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The old lie: Dulce et decorum est - Pro patria mori *
By: Kristina M. Gronquist
05/29/05 "ICH"
- - As Memorial Day approaches, much of the media will roll over backwards to glorify war and all the soldiers slaughtered in wars. Tributes to the dead are easy; the dead don't talk back. The media will prove their nationalism and allegiance by feeding us war stories ad nausea. Civilian casualties will not be mentioned, nor will post traumatic stress syndrome, Agent Orange, or Gulf War syndrome. The deleterious health effects of depleted uranium (used in today’s weapons) will likewise be ignored. This is no time for truth, mind you, this is the hour to exalt and wallow in the most evil system man has created – the system of war. Currently, our government has chosen to pursue an endless, perpetual “War on Terror,” which uses the terror of war against Muslims and Middle Easterners. Tributes to past wars help underline the real reason for meaning in our lives. If you are a true blue American, that meaning is found in our ability to try to “kick ass” anywhere we want, anytime. Who’s next - Iran? Syria?
This Memorial Day weekend, while the media replays endless tales of dead soldiers, living soldiers in Iraq will try to stay alive, dodging a slew of daily resistance attacks, in a nation our leaders invaded not because they had to, but simply because they wanted to, in the words of Rumsfield, “with the army we have.” Young American soldiers will remain stuck in optional quagmire. No exit strategy is looming on the horizon for the troops, only death, injury, and nervous breakdowns. Not surprisingly, none of the young college-bound Bush supporters are signing on with recruiters to go help out in Iraq.
The media will continue, this weekend, to suppress the truth, which is that the war in Iraq is a massive foreign policy failure; Iraq is a failed state, an incredibly chaotic unstable mess where tens of thousands of Iraqis have died needlessly. Unworried Americans will say we can’t judge Iraq yet, we have to “wait and see,” because down the road, if oil rich Iraq becomes a (Western-style) democracy “it will all be worth it”. These are such easy words to utter, from the armchair experts on democracy for Muslims, so smug with remote controls in-hand. Yes, tell the loved ones of 100,000 dead Iraqis that someday the deaths of their family members will all be worth it, as your own children scurry about safe and warm.
On Memorial Day we will blithely ignore the massive protest and hatred that our polices, occupations, torture and wrongful imprisonment have inspired in the Muslim and Arab world. Come to think of it, many Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans aren’t enthralled with our foreign policies either. But an empire can ignore the common sense of the global masses of people who oppose war, and we can easily choose not to try to understand root causes of anti-American sentiment. C’mon - America, it’s Memorial Day, tune that negative reality out and turn on your television for yet another glorious war hero story.
* To die for one’s country is sweet and becoming.
From the poem “Dulce et decorum est” by the English poet Wilfred Owen, 1893 -1918, killed at the front a few days before the Armistice.
Kristina M. Gronquist is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis. She specializes in foreign policy analysis and holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. She can be reached at
kgronquist@aol.com .
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