The Drone of Experts

[Joanne98]

By WILLIAM P. O'CONNER

I recently wrote an essay Counterpunch published. Judging from the amount of emails I received, a lot of people took the time to read it. This surprised me, both because I have never written anything of consequence before, and because the essay articulated the deceitful policy of our government in both Vietnam and Iraq. Despair, not disloyalty, drove me to write and point out parallels between the two worst foreign policy mistakes of my lifetime. Particularly rewarding was the number of responses I received from vets of every rank and every branch of the service, some active and some disabled, applauding the essay. Some offered encouragement in moving prose. When I wrote the piece, I had no idea how emotionally tied I was to it; yet, my voice cracked and my hands trembled more than once while reading the heartrending responses of this unique fraternity, this special band of brothers: veterans.

An issue this sensitive, however, insures dissent and when a veteran assumes an antiwar stance the criticism is fairly predictable: socialist, communist, faggot, and traitor are all epithets that found their way to my computer screen. The vitriol was expected and if the emails were peculiar it was only in the similarity of their endings; all of them were signed “Thanks for serving.” The veterans agreed with my position, yet all the dissenters curiously chose the exact same phrase to end their emails. Then it dawned on me. Writing “thanks for serving” implies the writer hadn’t served.

Veterans have no monopoly on sensitivity, but having been in uniform they are painfully aware that every casualty has a face, a life, a story. People, unlike numbers, can’t be adjusted, erased, or corrected; they are bones and blood, organs and limbs. Bones shatter, blood spills, organs are exposed and limbs come off. It is easy for a television commentator to say a car bomb exploded and a soldier was lost -- the words roll effortlessly from his well paid lips, but a 19 year old boy compressing a head to prevent a brain from sliding into the sandy street might not describe a soldier’s death so casually. The uninitiated have no conception what explosives do to the human body, or the toll such horrific sights take on the human psyche. Corporations control the media and are not moved by unknown names tagging faceless victims, but other soldiers who survived combat see victims not as strangers, but as unlucky reflections of themselves. By vicariously reliving their own nightmares they share in the agony of the fallen: “There but for the grace of God.”

Anyone exposed to the sickening stink of roasted flesh never forgets it. The stink affects all your senses simultaneously: it makes your eyes water, it seeps under your nostrils, it permeates your nasal cavity and it overwhelms your brain. It joins with the nausea from your stomach and then the conjunction lodges like a rotten oyster in your throat. Whiskey won’t chase it. Mouthwash can’t evict it. For this is not a just a smell that lingers; this stench comes with its belongings and takes up residence. Only time can eradicate it. Of course, by then it is too late; by then, this abomination has attached itself to the subconscious and is forever sealed in your memory.

A number of “experts” in the corporate media who remind the public of our responsibility to Iraq and the consequences of a premature withdrawal make valid points; however, the more strident advocates prefix their remarks of support for the troops by berating critics of the war as soft on terror, liberals or pacifists. It is both disingenuous and fatuous to believe every soldier in Iraq is a right wing Republican or that every voice of dissent belongs to a pacifist or defeatist. Are civilians aware of why these men are dying? They are not dying to liberate Iraq, nor are they dying for love of country. They are not even dying for the uniform our government will bury them in. A man doesn’t throw himself upon a live grenade because he wants Iraq free of Saddam Hussein, or for a red, white and blue flag, or love for Exxon Mobil; he does it to shield the men fighting next to him, to protect his brothers.

http://www.counterpunch.org/oconnor06262008.html