Meditations on Memorial Day

The days from Memorial Day to Flag Day to July 4^th are a time to honor and remember those who died for “our freedom.” But it’s also the time of year when the gulf between “patriots” and those of us generally opposed to US wars is at its widest.

We peace advocates are often accused of reasoning from emotion instead of facts. Actually, pro-war Americans often start from the emotional position of wanting to believe God is on our side, our cause is always just, and all who oppose us are “evil-doers.” Facts are then ignored, distorted or created to support this viewpoint.

For a supposedly peace-loving nation, we certainly have started a lot of wars. Does anyone honestly believe that all soldiers in all our wars died for freedom? The ones who liberated Europe from the Nazis certainly did. But there have been many ignoble American wars – from the Mexican-American War to the Spanish-American War to Central America in the 1980’s – where US forces fought to prevent people from attaining their freedom.

So let’s take a cold, hard, unemotional look at our most recent war to see if it really was about “Iraqi Freedom,” or about US control of the Persian Gulf’s oil reserves.

Yes, Saddam was a brutal dictator, but that’s not why we invaded Iraq. The US supports brutal dictators all over the world (try US allies Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Uzbekistan for starters). Indeed, we supported Saddam himself from the CIA-backed coups that put him in power, through the Iran-Iraq War and the gassing of the Kurds right up until the hour he invaded Kuwait. Just as with Noriega in Panama and Osama bin-Laden in Afghanistan, we have no problem supporting ruthless killers until they turn around and bite the hands that feed them.

Besides, the legal rationale for the war was Hussein’s alleged massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. We couldn’t even convince most of our Western allies of this threat, so we punted the UN and went in virtually alone. If Saddam had such weapons, he never used them, and as I write this, we haven’t found any. Our government lied, again. But I mean, we won, didn’t we, so who cares? NEXT!

Now that America has “liberated” Iraq from Saddam, who will liberate Iraq from us? US overseers have declared an Islamic republic off-limits. (I am no fan of theocracy, but if Iraqis want one, that’s their business.) We’ve handpicked Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress to be Iraq’s next leaders. For the last 20 years, while Iraqis were fighting and dying against Saddam, convicted embezzler Chalabi and his cronies were bravely struggling in the casinos, brothels, and luxury hotels of Europe. We’ve awarded sweetheart contracts to Bechtel and Halliburton to rebuild and run post-war Iraq. No wonder Marines are already shooting and killing rioting Iraqi mobs protesting our choice of their leaders and our invitation-only conferences to plan their future.

During the war, we protected the oil fields, the Ministries of Oil and the Interior (to protect the records of US-Saddam collaboration?) and allowed the destruction of all the other ministries, the civilian infrastructure and the National Museum and Library. With 5,000 years of Mesopotamian history in flames, we are now allowing Christian evangelists like Franklin Graham in to proselytize Iraqis. This looks more like a neo-colonial crusade than democracy to me…

Direct US military control over Persian Gulf oil has been a dream of leading hawks like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfewitz for 25 years, and September 11, 2001, finally gave them the green light. Having trashed international law, derided domestic opposition, run roughshod over the Constitution, bankrupted our economy and smashed Saddam, what is to stop them now? Drunk with hubris, they now threaten Iran, Syria and North Korea with “regime change” as well.

An unchecked America dominating the world through violence may appeal to some Americans, but it is a nightmare to everyone else. That’s why the world sees us very differently than we see ourselves, and why we peaceniks don’t wave the flag and feel a swelling of pride when the US destroys yet another weak, impoverished nation. As true patriots, we’d rather preserve our Republic by giving up our Empire.

Eric Fried is on the steering committee of the Poudre Valley Green Party, and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of Colorado. Contact him at eric@pvgreens.org.

Eric will be part of the Strength through Peace panel discussion entitled “Beyond the Bush Administration,” on Tuesday June 24 at 7 p.m. at the Lincoln Center’s Canyon West Room.