Remembrance Day

full text: http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/t/33093.aspx

I wonder what the dead of war would say, if they stayed past their demise, and wheeled around the fading battlefield like invisible kites of regret. I wonder what they would say - the hundreds of millions slaughtered by swords and bombs and guns, vaporized into shadows on broken walls, ground into jam beneath the curled feet of tanks - I wonder what they would say to us? I wonder what they said to themselves, in their last moments, before their eyeballs bled from the crushing weight of war descending upon their lives.

I wonder if all the words that herded them like bitter vacant shepherds off the cliff edge of death - I wonder if those words evaporated just before their lives did? All the words like - patriotism, nationalism, religion, country... soldier. I wonder if all of the words that wrapped around them like a strangling anaconda mummy tape flew away from them before they died, and revealed only the sand - the dead sand - of nonexistence. I wonder if they realized, just before they died, that they were going to go the way of the words that led them to their graves, the words that did not exist, that made them not exist... The countries that do not exist, the patriotism - that is to live on bended knee to violent masters - the class that does not exist, that led them to lay down their lives for nothing, for rulers emptier than the words that hung them. And I wonder what they would say, if they could still fly above the ruin of the world that smashed them - and that they smashed... I wonder what they would say, as they saw all of these ghastly, deadly, empty, strangling words - still roaming the human landscape, still slithering like spindly, spiderly snakes through the books and teachers and priests and parents and lies and media and print of this world... The words like, 'honor' - the words like: 'medal' - the words, not that they had been ground out by the empty illusions of their elders, but that they had 'fallen,' like a toppling domino that was a human being...
I wonder what they would think of the music played for the dead, who died from words... I wonder what they would think of the tears of the people who stood by their graves; the tears of those whose agony at their loss went as deep and as wide as a bloody ocean. I wonder what they would think of the tears of the people who cried their graves, the people who did not move heaven and earth to stop them from going and marching and falling into the whirling blades of warring death.
I wonder what they would think of those who sobbed at their passing, but did not stop their journey to their end, that did not throw themselves in front of this train of death that scoops and sweeps and grinds and sprays over the bodies of all those it runs into, and over...
And I wonder what these billions of ghosts would say to the young, whose hearts and minds and bodies are currently gripped in the talons of these empty, dead, dying, murdering, cancerous words... The young who are snatched from the dead classrooms of State propaganda, and the dead pews of religious praise for the dead and the dying and the killing and the murdering... To the young held aloft and carried aloft in the steely and stealing talons of these empty words, being carried high above the lands that they're supposed to be 'protecting' - but that no one is invading -- and, in the name of 'defense,' being carried thousands and thousands of miles across oceans, across frightened white upturned faces, and being dropped from these great heights, to fall like dead drones onto houses, onto hospitals, onto electricity plants, onto useless sand - but most of all, onto people - because these dead words carry live people and drop them to merge in a horrible embrace with victims of mass murder. I wonder what they would say to those being carried off by these words and dropped on the innocent...

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• war
• vietnam
• veterans
• iraq
• Iran
• Bush
• Cheney
• George Bush
• Laden

[mikepeare]

Steph is clearly a logician, but his impact is a result of his poetry. Just, simply, fastastic.

[stefbot]

@mikepeare thank you

[leafwatch]

@captnhuffy Because you believe you have an infallible crystal ball that tells you the unavoidable future, you advocate for U.S. troops to go 1/2 way around the globe and die and kill for your arrogant belief system. Your soul is cold, your brain is frozen with self-absorption and self-admiration, so much that you cheer killing machines and invasive empire wars for your vain nationalism. Shame on you. As if Saddam were a tenth the risk to the globe that Bush/Obama were/are.

[Antdog5]

We send all these people, who have hearts pumping, brains thinking, and body moving to their deaths because we think we can build some sort of utopia here in the USA and maybe the world. But using violence to solve social complex problems will lead us to mass population control, which the future will look back and say WTF? It's immoral to treat us this way, immoral to treat us like worker ants, we are smarter than that. We'll overcome.

[erentheca]

It is a sad thing that so much young potential is devoured on the battlefield, and to add to this, young manhood is considered fulfilled, patriotism is paid its due, through the worst, most horrendous rite of passage. If only all worthy ideals, if pursued to their utmost, were considered honorable. If only we had a culture where a young man found it more heroic to wield a stethoscope than he does a rifle. In our post-industrial culture, doctors and entrepreneurs will matter more than soldiers.

[erentheca]

@leafwatch That is fantastically written and very true.

[regelemihai]

"How many people have died in Iraq/Afghanistan as a direct result of our invasion?"

You mean how many people died as a result of muslim extremists being on the loose and killing each other in secterian violence? I dunno the exact number. The Iraq Body Count estaimates that overall, the total number o deaths amounts to 103,000. A million is pure fabrication.

[MrGarky]

@regelemihai Saddam killed tens of thousands of people?? WHOA. THATS A LOT.

How many people have died in Iraq/Afghanistan as a direct result of our invasion? I don't know exactly but I'm pretty sure it's over a million. That's ten thousand times 100 for those who aren't good at math.

[MrGarky]

@captnhuffy You said, "People in my country, and yours too, are alive now because of them." You were referring to soldiers killed in action.

Understand that they only fought because there was an opposing force comprised of men fighting for identical reasons--us good, them bad. We just happened to be the "bad guys" in their eyes they were the bad guys in ours.

What makes our soldiers so great and the old Nazi German soldiers so bad? They were lied to by Hitler just as ours were lied to by Bush.

[theredscourge]

LOUD NOISES!!!!!

[ihaterobbie123]

@FUZZYisBIG And you don't think I know war is a senseless loss of life? I don't know how many insults I can take from you fucking retards.

If you don't understand rembrance day, SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP. It is not there for the purpose of glorifying war. It is not there for the purpose of belittling human life. It is not there to somehow justify conflict. It's there to pay tribute to the SOLDIERS who were coerced or chose to fight to preserve the security of their friends and family. NOTHING MORE.

[FUZZYisBIG]

@ihaterobbie123 I grew up In Lebanon and have lost plenty of family to petty power politics. Lay your wreaths and parade like an idiot. I won't make out senseless loss of life to be anything more than it is.