Thoughts on America's Memorial Day

When I crossposted my entry about hidden war crimes coming to light from the Korean War over at Booman Tribune, one person stated, "I wonder if it will take 50 years for similar Iraq war documents to come to light."

I made a response to that comment and will now repost it here because it encompasses what I feel about war in general and the remembrance of it on days like this:

Afaic, the military should not be investigating its own affairs. Too often they either falsify conclusions or, when perpetrators are found guilty, they mete out very light sentences - if any sentence is brought down at all.

In today's environment of secrecy I have no doubt that we will still be learning the actual facts about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars decades down the line. How some people can go through life with such atrocities on their minds is beyond me. Or perhaps that's the problem, they truly believe they have done nothing wrong - completely denying reason with no sense of humanity or compassion.

It is at that point that soldiers cease to be vehicles for so-called freedom.

On this day, while most people are honouring soldiers who supposedly died for that freedom, the innocent civilians who died must be remembered as well. They, however, do not have wreaths placed on their graves by the powerful. They are only "collateral damage".

And, let me add one thing about the Haditha massacre: while right-wing bloggers are dragging Murtha through the mud, they seem to conveniently forget that hundreds of men and too many children have been held in Gitmo for years who have never been charged with anything. They are presumed guilty until proven innocent. Where's the outrage on the right about that? They seem to save that not for Marines who are suspected of war crimes but for anyone who dares reveal evidence of such claims. They're innocent until proven guilty, they cry out. But, they can't bring themselves to give the Gitmo detainees the same justice.

75 Gitmos detainees are currently on a hunger strike. No doubt, the military will once again force feed them, which is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. But, we all know those conventions just don't apply to so-called enemy combatants. Hunger strikers are an embarrassment to the Bush administration.

So, on Memorial Day in the US, there is much to remember and it must not only be about the so-called bravery of soldiers - actions of which we may never know the real truth. It must be about all aspects and victims of war or such a day means absolutely nothing.

War isn't hell. It's an inhumane aberration.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
- Mahatma Gandhi