First Casualty

My uncle C. died four years ago after a productive life, father of two daughters, married 50 years to the same woman. A farm boy who climbed the company ladder to middle management, retired with a good pension and expensive watch. He spent his final years hunting, fishing, camping and enjoying the grandsons he thought the sun rose and set with. He was also a Marine, and veteran of the UN and US "police action" in Korea.

When the story of troops burning bodies in Afghanistan surfaced this week, burned by US troops for stated reasons of hygiene, and the situation used by psyops to taunt the Taliban, according to the journalist Stephen Dupont who filmed the event, I remembered a similar story of uncle C.

He said once, after a particular heavy firefight, they piled Korean casualties in a mound, haystack high. To draw them out, they chided the enemy to retrieve their dead. After a few days of flies and maggots they incinerated the decomposing bodies. Even after decades the distress showed in his face in the retelling. The Korea war memorial was authorized in 1986 by Congress and dedicated by Clinton in 1995. Better late than never I suppose.

This is not to defend war or what troops do, but what puzzles me is the about face attention to MSM reporting that soldiers do ugly things. Why the telling and why now? They think the phrase 'war is hell' means what?

In the Vietnam era it wasn't the "hippies" or the protestors who disrespected the vets. It was the government and MSM which portrayed the vets as savage, uneducated, low-lifes. It was the government and MSM who ignored the returning vets; ignored their problems, their health, their minds, their benefits. Labeled them drug addicts, crazy, shiftless, homeless, the dregs of society. No one wanted to look.

It was the government and MSM who used Vietnam to demoralize and divide the American people. It was the government and MSM who abandoned those troops because they were no longer of use in "spreading democracy and freedom." The construction of the Vietnam memorial (approved by congress in 1980) was the result of campaigns by Vietnam vets. The government couldn't even build them a memorial. The project was financed privately and the wall dedicated in 1982.

In the 1980s MSM began to play the Vietnam vet as heroes, in sympathetic movies, documentaries, books. The public began to feel good about and respect those vets who lived through and died in Vietnam. The ruling class needed us to love and respect vets because the ruling class needed war. Sure enough, militarism became popular again to the public. Khaki fashions, camo everywhere, ponchos, cargo pants; the era of Apocalypse Now, Rambo, Platoon. The doves hoped such movies discouraged war; hawks hoped it would make boys yearn to buff up and play with weapons.

The country supported Reagan freedom fighters around the globe. Then came testing - toe-in-the water widening excursions. Contra-war, Granada, 1989 Panama invasion, 1991 Gulf War, Clinton Kosovo-Serbia. Anyone paying attention knew in January 2001 we would have no more proxy or weekend wars. We were heading for the big time.

We've been shown stories and images of mutilated bodies of Americans burned on a bridge, videos of hostages beheaded, children killed as our troops handed out candy. A few short months ago MSM was broadcasting Operation Iraqi Freedom as if it were a Hollywood box office success; Western heroes delivering a nation from tyranny, from the Butcher of Baghdad, from Chemical Ali, from Uday and Qusay, plastic grinders, torture, and rape rooms. Critics of Iraq War were punished. MSM gave us Judy "spy" Miller reporting the gospel on Iraq.

The government banned viewing flag draped coffins (the Dover effect), the government and MSM ignored the pain at Walter Reed, but initially and often showed the tears of joy in returning troops to their loved ones. MSM showed troops crying over fallen comrades; as lone silhouettes in a foreign sunset, or cradling wounded Iraqi children. MSM pushed the public's buttons, demonizing the enemy as wicked and grisly.

After ignoring false intel, and war for profit, the MSM sees truth? After two years MSM reports there never were WMD, no Saddam connection to bin Laden, and the wicked and grisly are us, torturing, murdering, mutilating, burning. Whatever is going on – it still isn't truth.

Will our liberation heroes become ruthless barbarians in the MSM? Will they become "of no value" as Rumsfeld said of Vietnam vets? Will they be the “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy” as Henry Kissinger says?

But why the MSM / ruling elite backpedaling now? We the people are not shamed and miserable enough to buy the solution of one benign government administered from Brussels by wise elders in a world parliament. Are we being prepped for the viable "third party" to enter and ease our national pain? But beware of a new party shilling to heal us with new honor; it may be no more than an old party with new names - cattle prodding us to a political promised land of no war, as long as we accept the global grunt psyche and do as we're told. Peace by threat.