Using My Name in Vain

It's time to stop telling me that I should be thankful, that I owe my freedom to our brave boys in green. Or white. Or blue. The real lesson of Vietnam wasn't about winning hearts and minds, or fighting without popular support, or No Land War in Asia, it was this: we lost, we left, we were still free. Still? More free. When I turned draft age in 1976, my liberty wasn't taken away - I wasn't drafted, into servile rank-ridden involuntary servitude, the least democratic mass organization I can imagine this side of organized religion with its despicable clergy, even apart from what grows clearer as the Vietnam generation begins to assume power: the get-out-of-Vietnam-free cards granted to the least scrupulous of upper class youth.

So 1976: no draft, the FBI no longer felt it had to keep dissident youth organizations under close surveillance. Carter was elected - a smaller percentage of what few taxes were extracted from me went to the national security apparatus (and the Russians unaccountably failed to take advante of this); the deficit - another involuntary debt - began to decline. Whatever we lost in Vietnam, it wasn't a sliver of any freedom I cherished. Who defended my freedoms? Well, lawyers, reporters and opposing politicians had rid us of a leader clearly guilty of felonious obstruction of justice.
Not the boys.

As a complete sidenote: in 1976 the greatest literal threat to my freedom was the war -the war on drugs. But the same law that keeps my family safe from depraved murderers kept me out of jail - the law of averages, schooling fishes. The psychopaths only get a few hundred of us. And the State couldn't - didn't even want to - catch and lock up every felony drug offender in college.

And look, at least there was some kind of plausible excuse for Vietnam: we were facing a military power that looked like it could challenge us; a manifestly unfree, hostile, arguably expansionistic Soviet Union. We lost. And unless somebody wants to resurrect the rotted rump of the domino theory - that we fought long enough to save Thailand, and and and. Desperation time. So, my country continued to be free, and as we moved away from what war does to a country, we were more free. And in all the dozens of military actions, large and small, for more than half a century - the boys dying - but more often killing, weren't doing it for my freedom. So long and thanks for all the deterrence, though, cold war buddies.

And yes, it was Roosevelt who showed how to twist the notion of freedom out of recognition by collapsing issues of liberty with other matters in the Four Freedoms, just as conservatives offered up the epithet of "license" to describe liberties of which they did not approve. Why not? Why not argue for sanctity of power -- when it is yours.

And now - what are they for? To keep the Mexicans and Central Americans from crossing the border and sapping my will to cut my own grass? They're not doing that.

So, now. That's not my freedom there in Iraq. I'd say it wasn't even my freedom in Afghanistan, although I support the war there, as a matter of collective security. But even then: Bin Laden says that they organized 9/11 because of three U.S. acts: supporting Israel; maintaining sanctions on Iraq; having troops in Saudi Arabia. When I think about it - none of those things is for me, none of them is for my freedom, or any other American's freedom Yes, a terrorist organization that attacks the United States should be flattened, and any regime that provides it refuge overthrown. Of course.

But then - I look at those acts and think - this isn't about me converting to Islam, or the bars closing, or even Baptist churches closing or Wiccans being burned at the stake (hold it - I don't want to convert myself to Wahabi Islam by playing up things that really MIGHT be appealing.) It was about projecting economic, diplomatic, and especially military power far from my home - projecting it right onto the pointy little heads of some nonAmericans. And I'd feel freer if we weren't doing those things - so why am I getting wanded going to work everyday - why is Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House permanently closed to vehicular traffic? Why is are Americans being held without their (our) constituitonal rights, based on a dubious Supreme Court decision made, not surprisingly, during wartime - albeit an actual formal, declared war, with a pretty clear terminal point, Remember the warning about standing armies? It's not the direct oppression, or not always. It's the cost and the mindset.

Why is traveling an ordeal; why are private citizens directing torture in POW camps; why are my library records and a thousand other things government business, simply when the government - not a jury of my peers - says so? Why does Justice Scalia think the Fifth Amendment is mighty inconvenient sometimes. It's not Al Qaeda that cares whether I'm free or not, not now. And it's not the military fighting to keep me that way.

Maybe I don't have the bad conscience that others seem to have. I don't even need to get into the discussion of whether someone who joins for pay and benefits is a mercenary; whether someone who joins because he listens to people in power tell him it's a patriotic things to do is a lackey. Maybe those people who feel guilty about the sacrifices these working class people are making so that those in power can have even more say - maybe they'd like to say thank you. Maybe they'd like to show their gratitude by awarding this medal og good intentions. I am from the class that produces these soldiers. But all the pain and fear of military families; all the bravery and sacrifice of the soldiers themselves - that's not for me. You're not much less likely to torture me than an Iraqi, if you are told to do so, because NONE of us are. But some of us don't put ourselves in a position to do what we're told. I don't owe you. That's not my freedom. Fuck you for saying it is - you self-promoting liars. I do not support your troops.