An Appeal to Our Active Duty Soldiers

November 27, 2007 by Zen Garcia

Honoring Veterans: Some reflections on our recent Veterans' Day

Would you allow foreign armies to kick in your doors, detain your family members indiscriminately, rape, brutalize, and torture your neighbors, friends, and family members without regard? Would you not, if that happened in America, create, lead, or join some kind of resistance or insurgency to combat the situation?

My father, a Viet Nam vet, like soldiers of today, almost paid the ultimate sacrifice of duty to our country - his life. Having been over run by Viet Cong outside the province of Dau Teng during the height of the 1968 Tet offensive, the soldiers that did survive that assault forever count themselves among the lucky, living on bonus time.

The best man I've ever known, it wasn't 30 minutes before writing this that he called to tell me that he was lying dormant in a hospital bed struggling with a heart to weak to hold a steady rhythm. Veteran's Day, I wanted to honor he and our soldiers, memorializing his contribution and our veterans contributions to our flag.

Sunday, a church bell sounds from nearby sanctuary where people congregate to praise the greatness of our Lord and Creator, Son having died on the cross to defeat death and bring salvation to the world. I pray for my father's healing and quick recovery as I pray for the protection and quick return of our soldiers spread everywhere across the world fighting to uphold duty and honor in attempt to protect family and loved ones at home from ever having to experience the front-line horrors of war.

This day we remember the fallen, praising our active duty soldiers especially those returning with life long disabilities or entombed in flag drapped casket. And though they are flown in under the cover of night with the honor of press coverage being banned by the decider who doesn't want the public to know how many die daily, Bush cannot hide the staggering numbers of returning veterans struggling to manage return to civilian disability.

Bush cannot hide the number of families and loved ones that have endured loss and are everywhere weeping. He can't hide the staggering numbers of veterans, 1 out of every 4 homeless sleeping on the streets. He cannot hide nor deny the staggering amount of soldiers returning home hopeless in their appeal to get help for what they've gone through.

It was just revealed that their is an epidemic of suicide among returning veterans. 17 of which take their lives daily doubling the average rate of suicide in America. "The US military is experiencing a 'suicide epidemic' with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS. At least 6,256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 -- an average of 17 a day -- the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population."

We, the public, must do something to honor all the veterans for their duty to our country, for believing in and holding affirm to those principles which lead our patriarchs to rebel against domineering forces which neither cared for nor catered to the peace, prosperity, or benefit of the people.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

I honor our veterans as I honor my father for his service to this nation in a time of war. He was proud to wear the uniform and did so for 20 years. For him it was a badge of commendation symbolizing duty to a nation that was a bastion of human rights and protecting freedoms for the people of the world. America had once represented what was right, lawful, and just in the world. We were the hope, inspiration, and envy of people everywhere oppressed by tyrannical forces. We were the catalyst for their struggle to throw off enslavement and take up the struggle for freedom, independence as our forefathers had in forming this once great nation.

The soldier is representative of those traits which led once ordinary citizens to find courage enough to rebel against unimaginable odds, endure unimaginable struggle in defending, and upholding the dignity of the collective regard. This nation was born on the bodies of fallen comrades, brothers and sisters in arms who refused to allow themselves to be dominated by autocratic rule and controlled by the whims of despotic monarchs like King George.

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How strange that history so often cycles in seemingly similar circumstance. It is in the spirit of righteousness that I appeal this day to the sunshine soldier and the pitchfork patriot willing to take up whatever tool necessary to support the defense of this nation against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Please soldier question yourself now -- are the leaders guiding a corrupt and criminal foreign-policy worthy of directing the oath of your allegiance? If you and the citizens of this nation were lied to, scared, and threatened into waging war against a sovereign nation which had nothing to do with the insidious attacks of September 11, 2001, wouldn't that negate the noble cause that the decider claims his war is and make us the enemy instead of the liberator.

It was our previous leaders, presidents, and administrations who supported Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, propping them up as puppet rule. It was American taxpayer money that asserted their power, financially backing their regimes, and arming them to wage war on their neighbors and even their own citizens.

