Private Steven K Close 1962 Basic Training Fort Ord Company B-8-3
Fuck the Army posted on the door for Marty Goodman's drafted into the army party. He's lucky he survived the Vietnam nightmare.
As a medic he recalls being ankle deep in blood in an evac. helicopter. He got disease. He feared for his life on occasion for being overrun by the enemy.
At age 78 he is now riddled with cancer.
What has America learned? Nothing.
I’m appalled when I see the glorification of military service and war.
Proud to have served? To do what, kill other people?
I served, not proudly, but because I didn’t have a choice.
“In his Armistice Day speech in 1948, General Omar Bradley famously accused those entities that placed their trust in military dominance. He said:
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”
“The military and economic entities that are in control of the world didn’t take Bradley’s admonition seriously. Most Christian churches failed to see the truth in the statements. In the halls of Congress and in the White House ever since WWII, there is no consideration of the cruelty, stupidity and futility of war. On Veterans Day in America today no one is sincerely praying or working for a real sustainable peace, even during the obligatory 2 minutes of silence.
‘In our corrupt capitalist society there is just too much money to be made by war-profiteering corporations and wealthy investors when there are potential military conflicts brewing. The stocks of war industries surge when Donald Trump tweets about bombing foreign nations. And then there are legions of major media outlets that are always ready and willing to cheer-lead for wars and rumors of war.
‘Just like America’s habit of glorifying select aspects of the criminal Vietnam war, Australia has been infamously and irrationally going overboard honoring a shameful military episode in their past history.”
Veterans Day
Trumpets, pledges of allegiance, parades, flags, songs and prayers, all to make running into a hail of bullets or stabbing someone in the gut with a bayonet seem like a good thing.
1962 B-8-3 Open House for the proud relatives.
Private Close foreground executing a long thrust, shouting On Guard, or some such nonsensical grunt or threat.
DI: “What two type of bayonet fighters are there?” Grunt: “The Quick and the Dead! On Guard!”
“The bayonet fighter's positions are guard, short guard, and high port. He executes the following movements: whirl, long thrust, short thrust, withdrawal, parry right and left, vertical and horizontal butt strokes, smash, and slash.”
“And just like that, as has been the case of so many other pro-war propaganda tools, anti-war and pro-peace sentiments had to be suppressed. Peace-loving holidays like Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Armistice Day and Labor Day needed to be de-emphasized or co-opted.”
Pro Patria, what does it mean?
Edgar Lee Masters Pro Patria (for one’s country)
I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the army.
Rather a thousand times the county jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, “Pro Patria.”
What do they mean, anyway?
Utterly Brainwashed
Shortly after serving in the US Army Infantry in 1962, I tried to read “I am the Infantry!” to my dad, but I could hardly finish I was so choked up with patriotic emotion and tears.
The poem has gotten considerably longer since 1962 to honor the hapless victims of American’s never-ending wars.
10 verses up to Korea when I first read it in 1962: 4 more since.
https://gruntsandco.com/grunts/infantry/
I am the Infantry!
I am the Infantry–Queen of Battle!
For two centuries I have kept our Nation safe,
Purchasing freedom with my blood.
To tyrants, I am the day of reckoning;
to the suppressed, the hope for the future.
Where the fighting is thick, there am I…
I am the Infantry!
FOLLOW ME!
13 more verses follow.
I served in peacetime, 1961-67, and thankfully was not called up as reservist for the Vietnam clusterfuck, Americans are the most brainwashed people in the world and they don’t know it. This is the purpose of public education, take away happiness and personal discovery to turn out an obedient work force compelled to sign up for tax collection and register for the draft. As George Carlin said smart enough to run the machines and fill out the paperwork, but too dumb to know how bad they're getting F'd.
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https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason
The strategy of rolling out one atrocity after another is working. No one remembers the preceding. Yeah, so what if a few million people were killed by the jab, there's fish to shoot in the Gaza barrel.
