On this Memorial Day, consider the term "Defending America".

[Stinky The Clown]

I am writing this from the perspective of one who believes there are reasons to go to war. Those of you who read my posts will, of course, know I am very much anti war these days. But there is no conflict in that stance today and the opening sentence of this post.

To thank a fallen soldier for giving her or his life "defending America: is jingoism at its very worst. It is also, quite likely, intended very much to make the soldier's sacrifice meaningful.

Why can we not simply thank the soldier for soldiering? Soldiers are as necessary as fireman or nurses or plumbers or trash collectors. Civil, modern society demands them all.

I am grateful each and every day for these people and more like them. As a society, we are slightly diminished each time we lose one of them. As a society, we are pained when one of them dies in the course of service.

I feel badly when I learn a cop has been killed in the line of duty. I feel badly when a road worker is hit by a car and killed.

I feel even more badly when those who dedicate their lives to living in ways that have long separations from family, see long tours away from home and, indeed, away from country. Who, each and every day, quite literally, face the prospect of being shot at or bombed by people bent on killing them, indeed, get killed in service to the country.

But to call what they died doing "Defending America" often cheapens things by putting a good face on a bad policy. It politicizes their deaths. I find that disrespectful of those who are now dead.

So I will spend my Memorial Day thinking not of the civilians who send our soldiers to war, but to the soldiers themselves. They have enough nobility in and of themselves that they do not need to be connected to "Defending America".

To those who are now reduced to marble and granite grave markers ..... I salute each of you.





edit to fix a few typos.

[stray cat]

1. Certainly they are killed while in the service of their country

and they deserve our appreciation for their sacrifice. I don't pretend the purpose of my employment is service to country or that I am risking my life to do it.

[roody]

5. Most of our wars are service to war profiteers.

Unfortunately many died serving the war profiteers.

[msongs]

2. depends on if current military activity is actually "defending America" nt

[L0oniX]

3. You could say that Iraq vets died in the line of offense and it would be more true.

[spanone]

4. we were definitely NOT defending america in iraq. we were defending bu$h*/cheney policy

pre-emptive war

[imdjh]

6. Im OK with the expression - Stephen Decatur

The "wrong" that Decatur was referring to was Jefferson's decision to not finish the job of taking Tripoli, of resuming the payment of tribute to the Ottoman prince. So we've been fighting to defend America from arguably "these people" for some 200 years. Of course there were other politics in play, there always are, but at that time Decatur was "defending America" by defending US merchant shipping. It's worthy of note, that at the time one of the concerns was France making side deals with the North Africans.

"Defending America" in a serious conversation between friends or academics can be picked apart as to its meaning, but when military folk say it, it means something else. We would have to assume a level of ignorance or blind devotion in our military that is beyond contemptuousness and borders on our own stupidity to think that when these people say "defending America" they mean something that Archie Bunker might have believed about fighting in Viet Nam.

Moreover, there is nothing wrong with honoring soldiers in the narrative. No war, NO WAR, be it the Revolutionary War or the US Civil War was fought for a single and noble reason, no matter how many people choose to hold a single and noble thought about those wars. Economics have always been an underlying element, because economics is just another word for what humans do.

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. Good point:

>>>>It politicizes their deaths.>>>>

It does exactly that.