We were both lied to by the same people that now sound the drums of war against Iran. The same lies are being rehashed just in a new way. Question yourself soldier -- do they deserve the power to put your life and that of hundreds of thousands of your friends and citizens into danger just because they want to deny Iran their Non-Proliferation Treaty right to create civilian nuclear power? Did they deserve the right to put you and your fellow comrades into danger in attempting the occupation of the nation with the second largest oil reserves in the entire world which neither attacked us or had anything to do with Al-Qaeda?

The CIA established Al-Qaeda as a boogey man, a ghost to give our military the necessary enemy for wars of conquest and the expansion of Empire. Dear soldiers, we know that you are good citizens who only wanted to service our country and nation by doing those things which preserved our collective peace and freedoms but please question yourself, can you truly look upon the Iraqi people with hate and disdain for rising up against our military occupation of their country especially in light of the atrocities that private military contractors have and are routinely subjecting their populations to?

Would you allow foreign armies to kick in your doors, detain your family members indiscriminately, rape, brutalize, and torture your neighbors, friends, and family members without regard? Would you not, if that happened in America, create, lead, or join some kind of resistance or insurgency to combat the situation?

The citizens of this country do not blame you in the least for what has happened to Iraq. You were lied to as we were lied to as the world was lied to. All we asked now is that you question yourself about whether your leaders deserve your trust and allegiance. We ask you to resist should they ask you to perform an act contrary to your duty as a soldier in protecting the values that America holds so dear.

Ask yourself also if they had your best interests in mind then why use depleted uranium which puts you, your comrades, and Iraqi citizens at risk for terrible health consequences? Why honor a civilian leadership that will not even fund fully and properly the Veterans Administration, on which you and so many of your brothers and sisters are returning home with life long debilitating and permanent disabilities, depend.

The leadership guiding you and your friends to unnecessary and tragic deaths, themselves elected to refrain from service to our nation in a time of war when they had ample opportunity to do as you do now. However they used their political connections or legislative loop holes to escape from having to fight in the front lines of war. They do not know what it is like to be on the battlefield with brothers dying around you.

They have no idea what its like to have to sleep in a foxhole with one eye open for spotting enemy. They have no idea what its like to see your friend and fellow soldier blown to pieces before your eyes. they have no idea what it's like to be forced by circumstance to shoot down a civilian or child. I myself do not know these things and could never truly understand what hell you have had to go through for your nation.

But unlike them, I would never claim the authority or responsibility to lead you in a time of war when I myself do not understand what that exactly entails. That right should be reserved for somebody that knows what it's like to fight by your side and extended only to someone who understands the atrocities on the ground of decisions made in bureaucratic offices in Washington D.C.

The civilian leadership responsible for the atrocity of Iraq and maybe soon Iran, have proven to you, to the country, to the world that they are not fit to lead and to be honored in their decision making capacity. This criminal administration is totally undeserving of being in command of our nation's military and the lives of our most honored guard. They are fit only to be impeached, tried, and hung as the war criminals they are. Our nation cannot stand for torture, rendition, nor for preemptive attacks of conquest and imperialistic expansion at the expense of other peoples and nations of the world.

Remember your oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic. Allegiance to a criminal element of governance waging genocidal policy against innocent people is not honor and duty to our nation. Please soldier help us to bring you home and properly fund the health care and long-term assistance that each of you will need in making sense of the war you were just put through.

Help us to stop the flood of money leaving our countries supporting illegal war and threating to bankrupt our children's' futures. We are on the verge of total economic collapse of the dollar and destruction of the American economy and your leaders say nothing. We are borrowing huge amounts of money our nation may never be able to repay. If we do not hold accountable these criminal politicians now, we may never get chance again and there will never be an America like we once knew for our children to inherit.

On this Veterans Day, I honor you as I honor my father, for duty to me and every member of this great nation. We just simply ask please soldier question your service to leaders who are not deserving of your dedication and moral sacrifice. We ask you to uphold and extend those values, those principles, those freedoms which made our nation great to all people everywhere. May the Lord bless you and your family wherever you may be.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."