By Karen Kenyon
You are rolled up in your blanket now,
perhaps 40 feet feet from my car
olive brown, army-colored,
here by the peaceful Pacific
tree-willow blue,
Paler near us, darker
near the horizon.
It’s almost time for the green flash,
but you don’t care. …
[Read more…]
By Hal V. J. Muskat
I’ve dreamt my name is on The Wall in Washington, DC.
And, right now, I’m thinking That Wall; I’m recalling also trips to the Armory with my dad, an officer in the National Guard. I’m thinking of my uncle, a WWII and Korean vet who just celebrated his 94th birthday. I’m thinking of those two hundred names and faces I can’t remember, eighteen and nineteen year old kids from my Basic Training company, KIA long before their 20th birthdays. I’ve seen their names on that wall while looking for my own.
Every time I hear, “Thank-you for serving!” I want to reply, “Fuck You!” But, I usually ask, “For What are you thanking me? Shooting old people and children or NOT shooting them?” [Read more…]
By Arnold “Skip” Oliver
More than a few veterans, Veterans For Peace among them, are troubled by the way Americans observe Veterans’ Day on November 11th. It was originally called Armistice Day, and established by Congress in 1926 to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations, (and later) a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.” For years, many churches rang their bells on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – the time that the guns fell silent on the Western Front by which time 16 million had died.
To put it bluntly, in 1954 Armistice Day was hijacked by a militaristic congress, and today few Americans understand the original purpose of the occasion, or even remember it. The message of peace seeking has vanished. Now known as Veterans’ Day, it has devolved into a hyper-nationalistic worship ceremony for war and the putatively valiant warriors who wage it. [Read more…]
By Dana Levy
I was drafted into the US Army in 1966 and my (our) country seems to have been at war ever since. I was sent to Germany after my training in Basic and AIT as a soldier and order taker because my next older brother (drafted 2 months ahead of me) was in Korea. The benevolent country of the USA wouldn’t send two brothers to a war zone at the same time back then.
We (this includes us all) don’t have such a policy any more and it is every man–whether young or old– for himself, not to mention the many women involved now. My supposition is that the new policy stems from the fact that we now have an all volunteer military. I only did two years in the service to my country and it is still constantly always right under the surface of my thoughts and actions.
[Read more…]
By Jay Powell
Surrender your free will to the machine.
That is the act performed,
when you enlist or accept a commission
and take the oath to obey,
without reservation.
They don’t tell you that,
when you are 16 or 17 or 18 or 19 years young.
Your brain, no matter how incredibly brilliant,
is not fully formed and hooked together (scientific fact).
You are still a babe,
whether you know it or not. … [Read more…]
By Anna Daniels
Almost one hundred years ago President Woodrow Wilson declared in vaulting prose that World War I was the war to end all wars, that it would make the world safe for democracy. The vaulting prose came to naught– the war to end all wars didn’t.
The reality is that the United States doesn’t wage peace with anywhere near the same commitment that it wages war. The veterans who march in the Veterans Day parades this week, as well as those who consciously choose not to, will represent a constant succession of wars, declared and undeclared, since World War II.
The Cold War. The Korean War. The Vietnam War. The Gulf War. The War in Afghanistan. The Iraq War. [Read more…]
By Janet Parkinson /Poems Against War
Jalal Ahmed 07901 295135
Ali Abbas 07901 567256
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are incised on my thigh.
My wife sees them when we make love.
I see them when I bathe, change clothes.
They are high enough to be covered
at the beach. I do not want
the world to know my fear.
I do not want the world to know
I have reason to fear. …
[Read more…]
By Bob Dorn
Freedom. A word we don’t hear lately, cheated of life by politicians who told us that’s what wars are for.
After all those wars fought in its name, did we lose the concept, freedom? What took its place? Hate? Maybe that’s what’s left.
We’ve been suffocated by war; our culture is dying from it. Road rage is normal. The military mails advanced war games to little boys whose memories of all those explosions can be tickled once they reach 18, all ready for the next “conflict.” War is just a digital metaphor, a collection of remote buttons until they’re turned into launcher’s buttons.
Yipeee… they’re all gonna die, is that what Country Joe sang? Nope, he said, we’re all gonna die. [Read more…]
By Maria E. Garcia
The Depression and the advent of World War II brought social and economic change to Logan Heights. Residents who lost their jobs and savings during the Depression found a scapegoat for their anger and fears in the form of their neighbors of Mexican descent.
These residents, many of whom who had been actively recruited by American business owners, ranchers and farmers in the early twentieth century were now seen as job stealers and a burden to the welfare system. They were denied employment, dropped from the welfare rolls and actively repatriated to Mexico. Sixty percent of the repatriated individuals were American citizens.
Several men that I have interviewed told of their mothers crying when they heard we were at war. Men were enlisting and being drafted. The whittling away of the Logan Heights population which first occurred during the repatriation, became even more apparent when so many of the men, often the household’s primary breadwinner, went off to war. An unprecedented number of women entered the workforce in the canneries and defense industry as a result.
But there was an influx of a new group in Logan Heights–sailors. … [Read more…]
