How Lying Causes Casualties of War

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



How Lying Causes Casualties of War
December 12, 2012

Lying and warfare have long gone hand in hand, a reality that continues today with a U.S. news media that opts for simpleminded storylines about good guys vs. bad guys, the pro-U.S. side against the America-hating side. Such nonsense has caused much death and destruction, notes Gary G. Kohls.

By Gary G. Kohls


Not too long ago I watched “Johnny Got His Gun,” the film adaptation of Dalton Trumbo’s famous antiwar novel with the same title about a young American soldier who came home from the trenches of World War I in France, having miraculously survived an artillery explosion that blew away his face, as well as both legs and both arms – not to mention his dog tags.

The helpless victim was being kept alive in the back wards of a military hospital by his “caregivers,” probably out of scientific curiosity. The doctors and nurses treated him as a vegetable that was unable to communicate. Moreover, the staff believed that he was unable to perceive pain or have feelings.

Because the military didn’t want the public to be aware of this horrific example of the gruesomeness of war, he was segregated (as is still done to this very day in veterans’ hospitals and nursing homes) to locked room where nobody would be able to give witness to his plight. A series of flashbacks provided sympathetic evidence of the victim’s innocent pre-war civilian life and total lack of appreciation about the ghastly reality of organized mass human slaughter that is modern war.

What was most moving about “Johnny Got His Gun” was the fact that the victim, kept alive by a stomach and tracheotomy tubes, was actually quite aware of his surroundings and what was being done to him without his consent. Finally finding a way to communicate with his caregivers, the story ends with no certain resolution, forcing the viewer to think about end-of-life ethics, militarism and the lies, half-truths and cover-ups of the consequences of war. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/12/how-lying-causes-casualties-of-war/

[JoSpits]

1. War Mongers Don't Need A Reason

[cbrer]

2. The realities of war

SHOULD be shoved into our faces. The checks we write. The policies we accept. The cruelties we endure. The lives that are rended. The resources squandered. The futures that are mortgaged. The imperialism forced down the worlds throat. The evil, the satanic, the cruel careless monied interests.

Until we force this to change at home, America cannot shine a beacon of hope and human progress to the rest of the world.

[DollarBillHines]

3. The Gulf of Tonkin lie killed a lot of my buddies. eom

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R