it takes, you know, to stop this war. I had been inspired while in the hospital by Martin Luther King and others. And I knew that that war that I had fought in and sacrificed in was wrong, and we had to do everything possible, and it was hurting my country deeply as well."
Sjursen: " When I was put in front of those cadets and asked to teach American history in the normal patriotic lens, I couldn’t do it. And I think that was the breaking point. And at that point, I decided to do what Ron Kovic decided to do, which is to speak out every day to try to minimize the number of Americans that die in these wars. And that’s where I’m at now, and I wish it would have happened sooner for me, but I can’t go back and change that. All I can do now is bring a new version of patriotism, and that is dissent against meaningless, harmful wars."
The whole article is very, very worth reading:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-great-con-of-american-patriotism/
sidd