One recent evening, whilst fumbling through a collection of
documentaries by acclaimed journalist and film maker John Pilger, I came
across ‘Heroes’. This short film, produced in 1981, shone a spotlight
on the treatment of Vietnam veterans in the aftermath of the conflict by
an administration that had sent them to war.
One recent evening, whilst fumbling through a collection of
documentaries by acclaimed journalist and film maker John Pilger, I came
across ‘Heroes’. This short film, produced in 1981, shone a spotlight
on the treatment of Vietnam veterans in the aftermath of the conflict by
an administration that had sent them to war. In the documentary a
former US marine, injured in Vietnam, recalled the hysteria that led to
hundreds of thousands of young men volunteering to fight in a strange
far off land. They had been told that Vietnam posed a credible threat to
the USA and the war was sold to the American public as being a
righteous moral venture. At that time, President Lyndon B Johnson
promoted the ‘Domino Theory’ which speculated that if Vietnam were
allowed to turn ‘Communist’, the so called ‘Red Menace’ would spread
across Asia. The result, in Johnson’s own words, being: ‘‘If we quit
Vietnam, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we’ll have
to fight in San Francisco’’.
Such crude scare tactics would come to sound hauntingly familiar. Times
have changes but propaganda style has not. In the early 21st century,
the new bogeyman, Al-Qaeda this time, was on the lips of politicians,
splashed across the pages of newspapers and disseminated through the
airwaves. In the aftermath of September 11th, we were threatened with
everything up to and including weapons of mass destruction being used
against us by a far off, formidable, but for the most part, unknown
enemy. Events were quickly put into motion and many were swept up in the
flood of hysteria that was used to justify the invasion of two already
crippled countries and the destruction of many lives. In 2005, George
Bush reminded us ‘‘We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight
them over here’’
An article published in 1977 in ‘The Veteran’, the official magazine of
Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW), summed up the treatment of
veterans after the war succinctly with the phrase- ‘The ruling class
policy toward its soldiers–Use Once and Throw Away’.
The first major monument dedicated to more than 58,000 members of the
armed forces killed in action in Vietnam, The Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
was not erected until 1982, nearly a decade after the war’s end.
However, the real tragedy revealed itself in the years following the
conflict as the soldiers who returned home were deserted by the
government whose battles they been sent to fight. By the time ‘Heroes’
had been produced, roughly as many Vietnam veterans had committed
suicide as had been killed in active service. Many more have taken their
lives since. Thousands returned home missing limbs, suffering from
cancer brought about through exposure to Agent Orange, used to defoliate
the jungles of Vietnam, or casualties of post traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). Many became and still are homeless. According to the National
Coalition for Homeless Veterans, there are usually around 107,000
veterans sleeping rough every night. Of these almost half served in
Vietnam.
The US Department of Defence estimated the direct costs of the Vietnam
War to have been $173 billion (corresponding to about $770 billion in
2003 currency). When it came to providing medical care to the veterans
of Vietnam, the necessary funds were not available. In 1972, President
Nixon vetoed the ‘Veterans Health Care Expansion Act’ on the grounds
that the bill was ‘fiscally irresponsible and inflationary’. The purpose
of the bill was to approve spending of $85 million to expand health
care provision for veterans and their families.
The cost of the Vietnam war has already been outstripped by the amount
spent on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and, more recently, Libya. To
date, the US has expended over $1.1 trillion on these wars. The UK, a
junior partner of the coalition, has spent over $20 billion – the same
figure that the NHS has been told it must save over the next 4 years
through a string of savage cutbacks.
History repeats itself. The invasion of Vietnam proved devastating to
invader and antagonist alike. Modern wars have proved to be a one way
ticket to disaster. For those still harbouring doubts, recent
revelations that emerged in February this year put an end to any
reservations. Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector whom the
CIA codenamed ‘Curveball’ , admitted that he had fabricated stories
about Iraq having a secret biological weapons programme. Alwan
al-Janabi’s stories played a major role in building the case for war. He
stated in an interview with the Guardian‘‘I had the chance to fabricate
something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we
are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."
