Like Lambs to Slaughter
Because Hell
Hell Is For Children
And you know that their little lives
can become such a mess
--Hell is for Children, Pat Benatar
A little sacrifice for your foe
Got your sticks, your stones
A place all your own
So much for unholy war
--Not in My Name, KMFDM
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What ?"
--Highway 61, Bob Dylan
The wrath of Almighty God
is now undoubtedly hanging
over a great part of this congregation
--Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,
Jonathan Edwards
__________________
Hell Is For Children
And you know that their little lives
can become such a mess
--Hell is for Children, Pat Benatar
A little sacrifice for your foe
Got your sticks, your stones
A place all your own
So much for unholy war
--Not in My Name, KMFDM
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What ?"
--Highway 61, Bob Dylan
The wrath of Almighty God
is now undoubtedly hanging
over a great part of this congregation
--Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,
Jonathan Edwards
__________________
President Obama spoke Saturday to the "sacrifice" of the 30 troops killed in Afghanistan.
Sacrifice is really an Old Testament issue going back to Abraham, but upon whose altar and for whose god were these troops sacrificed? What good comes from this burnt offering? What do we expect the gods of war to offer unto us from the acceptance of this sacrifice?
Why do we accept the sacrifice of our troops? Does this make us more godlike? Have we failed to learn that sacrifice is an outmoded religious, if not military, concept? We have accepted Jesus (or so I am told) so that sacrifices are no longer needed to appease a loving God. Is our Commander-in-Chief now a god-substitute -- have we made of him a graven image?
We would like to do a Ranger analysis, but how to deconstruct an action that is already being sold as an event motivated by the desire to save Rangers? SEALs to the rescue! Except, it did not happen that way.
If one believed in sacrifices and appeasing angry gods, it would be easy to say that the SEALs, part of the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, paid the price for the hubris of that killing. One could say that anyone breaking into any man's bedroom to kill him in the presence of his wife (wives) is treading shaky moral ground.
One could say that one insurgent -- just another Afghani with a $200 RPG -- inflicted vengeance upon the 22 SEALs. One could say that the 37 people who died when one RPG took down a multi-million dollar Special Operations aircraft were really a sacrifice to atone for a multitude of sins.
One could say that if one were a fundamentalist Christian asshole, but this Ranger would not say that. These men died because of military hubris. This is not the first time for Special Ops at this rodeo; they lost birds at Roberts Ridge early on in this fiasco.
How can a nation sacrifice the best that we have to offer in such a blithe manner? We saw a billboard on I-65 outside Nashville today: "HELL IS REAL".
Do we need to look any further?
Labels: 30 servicemembers killed in afghanistan, afghanistan
posted by rangeragainstwar at 9:15 PM
9 Comments:
Our "leaders' are the ones who should fear the day of sacrifice.
A Dead Statesman
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
"Epitaphs of the War" Kipling
The problem I have with this is the disconnect between the reality - that these guys and ALL our guys are doing what imperial troops have done for centuries; policing the wild lands at the fringes of empire - and the story we keep telling ourselves about it - which is that these guys and ALL the guys are noble freedom fighters, the 2011 equivalent of the US Army that stormed ashore at Normandy.
I don't expect anything but patriotic blather from politicians. That's their job, to drape dead guys in the flag so we can feel good about the waste.
I once expected more from the U.S. public and our news people. Not anymore, mind you, but once. And once we might have had a genuine national discussion about whether its worth the lives of some of our cleverest and most capable legionaries to chase wild men around the hills of central Asia.
But not anymore.
One minor correction; I understand that the helo was not a SO bird but a plain vanilla ARNG Hook, so the five dead aircrew were just local guys from Cornhole, Arkansas doing their 12 months in theatre.
Not much of a reward for manning the milecastle on Hadrian's Wall, was it?
Jay,
Thank you for an excellent Kipling selection.
Chief,
This is a very compelling development, that it was a "mere" ARNG bird.
Chief,
When i wrote this essay the news reported that the bird was SOF. I also assumed this to be true since it's against reason to use NG for SOF misns. This is not a slam , but a fact. This is 2011 , not 1970.
There's a whole lotta speculation about the NG asset being used/sacrificed.
Kipling was writing in 1918, after the Great War and all the hoo-rah and jingoism had finally lost its magic.
"If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied."
Les pauvres chevaliers du Christ
Jay,
Kipling is as relevant today as then. Thanks for the apt selections. (There are, sadly, so, so many.)
http://rense.com/general94/execc.htm
Slaughter indeed.
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