Killing Ourselves, and Asking Why

SINCE 1999 nearly one hundred and thirty eight thousand American military service veterans have committed suicide. Currently approximately twenty take their own life each day. This compares with the slightly more than five thousand two hundred who have been killed on the field of battle during the same time period. Since the perpetual war of American aggression in the middle east actually began in 1991, the numbers stated above are necessarily low. It is estimated that the American military has killed nearly half a million people in the middle east during the same time period, many if not most of them civilians. To justify this, the usual platitudes are applied: defense of freedom, defense of liberty and the spread of democracy and virtuous American values to benighted regions of totalitarian government. None of this, obviously, is true. What is true is that the American people signaled their intent of becoming an empire as early as 1763, when thousands of colonists defied instructions from their overlords in London not to attempt to resettle west of the Appalachian mountains, on account of the inability of the British Empire to protect them. The American government further expressed its intent of empire in 1846, when it deliberately provoked a war with Mexico as pretext for stealing half of Mexico. Then, in 1898, the American government provoked a war with Spain for the purpose of extending the American empire overseas, and its expansion has continued apace, economically and politically if not always geographically, to this day. The governing principle of American foreign policy is that might makes right, and the disastrous American foreign policy of the second half of the twentieth and first fifth of the twenty first century clearly demonstrates this. Viet Nam was a war provoked by American imperialism, by a desire to open foreign markets and plunder foreign resources for American corporations, as were the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States deliberately enticed Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1991 as a pretext for the imposition of American military power in the middle east. The wars in Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have all been American failures. Appropriately, we venerate memorial Day as a day of remembrance and appreciation for the thousands of brave patriots who gave their lives for the pursuit of American foreign policy goals. Memorial Day was not actually formally declared a national holiday until 1967, surprisingly, having theretofore been traditionally called "Decoration Day", a day upon which citizens honored the Civil War dead, beginning in the late nineteenth century, by placing flowers on their tombstones. Prior to the civil war cemeteries had been used by civilians as public parks; pleasant places to have picnics and group gatherings. After the civil War, when the same cemeteries were filled up with tens of thousands of too young dead, the recreational purpose was forgotten, supplanted by a more somber one. It may one day come to pass that the ideal behind Memorial Day evolves yet again, and becomes a day to ponder not only the brave ultimate sacrifice made by millions of patriots, but also a day during which we the American people reflect back on the foreign policy which precipitated the mass slaughter, and bravely evaluate its veracity, and then ask ourselves "was it really worth it"? As of now, we have not yet reached that point, most likely because we are not yet prepared to accept the answer.