Friday, October 06, 2006

Remember Ira Hayes

Can I say just how sick I am of WWII lionization?

Clint Eastwood is releasing a new film: Flag Of Our Fathers, all about the battle of Iwo Jima and American military triumpalism...

I can appreciate the battle as a significant event, and even be legitimately moved at the various aspects of what the U.S. Marines who fought and died there went through.

But any attempt to tell this story will be disengenous and fraudulent if it does not pay serious attention to the fact that one of our greatest military victories, also encompasses one of our greates national shames...

You wanna honor the dead of Iwo Jima and take something important from that event...Go read The Ballad of Ira Hayes. Every inch a true story by the way...a young man who fought bravely for country that, at the end of the day, crapped all over him for cheap political purpose...

I have said it before that this is the greatest country on earth and I am glad to call it my homeland...that is why this bothers me so...that we can superficially puff up ourselves up with jingoism and our military superiority in the face of that shame without lifting so much as a finger to redress it, says something ugly and horrible about this country, and it dishonors the men who fought and died in that battle

That needs to end, now!

mojo sends

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