The Mask of Compassion

     Donald Trump met with the Secretary of Defense and top military brass in the Pentagon on January 18, 2018.  He proposed a military parade in Washington, D.C. to "celebrate" our troops, our military, our war effort.  Secretary "Mad Dog" Mattis and the Generals liked the idea.  Veterans Day, November 11, 2018, could be the event date.  Of course, a daily barrage of Trump's utterances and tweets have occurred since then, making the parade proposal seem a dim memory.  At the time, some journalists in mainstream media compared the parade idea with the regular military parades in Pyongyang attended by a smiling Kim Jong-un, the familiar images of goose-stepping soldiers watched proudly by North Korea's Supreme Leader meant to compare his bellicose vanity with Donald Trump's.
     I was struck by the lack of comparison to similar past parades in the Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany.  The idea of a big military parade in the U.S. isn't unheard of: General Schwarzkopf in 1991, hero of the Gulf War, paraded with Mickey Mouse in Tampa, Florida, with chorus girls in New York.  The U.S. had won the Cold War, celebrating it with a crushing victory (mostly from the air) against Iraq, a nation run by a dictator so evil he merited a comparison to Hitler by President Bush, yet, unlike Hitler, wasn't overcome and allowed to rule another twelve years.
     Americans don't have a problem with military parades.  What's Memorial Day except an excuse to flaunt militarism?  Professional sports, the NFL especially, have joined with the military to the extent that the singing or instrumental performing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is done, as announcers put it, in "honor of those who serve and have served their country in our nation's armed forces."
     Flyovers of military jets or helicopters often accompany these spectacles, but really, it's just a game, though one connected thoroughly to the free market, the promotion of which leads to the invasions and overthrows of governments like Iraq.
     Trump loves a parade; at heart he's a simple man.  He enjoys eating McDonald's hamburgers and fries.  He likes commanding the world's hugest war machine.  It's slightly less shocking that he wants to put on a big military parade than the easy acquiescence of Mad Dog Mattis and other Generals who also want the parade.  Display of military hardware helps business, increases sales for the world's behemoth arms dealer, the Pentagon.
     On Friday, April 13, 2018, responding to the Syrian government's alleged use of chlorine against civilians, Trump, obedient puppy of the Neoconservatives he's become, ordered a multi-pronged attack against Syria, hitting Damascus itself, the targets reportedly relating to Assad's chemical weapons production facilities, although it's more likely that the main target in Damascus was the headquarters of Hezbollah.  Syrian reports of civilians killed in two neighborhoods struck haven't been confirmed in the U.S. but I'll accept their viewpoint before that of the Pentagon any day.  Trump did this in concert with France and the United Kingdom, two countries that, after World War One, drew lines on a map of the Middle East, creating Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, and a host of troubles following.
     In the mainstream news, much has been made of the care taken not to kill Russian "advisers" and troops in Syria.  Syrian civilians, like the civilians allegedly killed in the chlorine attack, don't merit our concern.  Suffice it to say, Friday night and Saturday morning were loud and violent in Syria.  International and neutral WMD inspectors who were to investigate the alleged chlorine attack site were supposed to begin their work on Saturday.  Macron's, May's, and Trump's hysterical overreaction (attacking Syria without evidence of WMD being used by that country's government) has certainly made objective analysis of the issue of chemical weapons attack precarious.
     U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, continues her harangues against Syrian government forces, Assad, and Russia, making it out like she's really concerned about the lives and safety of children in war zones.  She's demonstrated her clear disdain for human lives called Palestinians and Yemenis.  She has no credibility on the subject of human rights, but U.S. Ambassadors to the U.N. tend to be mouthpieces defending the extension of American power even to absurd levels of logic--recall former Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright's rationalization of the deaths by neglect (from the U.S.-driven embargo) of an estimated half-million Iraqi children in the 1990s.
     I don't know if it's deliberate, but the job of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. has been given to at least three women, Samantha Power being the third mentioned here, who employ selective outrage, ignoring crimes against humanity committed by Israel and the United States, lending their voices, thus, to silent assent of the practices of mass murder, illegal warfare, meddling in the politics of other countries, torture, racism.  Ironically, while Albright, Power, and Haley have all spoken out about their heartfelt concerns for suffering children, they overlook millions of children suffering and killed by policies concocted and carried out by the same goddamn government they represent!
     How do they do this?  Are they unaware of their hypocrisy?  If so, they must be psychopaths, do-gooders who help commit mass murder, lacking awareness of how horribly wrong they are.  Another possibility is that they know exactly what they're saying, what those implications are.  They've swallowed whatever objections they may have ever had years ago and now help enact and apologize for policies they believe to be "for the greater good."
     Albright served under Bill Clinton, a Democrat; Power served under another Democrat, Barack Obama; Haley serves under a Republican, Donald Trump.  All three of these Presidents have never questioned the Israeli government's atrocities against Palestinians.  It begs the question: Does it matter to these people, Haley, Trump, Clinton, et al, that human beings are human beings, regardless of nationality, race, or religion?  By neglecting to feel for the Palestinians and Yemenis, Haley and people like her, may be classifying them in her own unfathomable mind as sub-humans, unworthy of civilized consideration.  Haley was born into a Sikh family, her parents are from India, a country
dominated for about 150 years by the British Empire.  Her ancestors living under British rule were not regarded on the same level of worth as the White occupiers.  Her ancestors were, in essence, Palestinians, i.e. second class citizens, judged by their skin color, religion, by their being in the way of the superior race.
     This, apparently, doesn't matter to her as she does her job in the U.N., lying on behalf of another empire.
     Let the parade be held, why should we care that Kim Jong-un does the same thing?  Shouldn't we celebrate our weapons?  We don't have parades for writers and painters, nurses and teachers.  It's important to recognize the hard military tool that helps America accomplish its deceptive practices, its righteous and justified killings of civilians using non-WMD means.

                                                                              Vic Neptune