On Memorial Day, how many tens of thousands of conscience stricken veterans of America's wars in small Third World countries can forget the faces of the "enemy' dead? How many remember finding smiling photos of beautiful children and wives in the caps or pockets of their clothes? How many of us were not ashamed to be seen murdering guys defending their country and countrymen from unprovoked foreign attack? How many of us were not amazed at their bravery to fight us, the greatest military superpower in the history of the world?
How many of our dead comrades would have wished to be praised on Memorial Day by the very same people who sent them to kill and be killed in someone else's dear homeland for lies, world hegemony, and war profits for cold-blooded super wealthy compatriots?
Incredulously, the National Office of Veterans For Peace, has doggedly rejected demands from its more sensitive members who are insisting that Veterans For Peace call for remembering our fallen adversaries and their families first on Memorial Day.
The following is the Veterans For Peace Bulletin for Memorial Day 2010, an embarrassment for its slighting of the families of the courageous men and women who died fighting in defense of their US invaded countries:
THIS MEMORIAL DAY: VETERANS HONOR SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS THAT DIED
"This Memorial Day as we pause to remember the U.S. service members who have died during the nation's wars, we need to think for another moment of the astounding number of civilians who have perished in those wars as well."
Considerable efforts were made by Veterans For Peace members insisting that the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands armed combatants who were killed by Americans while defending their countries from US invasion and occupation ought to be remembered on Memorial Day 2010.
Besides being kind and regretful long after the fact, veterans calling for a remembering of soldiers fallen fighting against the US empire's criminal wars in poor counties would awaken indifferent Americans to challenge lies past and present about our wars.
Angry veterans asked that out of common decency, those that died in their very own countries fighting merciless cruel military attack on their nation and people, which had never caused Americans harm, be the first to be remembered on an honest and caring Memorial Day dedicated to peace and love instead of "honoring' the tradition of war and only the Americans who fell in wars - all and any wars, regardless of those that were outright crimes against humanity and atrocities.
Instead of a veterans organization unmasking politicians like Obama who ask that we celebrate the sacrifice of the lives of Americans he and others before him sent to their deaths dishonestly in willful deception, the VFP press release aids the continuing media focus on American military fatalities to the exclusion of military fatalities suffered by the military of the countries we invaded.
Our VFP executive officers seem to forget the the millions of dead civilians they are asking us to gratuitously remember this year were family and friends of those "enemy' soldiers we killed and refuse to remember on Memorial Day.
Read the VFP full statement here and notice the absurd absence of any statistics on opposing combatants deaths, as if there were none - no dead enemy- or as it they weren't worth counting or considering, being of little or no consequence to Americans.
click here
For all the support that our National Office seems to be unwittingly affording the Military Financial Complex engaged in blessing the cannon fodder for it's ghastly hells of profit making wars, some of us presented an OEN published separate press release:
click here
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A Memorial Day Press Release From Some American Veterans
We will no longer participate in selective mourning only America's war dead. We will mourn all victims of war, the millions of civilians, the hundreds of thousands of our designated enemies fallen in their motherlands, and then, having put others first, as in common humility, will we mourn the tens of thousands of our very own fellow citizens who sacrificed their lives for, or thinking it was for, the good of our nation.
This writer and veteran has absolutely no doubt that this rather obvious inhumane slight will be corrected by our VFP president. Preferably, for the anti-war, effort sake, before this present militarized holiday weekend is past.
And this is said in full recognition of the fact that we, who are criticizing others for not remembering the many good men our government had us kill, did not raise our voices regarding this glaringly immoral oversight until recently, after being asleep at the anti-war-promoters-switch during previous war promoting Memorial Days.
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