This Wednesday: Memorial Day Everyday
May 30th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Problem:
Yes, yes, yes, dear readers, I realize that Memorial Day was “celebrated” on Monday, but there’s two things to consider: first, Memorial Day is actually today, May 30, we just “observed” it on Monday; second, it seems odd to us that we’d remember those who’ve died in the name of our country for only 24 hours, if that. The majority of us, yours truly included, spent the vacation day gobbling bratwurst and watching baseball on the idiot box.
So, this Wednesday, this Memorial Day Wednesday, we’re going to do something for the troops so they needn’t just be in our memories.
But that’s not the biggest problem we’re facing today. Today, we’re facing a continuation of our senseless occupation of Iraq. On Friday, May 25, I realized, once again, why I belong to no political party: politicians aren’t listening to the people, the 9/11 Commission, the Iraq Study Group, or the rest of the free and not-so-free world. The Democratically controlled Congress and the Republican president just agreed to legislation to continue funding our occupation of Iraq with no end in sight (I suppose “never” is technically a time, but it’s rather far off).
An occupation can only end two ways: annexation or withdrawal. Since we’d rather have Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia as the 51st state, we’re calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Opponents of a troop withdrawal, the few that remain, may say that to do so will destabilize the region. I’m fairly certain — if there’s any accuracy to the news we’re streamed every day — that the region is pretty well destabilized. I’m fairly certain that those destabilizing the region either despise us, fear us, or are us. But in none of those cases does that mean the Iraqis want to listen to us, particularly if what they’re hearing is mortar shells and machine guns and violent knocks on their doors. Opponents of withdrawal (which I suppose means they want to add Iraq as a state) also spew things like: “If we don’t fight the terrorists there, we’ll fight them here.” Seeing as the vast majority of terrorists don’t live in Iraq, I’m pretty sure our 160,000 troops in that country aren’t actually not fighting many of the world’s terrorists.
Let’s get something straight and straighten out our diction: we are not mired in a “civil war.” We are mired in an occupation of a sovereign country, a country of approximately 27,500,000 people. And we’ve slaughtered at least 64,333 of those civilians[1] for no ties to 9/11, for no ties to weapons of mass destruction, for no semblance of a peaceful democracy.
And the potential blowback from our occupation is rather terrifying. Blowback — not our freedoms, not our wealth, not our (somewhat) equal treatment of women, and not even our McRestaurants — caused 9/11. If we want peace on our land and on others, the sooner we withdraw, the better. We want the world community to respect us, and this is best achieved through a good example (and not imposing), through peace, through fair trade, through humanitarian missions and actions.
So let�s let logic rule this Memorial Day Wednesday. It’s time that we at Progressive Wednesday — our valiant staff and our dedicated readers — take a stand.
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Make Progress:
3,454 American troops have died because of our occupation of Iraq. And here’s another sobering factoid: “In the period from Memorial Day 2006 through Saturday, 980 soldiers and Marines died in Iraq, compared to 807 deaths in the previous year.”
On top of that ugly fact — with 114 American casualties in Iraq this month, May 2007 becomes the third deadliest month since the occupation began, and the highest total deaths since November 2004. In other words, our time in Iraq is getting worse.
So our goal this here Wednesday is simple: let us help bring an end to this mess as soon as possible, and let us properly remember those who’ve fought in our name. Can we? We can. Enough said.
Let’s put away the ketchup and mustard, let’s put the volleyball nets back in the shed, let’s put the kids to bed, and let’s do something. Let us all — united together by the name of our country and our shared values — do something powerfully patriotic.
[1] And at least hundreds of these deaths could have been avoided. But we insisted on using cluster munitions, and “50 strikes on top Iraqi leaders failed to kill any of the intended targets.”
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