Defending 'Merica

I work across the street from Glendale City Hall and the police station. On the corner of Broadway and Isabel there's a yard with a memorial for military personnel. Its motto is "In Memory of Those Who Served that the World Might Live in Peace," and there is a black marble plaque for each major conflict, listing the names of fallen soldiers (presumably from Glendale):

WORLD WAR I - 1917-1918 - The War to End All Wars
WORLD WAR II - 1941-1945 - Victory on Land, at Sea and in the Air
KOREA - 1950-1953 - The Forgotten War
VIETNAM - 1958-1975 Remember...



This is a noble thing, to remember one's fallen.

There is now a fifth plaque. I was thinking there should be one, since the number of American personnel who have perished in Afghanistan and Iraq has passed the 3000 mark.

However, it says this:

PROTECTING AMERICA FROM TERROR - 2001-Our Heroes

... which really bothers me. This smacks of heartstring-yanking, of a vague emotional appeal to somehow legitimize the loss of these men and women. They can't even put a proper name to this conflict, for there isn't one. It's a permanent agenda, a scattered, bullheaded push toward American domination of the Middle East, which we water down by pretending we're being made safe... as if the men and women who have been trained to fight in defense of the country are standing at our very doorsteps, fending off mad foreign killers.

Why are they there? Why, they're "protecting America from terror." No. No, they're not. That might be their goal, their wishes, what they've been told and what gives them hope during the hellish dangers surrounding them daily, but that isn't why they're there. No terror hatched from Iraq until we created the incubator for it. They're there because someone in a suit wants something.

If the plaque had said "The Afghanistan/Iraq Conflict," I would have nodded and passed on. But instead there is this ambiguous, politically-charged moniker. It might as well have said THE WAR ON TERROR, as if it had an actual title and was declared by Congress.

To me this plaque takes all the sacrifice, all the real human lives at stake, and lessens their value, because of this hazy appeal to emotion splashed on it. To me it takes a family's loss of a loved one and gives their grief a patronizing pat on the head: "see, we remember the sacrifice of your son/daughter/brother/sister. They fell defending our freedom, from terror!" Every soldier who dies from now on, for any reason, will have fallen "defending America from Terror." Every cause is now noble, even when it's blatantly not.

Someone might well nod in satisfaction at this kind of monument, shed a tear for this government-approved watering-down of our reasoning, and bitch at me for all the wrong reasons. I have no patience for that at the moment, no desire to explain that I didn't want our soldiers over there in the first place, because they're not going to comprehend that. So for those led by their hearts instead of their minds, for those whose meager knowledge stems from the mainstream loudspeakers of this administration, fuck you.

Current mood: Insulted