Rolling Thunder 2008
Press Action
Sunday, May 25, 2008
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/rollingthunder05252008/
It’s Memorial Day weekend in the United States so that must mean thousands of Harley Davidsons and other motorcycles with loud pipes will be thundering through the streets of my Arlington neighborhood on their way to the Pentagon a few miles down the road.
Back in the 1980s, a group of Vietnam veterans organized a group called Rolling Thunder to lobby the U.S. government on the issue of U.S. soldiers being held prisoner in Vietnam. Since then, the group has broadened its scope to remember all U.S. soldiers taken prisoner or killed in U.S. wars.
Sadly, the group chose to give itself an extremely offensive name, Rolling Thunder, which was the code name given to the U.S. government’s bombing raids in North Vietnam and portions of South Vietnam controlled by the National Liberation Front from 1965 to 1968.
The plan was to destroy the North Vietnamese economy and force it to stop helping guerrilla fighters in South Vietnam. In all, the U.S. military flew 304,000 fighter bomber sorties and 2,380 B-52 bomber sorties over North Vietnam under Operation Rolling Thunder, dropping almost 1 million tons of bombs on the country.
Imagine how many Vietnamese were killed and how many homes were destroyed by the U.S. military bombing raids. And then about a decade or so after the U.S. pulls out of Saigon, a group of Vietnam War vets here in the United States decides to recognize their brothers and sisters who lost their lives in Vietnam and who were held prisoner by the North Vietnamese and the NLF by naming a group after this vicious and criminally insane bombing campaign.
Every Memorial Day now, I must listen to these roaring motorcycles driven through my neighborhood by American flag carrying, black leather-clad men and women who demand my attention by the roar of the toys between their legs. No thanks. I’ll pass on giving them even an ounce of my support or respect.
Instead, this Memorial Day I will remember the Iraqis who have found their country overrun by a mob of American military and contractor thugs, taking orders from madmen in Washington. On this Memorial Day, I will remember the thousands of Iraqis who have been killed and injured by the many men and women who volunteered to join the vicious criminal enterprise known as the U.S. military.
I will choose to remember and honor the people in the United States and around the world working in various ways to dismantle the system that permits nation states and corporations to kill and destroy the planet with impunity.
On the website of the New Jersey chapter of Rolling Thunder, I found a message that, sadly, sums up the thinking of millions of Americans:
POW’s / MIA’s
YOU WILL NOT BE FORGOTTENIt was the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
Contrary to this type of state propaganda, it is not the soldier who gives us freedom. Freedom is inherent. Instead, it is the police and military who threaten, by following the orders of their masters, to take away our freedom if we decide that we don’t like the actions of a government that steals our money to pay for murder and mayhem.
On this Memorial Day and all future ones, I will remember the victims of militarists, home and abroad, not the soldiers who perpetrate the violence of the state.