Trump Stokes “America First” Fires with Veterans Bill:

Honor Warriors of a Blood-soaked Empire?

June 25, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.

Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:6

On June 23, in a major media event signing the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, Donald Trump declared that veterans who fought in the U.S. military were “warriors and heroes who have won our freedom.”

On January 29 of this year, 30 of those “heroes,” backed by drones and helicopters, descended from the sky to attack two houses in the tiny, impoverished village of al-Ghayil, Yemen. As people in the village rushed to find shelter, or defend themselves with primitive weapons, the U.S. military indiscriminately bombarded the entire village, destroying stone huts as families slept, and gunning people down as they fled, even wiping out people’s livestock. Eleven-year-old Ahmed Abdelilah Ahmed al Dahab was the first to die—stepping outside his home, he asked the Americans, “Who are you?” and was fatally shot. Eight-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki bled to death after being shot in the neck. Mohammed al-Ameri’s three children, ages four, five, and seven, all died when their home was destroyed by an airstrike.

That massacre was in service of U.S. objectives in the oil-rich and militarily strategic Middle East. But it was emblematic of what the U.S. military does around the world. The beginnings of the USA were built on the genocide of Native peoples, carried out by the U.S. military. And the U.S. military has been carrying out crimes against humanity ever since. Last month, the U.S. military massacred over 100 civilians, including 42 children, in the town of Al Mayadeen in Eastern Syria. The U.S. military, who Trump calls “heroes who have won our freedom,” killed three million people in Indochina in the 1960s and ’70s to suppress just liberation struggles. (See “From a Vietnam War Vet: We Were Baby Killers for U.S. Imperialism.”). At this moment the U.S. military threatens the planet with a nuclear holocaust as part of their rivalry with other reactionary powers. And Trump is hell-bent on, and already taking big steps to, put all this on steroids.

“Warriors and heroes who have won our freedom”?

The reality is in what Bob Avakian says in BAsics 1:5:

It is not uncommon to hear these days, from government officials and others, that only 1 percent of the population is in the U.S. military but that this 1 percent is fighting for the freedom of the other 99 percent. The truth, however, is this: That 1 percent, in the military, is in reality fighting for the other 1 percent: the big capitalist-imperialists who run this country—who control the economy, the political system, the military, the media, and the other key institutions—and who dominate large parts of the world, wreaking havoc and causing great suffering for literally billions of people. It is the “freedom” of these capitalist-imperialists—their freedom to exploit, oppress, and plunder—that this 1 percent in the military is actually killing and sometimes dying for.

To “support the troops” is to be complicit in enforcing a world of horrors, and perpetuating the world as it is. Enough of all this fucking “America first” bullshit in any way, shape, or form. Instead, people need to start from the interests of the vast majority of the world’s seven billion people, and the profound need for a whole other and much better world.

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