"Lest they forget", no, make damn sure they forget.
"If we let the COVID crimes fade into history, unpunished, the message is clear: there is no abuse of state power too excessive that the population, with its goldfish memory, will not tolerate and soon forget about it. Nuremberg II now. Anything less is an abdication of moral responsibility." Ben Bartee
As a young boy, our family enjoyed a record called Man Without a Country. I can’t say I really understood it very well, but I was left with the impression disavowing our country was about the most regrettable act one could commit.
“Edward Everett Hale, a descendant of Nathan Hale and a leading Unitarian clergyman of his time, tells the story of Philip Nolan, a young man enamored of the charismatic Aaron Burr. He participates in Burr's mystery shrouded empire building scheme, for which Burr was charged with treason. While Burr and the other leaders escape punishment, Nolan is convicted. When the presiding judge offers him an opportunity to prove his loyalty to the United States, Nolan replies in fury: D---n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again! The stunned Court determines to grant his wish as his punishment. He is placed on board a naval vessel and the crew is ordered: The stunned Court determines to grant his wish as his punishment. He is placed on board a naval vessel and the crew is ordered: You will receive from Ltd. Neale the person of Philip Nolan, late a Lieutenant in the United States Army. This person on his trial by court-martial expressed with an oath the wish that he might never hear of the United States again…”
Review of Edward Hale's The Man Without a Country - BrothersJudd.com
Dorothy C. Judd adds:
“When I was a child, back in the Dark Ages, before television, I first heard the story on a radio program called "My Favorite Story." I can still hear the "voice" of Philip Nolan and his curse in my head! My parents, of course, used this story, not as a political lesson, but as an object lesson: the ultimate "think before you speak." Even today, reading from the slim, red leather volume my son mentions, I can feel the anguish, the loneliness, the regret which first reduced me to tears as a child.”
Now I believe people without a country are the freest people in the world. Consider the “illegal” who enters the United States, or any other country in the world who may make up any new identity they choose and may not be tracked or taxed by the state. This was verified by a Mexican neighbor who enjoyed life in the U.S. better/freer before he received amnesty in 1985 and was thereafter tracked and monitored.
Here is testimony from former veterans from the U.S. and Israel who figured it out.
US Veterans throwing medals! MUST Watch - YouTube
Vietnam veterans end war protest by tossing medals away - YouTube
Breaking the Silence: Israeli Soldiers Come Clean - YouTube
Former Israeli soldiers testified about army aggression - YouTube
"...their real goal is to use the powers of the state to plunder and legally steal from their customers. They must cloak their greed in nationalism, national defense arguments, anything but the truth."
Veterans Day. Makes it seem like it's a good thing to sacrifice & die for the state while murdering other people far from home.
https://mises.org/wire/false-virtue-life-and-death-american-exceptionalism
The Mother of All U.S. Government Lies
For at least the past century and a half American imperialism has been cloaked in a monstrous lie about the supposed moral exceptionalism of Americans and their government.
Robert Penn Warren wrote that this massive and unprecedented propaganda barrage created “a plenary indulgence, for all sins past, present, and future.” The US government emerged from the Civil War “so full of righteousness that there is enough overplus stored in Heaven . . . to take care of all the small failings and oversights of the descendants of the crusaders” By “crusaders” Warren apparently meant the likes of General Sherman’s army of plunderers, arsonists, rapists, and murderers of civilians.
The American state adopted “a moral narcissism,” wrote Warren, which fueled “the crusades of 1917–1918 and 1941–1945 and our diplomacy of righteousness, with the slogan of unconditional surrender and universal rehabilitation—for others.” “The effect of this conviction of virtue is to make us lie automatically,” he wrote.