In reality Curveball appears to have been somewhat of a fantasist and a
bit of a loser whose codename could well have been ‘Munchausen’. He fled
to Germany in the 1990s and applied for political asylum after being
sought by Iraqi authorities on charges of theft committed whilst working
at a TV production company in Baghdad.
Not only do Curveball’s revelations provide a bitter send off to the
Britain’s troops, the last contingent formally having left Iraq at the
end of May after 8 years of war and 179 dead, his comment about
singlehandedly brining democracy to Iraq insults the memory of over a
million Iraqi dead; few Iraqis today enjoy their newly bestowed ‘margin
of democracy.’
Nevertheless, an obliging media and a fearful public seem can make any narrative seem real.
Government and media exhortations to ‘Support our troops’ are sick
irony. Many of those fighting abroad are from deprived socio-economic
backgrounds, created and enforced by a capitalist economic system. David
Cameron announced last week his intention of keeping the armed forces
tied up in Afghan conflict till at least 2015. The question must be
asked: should we support our troops by encouraging their deployment into
danger to be maimed or killed in bogus wars or should we support the
armed forces by opposing foreign invasions and calling for them to be
brought out of a dangerous and futile situation once and for all.
Returning soldiers, having ‘outlived their usefulness’, risk being
thrown onto the scrapheap by a government that one day lauds them as
heroes and the next leaves them to the mercy of an unfavourable economic
climate.
The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) published in October
2010 proposed the loss of 42,000 jobs, throughout the armed services
over the next 10 years. The projected job losses would amount to 25,000
civilian MOD employees, 7,000 troops and 10000 navy and RAF personnel.
The redundancies are intended to save the government £1.2 billion over
the next decade. The ‘Future Reserves 2020 Study’, commissioned as part
of the SDSR by David Cameron and carried out by General Sir Nick
Houghton, deputy head of the armed forces, recommends an increased role
for reservists, cheaper but lacking the training of regular soldiers, in
future military missions.
History is awash with numerous examples of the ruling classes sending
the deprived to fight for imperialist interests. Whilst the British
people are constantly reminded of the need for cuts or ‘efficiency
saving’ as they are known in polite company, every sector including the
police and armed forces having to take a bite of the rotten apple, Prime
Minister David Cameron has found the money (and the excuses) for
another military adventure- Libya this time. His friends in the banking
sector, whom we have much to thank for the current state of affairs,
have also managed to avoid swallowing the bitter medicine of austerity.
A much greater threat arises from home-grown terror operatives. A band
of fanatics operating in the UK are unleashing a wave of economic terror
attacks. The first wave of extremists, operating in cells known as
‘investment banks’, caused billions of pounds worth of damage to the
British economy and found creative ways to avoid paying taxes they owed.
The second band of extremists, commonly referred to as the ‘Con-Dem
coalition’, incited by fanatical free-market ideology, unleashed a
wholesale and deplorable attack upon innocent public sector workers,
targeting both military and police personnel and civilian workers alike.
The Con-Dem coalition, wealthy tax dodging corporations and individuals,
alongside an unregulated financial sector, pose a much greater threat
to the lives of the people of Britain than any civilians or nationalist
movements in foreign countries ever did. The working class men and women
that make up the backbone of the military are arguably turning their
force on the wrong people. Perhaps it is time our armed forces were
redeployed to the perilous Canary Wharf and City of London provinces to
do battle with the socio-economic terrorists in their high-rise
hideouts. Doubtless, our American allies would want a piece of the
action too, snatching high ranking operatives, such as Phillip Green and
former RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin, at the dead of night, hooding and
placing them in orange jump suits before flying them half way around the
world to face creative interrogation methods at the hands of the CIA.
Article originally posted on the London Progressive Journal site .