WHAT IF THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME?

  What if those who serve in the military were fully aware of what their government requires them to do? What if they understood the underlying purpose of war and refused to participate? What if military recruiters were unable to feed the war machine with our sons and daughters; our uncles and nephews, and our nieces? How could it continue?

 It is no coincidence that those who make war never fight in them. It is the corporations that lobby for war because there are profits to be made; and profits to be kept. The politicians, of course, are owned by the corporations and do their biding. 

 

American citizens have never been involved in making decisions about going to war. Whether or not to wage war is one of the most momentous decisions a people could make; and they have no voice in the process. Half a million people can demonstrate in the streets but the war machine keeps turning. Does this meet a thinking person’s criteria for Democracy?

  The people who fight them do not want war. Why would they? They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. War is the province of wealth and Plutocracy, not of the working people. It is not for us to ask why. It is for us to fight and to die.

   But what if we refuse?

Those who send our children into battle do not care about them. Soldiers are culled from the working class. They are disproportionately poor—many of them people of color. In America, poor people are disposable; the rich are indispensable. Money and social status matters.

The government abandons its soldiers and their families when they come home in flag-draped coffins or over-sized cardboard boxes; when they return with missing limbs and with psychological scars so deep it would require lifetimes to heal them.  It denies the effects of Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome; and depleted uranium munitions. The government cuts veterans benefits. It does not care. 

  

The people who send others to war are cowards and pathological liars. It does not require courage or moral authority to send other people to fight and to die.

   The people should ban pledging allegiance to the flag. Let them pledge their allegiance to truth and to one another in the great class struggle that has always characterized our nation.

   Call Me Un American! I marched on Washington. I was at Kent State! I PARTICIPATED!

What have YOU DONE? What will you do?

    You'll, no doubt, go watch a parade and cheer for those Vets. that so proudly fought for the American Way. 

OR... You can do your part and stop feeding the machine!

  IMAGINE:   

WHAT IF THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME?