Tomgram: William Astore, Six Vows to Support Our Troops

The Cost of Our Wars

On Listening to Our Troops

February 21, 2011

By Tom Engelhardt

This article originally appeared on TomDispatch

speaking one’s mind in the military ASTORE SPEAKS

“SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” is an unconditional American mantra. We’re told to celebrate them as warrior-liberators, as heroes, as the finest fighters the world has ever known. They’re to be put on a pedestal or plinth, holding a rifle and a flag, icons to American toughness and goodness.

TomDispatch.com. From these I’ve selected a handful of passages to share with you: voices that resonated with me, words that often got me right in the gut.

LEFT: The troops, like the rest of the American public, are incessantly propagandized to sell them a sanitized version of our military adventures. The growing influence of Christian fundamentalists inside the US war machine has made it more self-righteous than ever. —Eds

poverty draft, sweeping up the disenfranchised and disadvantaged, with an emphasis on the rural working class, and sending them halfway across the world into harm’s way.

Which leads to my second vow:

with the myth that all our troops are volunteers — a myth which leads most Americans to pay remarkably little attention to and take no responsibility for the wars our “volunteers” are fighting.

Despite evidence of endemic corruption and rampant war profiteering, why do our eyes remain glazed over, if not stubbornly shut? Is it because our government-military-media complex is always seeking to put the best spin on our wars?

hardships involved, while refusing to consider the hopelessness of the tasks we’ve assigned them.

Just ponder that sentence: All by itself it could serve as an antidote to the Afghan Kool-Aid being drunk in the halls of the Pentagon. Which leads to my next vow:

Again, if you listen closely to our troops, you might be surprised at their views on how and why we fight. Consider the following confession from an Army lieutenant colonel:

With respect to how we fight, the email message that hit me the hardest lately came from a recently retired general and former infantry division commander. In his considered words:

remote control? And here’s a question: As we praise ourselves for our innovative, comparatively low cost (to us) high-tech weapons like our “Predator” and “Reaper” drones, is our reliance on massive firepower only serving to strengthen the resolve of the enemies we’re fighting? Which leads to my next vow:

“collateral damage” we’ve inflicted on others, our own harvest is measured in the wounded bodies and minds of our troops who still aren’t getting the medical and psychological care that they’ve earned and deserve. And in these budget-cutting times, is it not likely that we’ll soon hear about cuts in benefits even possibly for wounded veterans?

Which leads me to a final vow:

Second Inaugural Address, let’s vow to care for those who have borne the battle, and for their families, and strive to achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

here, or download it to your iPod here.

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the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.