As 2023 ends and 2024 begins, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank billions of you, in America and around the world, for your service.
No, I’m not talking to military veterans — or at least not to military veterans AS military veterans. Whenever I’m thanked for my “service” in the US Marine Corps, my first instinct and usual course of action is to point out two things:
First, the rest of you paid me good money and provided me with food, housing, medical care, exotic travel, and other benefits.
Secondly, my “service” wasn’t to you, nor was it to some high-minded concept like, say, freedom. It was to a government which forcibly extracted that pay and those bennies from Americans’ wallets whether they liked it or not, then endangered the lives and livelihoods of Americans and others alike by using me and millions like me, sending us around the world conducting ourselves violently in pursuit of unworthy goals.
War is an evil, not a good. Those who engage in it are, at our very BEST, the unwitting (or if conscripted, unwilling) pawns of evil actors, and at worst know full well what we’re doing and for whom, yet actively choose to do it anyway.
You don’t owe veterans thanks for our “service.” We owe YOU our sincere apologies and such restitution as we can figure out how to make for the damage we’ve done.
Of course, many veterans go on later to engage in service that’s truly worthy of thanks.
Waiting tables. Growing crops. Building houses. Writing software. Entertaining audiences. Treating the ill and injured. Putting out fires. Repairing or operating planes, trains, trucks, cars, bicycles, etc. Mopping floors. Cleaning toilets or making sure water gets to and from them correctly.
The list of good and important things that people do goes on and on.
The vast majority of humans spend much of our time making other humans’ lives better, and having our own lives made better by those other humans.
I’m not sure we thank each other (including military veterans who’ve moved on from destructive to productive work) enough, or sincerely enough, for all we do.
But I’m sure we should.
My New Year’s resolution is to be more mindful of my debt to all those who, by way of earning their own livings, improve my life.
Thank YOU for YOUR service. I wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2024.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
Spot on TK, spot on.
PEACE ON EARTH!!!
PEACE AND JOY TO EVERYONE!
One thing we can agree on, Knapp: fuck my military service.
I am giving you a Huge Thank You for your service and safety!
Although I was not a Marine, I say “Semper Fi”, and a great new year. ( Army grunts do respect the Corps)
The veterans I thank are the ones that protested the NATO Summit in Chicago several years ago and destroyed their medals. The Media called the NATO 3 ( 3 of the people protesting) the “NATO 3 Stooges”. The 3 men were Jared Chase, Brent Betterly and Brian Church.
They were arrested and I don’t know what’s happened since then.
Hi PP500:
I Always thank veterans, always. Many Veterans become involved in Peace. It can be very healing
V.
For a long time in my post-military civilian life, I avoided clothing and such that identified me as a “veteran.”
Lately I’ve started wearing a Marine Corps hat on occasion, that kind of thing, for two reasons:
1) So that if someone “thanks me for my service,” I can tell them no, thank YOU for YOURS.
2) So that if I run into other old Marines, maybe we can swap some stories. I’ve met some who are still all in “warrior” mode, and others who seem to get it.
I’ll also wear that stuff the next time I go to an anti-war protest, but the ones around me are mostly not well-announced and mostly university students, so I haven’t found one to atttend yet.
I gave my medals and ribbons to my oldest child years ago, and we’ve since become estranged. I don’t know if she kept them or not. I don’t want them back, but maybe I’ll have a rack of them made up to destroy or throw at a police line or something.
It is football day…. Not my thing…. The Ducks are playing right now…
Whenever I’m thanked for my “service” in the US Marine Corps, my first instinct and usual course of action is to point out two things
I normally roll my eyes and chuckle. Weird how it took almost 20 years for someone to thank me for my service. I got discharged in 1976. The propaganda machine does work. Sometimes it just takes a while. I never even knew I was a hero.
The worshipful attitude toward the military seems to have hit with the 1991 Gulf War. When I got back, every bar at O’Hare airport (where I had a layover on my way home) had a free beer waiting for anyone in uniform or with orders/ID. And it seems like it wasn’t long after that that every e.g. NFL game had a fucking flag parade, flyover, etc.
I was still a warmonger then, but I quickly got sick of the whole “thank you for your service” thing. Good people were busting their asses doing REAL service while I was off collecting about the best pay I’d ever had in my life (half again what I was making at my factory job), getting tattoos and swilling beer and blowing things up, and they were thanking ME?
We lost another Patriot for peace.
December 31, 2023 The World Has Lost John Pilger
One of the greatest journalists and filmmakers of any generation has died at age 84, his family announced on Sunday. John Pilger, whose books, films and articles informed generations of people eager to cut through official narratives and propaganda on the Palestinian question; U.S. wars executed in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere; the one it plans for China; the state of public medicine in Britain; the treatment of aborigines in his native Australia and a host of other critical public issues, has died in London at 84.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/31/the-world-has-lost-john-pilger/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Screen-Shot-2023-10-09-at-21.45.14-2-1024×576.png
Thank YOU too TK. We’d be lost without you. I truly mean that.