Operation Ranch Hand spraying Agent Orange.
With the new activist veterans showing up at the Portland protests (Wall of Vets), one phrase seems to pop up over and over again: "This is not the country I fought for."
While I salute their actions and bravery standing up to the thugs of the Trump American Bund, I kinda wish they would not repeat that old adage.
What is happening now is exactly the country I was sent to fight for.
No rules of engagement, kill anything that moves, support the corrupt governments, chemical warfare, destroy hamlets and villages, etc..
"We had to destroy the village to save it."
Whether it be the massacre at Washita River or My Lai, the brutality of slavery and the Jim Crow laws, the grinding poverty of Appalachia or the violent suppression of labor, that is the America that hides the continued murder of black and brown citizen with no repercussions for those who commit or condone those murders.
That's the problem. That is always what this country has been about. That’s what needs to change.
Its a hard lesson to learn for those of us who were sent to war zones with the brainwashed version of American foreign and domestic policy. They are both corrupt.
“This isn’t the country I fought for.” I’m afraid it is.
When you discover the truth through the
door of betrayal, and become a global
citizen, it is as if you acquired a quantum
leap in intelligence. The world you once
lived in is no longer your primary residence.
Mike Hastie
Army Medic Viet Nam
