Mike Gaddy is a veteran of many years in the Army. He saw action in Vietnam, Grenada and Beirut. He currently lives in the Four Corners area of the Southwest and has written numerous essays for LewRockwell.com that make for very worthwhile reading. Like a lot of veterans, life has taught him that huge numbers of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines have made huge sacrifices over the years in the service of what turned out to be lies.
In a very recent column, he wrote the following:
“We came home [from Vietnam] to a misguided, ignorant nation who blamed its veterans for the mess our criminal politicians had gotten us into. An American population yelled obscenities at veterans who had been victims of unspeakable horrors when they met them at the airports and bus stations on their return home, but gave a pass to the politicians who sent them there.”
If any opponents of the War on Terror (WOT) are greeting returning troops in such a detestable fashion, I hereby issue the following demand, for whatever it might be worth: CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY! I am a retired Naval Reservist and I steadfastly maintain that the majority of those in uniform genuinely believe that they are doing a good work on our behalf.
The military, like any other segment of the government, grows and thrives based on the willingness of people to believe its propaganda. During my 17 years of involvement with the Navy – they let me retire early because of a relapse of a back injury – I seriously believed I was contributing to the defense of America and its freedom. Almost all of my shipmates believed likewise.
Like more and more veterans, living life and observing events have opened my eyes to the fact that I was being lied to. And, like more and more veterans, I am speaking up in the hope that Americans stop dying for lies. I love the Navy, but I hate what it is being used for nowadays.
As much as I oppose this WOT, I will give those who are doing the actual fighting this: they are making a sacrifice. They are sacrificing for the benefit of those who send them off to war. Some sacrifice more than others. Indeed, several thousand have made the ultimate sacrifice.
There are those who wage war and those who fight war. Most of the key players waging this current WOT – politicians, network talking heads, megachurch preachers and executives in the military-industrial complex – have never lifted a finger to do a day in the military. Very few have any kids in the active military.
More often than not, the fighting is done by kids from places such as South Central LA, the mining towns of West Virginia and the farms of Nebraska. Someone called the War Between the States “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” The WOT is no different.
And while they may not, in 2007, return home to spitting and obscenities, they are being spat upon in another, more offensive, way.
The people who so relentlessly beat the drums for war abroad -- and who are oh so outraged when anyone suggests ending the WOT -- are often the same people who tell us that we must sacrifice our liberty at home. They even admit that it is a paradox: in order to preserve our freedom, we must give up our freedom. While thousands fight and die for our freedom, we must give up your most basic constitutional guarantees of liberty here at home.
Terrorists do not threaten our liberty. After the 9/11 attacks, there was no follow-up. There were no invading armies, no naval battle groups in New York Harbor and the Potomac River and no aerial bombing raids. (1) Terrorists do not even control the government of Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on earth. It has been centuries since a Muslim country conquered a non-Muslim country. This idea that radical Islamofascists pose any threat whatsoever to take over America is, to steal a phrase from GW Bush, an outrageous conspiracy theory.
Al Gore and the Left want us to freak out and go on Amish mode because of the junk science of global warming. GW Bush and the Right want us to freak out and submit to a police state because of the grossly exaggerated threat of terrorism. They are just two sides of the same totalitarian coin.
Millions of Americans are willing to believe these lies. I have had too many conversations with too many people over the last six years to think otherwise. It is bad enough that the government and its lapdog media want us to relinquish what is left of our freedoms. It is worse when millions of average Americans are more than happy to comply.
Here are just a few comments that stick out in my mind.
- A girl in a Bible study: “They can search and spy on me!”
- An old friend: “They are going to hit us again. You just can’t be too careful.”
- A friend over beer and wings at a local sports bar: “Actually I'd be willing to give up a fair amount of my liberty for a time.”
- A woman at Denver International Airport: “I know this security stuff is inconvenient, but I am SO GLAD they are doing it.”
I can’t believe that my experiences are that unique.
And then there are a those who will give up their liberty for a time and who expect to get it back in the future. I know of a group of people who gave up their liberty and got it back twelve years later: they were the German people of 1933-1945.
Millions of Americans are either silent about, in total denial of, or zealously promoting the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the John Warner National Defense Act and the numerous executive orders and pending pieces of legislation designed to set up a full blown police state.
Some of the biggest support for this comes from Christians. Indeed, thousands of pastors have joined Clergy Response Teams whose purpose is to quell dissent should martial law be imposed. If they had any integrity, they would be preaching hellfire and brimstone against a government that would even dream of imposing martial law. But no-o-o-o-o-o-o. This might hurt attendance and jeopardize their 501c3 status.
These people who are so willing to give up what is left of our freedom – even for a short time -- are, in my opinion, worse than those protestors who spat on the troops returning from Vietnam and yelled at them calling them baby killers.
I can’t imagine thinking I was doing the right thing for my countrymen, making a huge sacrifice by fighting for their liberty in a foreign land, and coming home to find that they are more than willing to give up the very liberty that I had just risked my life for.
Oh sure, they wave those flags and have “Support the troops” bumper stickers on their cars and watch Fox News and listen to Drug Limburger and pray for the troops in church and say all the right things at bible study. But they have never even considered doing a day in the military and they don’t care one iota about the liberty for which so many have given so much. It makes my stomach do 360s.
The more I study, the more I believe that most of this nation’s wars have been contrived events. This does not minimize the sacrifice by those who fought in those wars. Most of them thought – idealistically and patriotically – they were doing the right thing. It is enough that they made such great sacrifices on someone else’s behalf. Let us not spit in their faces and desecrate their graves by relinquishing what liberty we have left.
(1) For the record, I do NOT buy the official story on 9/11. And it is not just Arkansas militia types, tin foil hat wearers and Haight-Ashbury hippies who agree with me. Type "truth about 911" into a search engine and you will see that it is also pilots, veterans, architects and engineers and people from all walks of life.
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