And so it went with the treasury of virtue, which morphed linguistically into “American exceptionalism.” This is what paved the way for the never-ending military interventionism of the twentieth century and beyond, up to the present day. The “treasury of virtue” has always been the moral cover for all of this greed, racism, barbarianism, and worse. The good news today is that it is hard to think of anyone with a sound mind who would sincerely believe this any longer. Of course, it is human nature to deny that one has been duped and lied to for one’s entire life, so there with always be the Boobus americanus class, so named by H.L. Mencken, that will chant USA! USA! for every bomb dropped on civilian populations anywhere in the world. But the gig is up. The party in power as of this writing is run by a man described by Naomi Wolf as “a senile puppet of the Chinese Communist party” whose main mission as president has been to align himself—and his country—with what is generally acknowledged as the most corrupt society on earth, Ukraine. The “uniparty” in Washington is finally crumbling, David Stockman has recently declared.
In essence, War is a Racket
Smedley Butler: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
I don't believe the people of any country should be held to account for war crimes their government commits. Just because they claim to be democratic and hold elections, does not mean the people necessarily approve of the actions their government takes, especially when it comes to matters of war. I believe most people want no part of war. Do you believe the people of Ukraine celebrated the war on eastern Ukraine their government undertook in 2014, or that Russians rejoiced when their government invaded Ukraine in response? Did most Americans champion the US invasion of Vietnam? To the extent citizens approved of such hostilities, would be the result of propaganda their own government imposed on them. In my experience, governments do what serves the interests of the government before the will of the people. If it were true that people were to be held to account for the aggressions of the United States, for example, there would be ample cause for retribution on the people from those suffering from the aggression.
Neither the people of Israel, the United States, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, Iran, China, Taiwan, name your place, have the means or capability to make war on their neighbors, only their governments do. Surely then, only the leaders of those places that make war on other places, should be held to account.
We need peace now more than ever. Wherever you live, demand your government to cease and desist from war.
Smedley Butler said war is a racket. Why couldn't peace become a racket instead? How many hospitals could be built and staffed for the cost of a Navy? How many homes for the homeless could be built for the cost of an Army? How much food could be produced to feed the hungry for the cost of an Air Force?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/11/eric-margolis/make-a-desert-and-call-it-peace/
(1) Netanyahu Blames Arabs – Not Hitler – For The Holocaust! - YouTube
Caitlin Johnstone
The ten dumbest things we're being asked to believe about Gaza:
1. That Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to prior to October 7, but ever since October 7 has known about every hospital, mosque, school, refugee camp and water tower that Hamas is hiding in.
2. That the blame for all of the deaths caused by Israeli weapons launched by Israel rests solely on Hamas.
3. That Hamas is using “human shields” — meaning Hamas bases are hidden amidst civilian populations — yet Israel is managing to kill thousands of civilians without doing any meaningful damage to Hamas.
4. That it would be perfectly fine to murder children by the thousands even if they were being used as “human shields” — as though resolving a hostage situation by mowing down thousands of child hostages would be regarded as reasonable and acceptable by the public if it happened in our own country.
5. That is is only by pure coincidence that Israel bombing “Hamas targets” in civilian infrastructure and residential buildings just so happens to look exactly the same as what you’d expect to see if Israel was simply bombing civilian infrastructure and residential buildings and lying about its reasons for doing so.
6. That satellite images of entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble in Gaza have been caused by “precision strikes” directed solely at Hamas and have been carried out with the greatest of care for human life, despite Israeli officials openly saying that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” in this assault and that “Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents; there will be no buildings.”
7. That this bombing campaign has anything to do with freeing Israeli hostages — as though the bombing campaign itself has not killed dozens of hostages, and as though anyone believes Israel would stop bombing Gaza after the hostages are returned.
8. That the only reason anyone could possibly oppose the detonation of thousands of bombs on an open air prison full of children would be if they had very strong and hateful opinions toward the members of the religion of Judaism.
9. That Hamas attacked Israel entirely out of the blue and completely unprovoked, solely because they are evil and hate Jews.
10. That Washington is powerless to stop this genocide that it is directly funding and supplying.