2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or
not there should be war.
3.
We
must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
He
wrote those suggestions in 1935, but they are still not merely relevant, but
imperative today.
If
we truly care about our soldiers and wish to honor the memory of those who died
believing they served our country, we will not only enact Major General Butler's
three suggestions, but also, finally, end war as a tool of foreign policy once
and for all. That way, we will no longer add to the tragic totals of dead
already mourned every Memorial Day.
Instead
of merely marching in parades or mouthing pious, patriotic platitudes or, worst
of all, attending military weapons shows that glorify and fetishize weapons of
mass, indiscriminate death, starting this Memorial Day, we must all pressure
Congress to end the shameful V.A. backlog of veterans' benefits claims, do
whatever we can to end our many imperial wars and bring our soldiers home from
them and the U.S. bases abroad, and donate to one or all of the following
organizations helping our veterans:
The
Wounded Warrior Project
( http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/)
Fisher
House
(http://www.fisherhouse.org/)
The
Soldiers Project
( http://www.thesoldiersproject.org/)
War
is a curse and a lie. It is time we
ended it.
As
General William Tecumseh Sherman, another one of our military "heroes", knew, and
said bluntly:
War
is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have
neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry
aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
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