“The
object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding
oneself in the ranks of the insane.”-- Marcus Aurelius
MY COUNTRY, RIGHT AND
WRONG
Dom Stasi
April 25, 2004: “My country, right or wrong.” I’ve always subconsciously ascribed those
words to some great American soldier-statesman, perhaps George Washington or
Nathan Hale. It is most often attributed to Commodore Stephen Decatur's toast, "In matters
of foreign affairs, Our Country, may she always be right..." I expect many have
likewise assumed. Perhaps that’s
because it’s been a soldier’s credo and an inspiration to generations of
patriotic Americans. In fact, that
verbatim phrase, My country, right or wrong! was emblazoned between the painted
flag and the field elevation notice that graced the portal of the flight
operations shack on an Arctic airbase where I was stationed for a time. Stand on that flight line, and you read
those words: “My country, right or wrong!”
Such words seem appropriate
above a military portal. They did even
then - perhaps especially then. It was
the Sixties. Like today, they declare
commitment in the face of doubt.
Tennyson said it best: Theirs
not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.
Like military service itself, such messages are unambiguous, unwavering
in the face of the cognitive dissonance and conflict every thinking soldier
experiences: My country, right or wrong.
It holds no place for either subtlety or those who would deign to be
subtle. I never questioned such words
while in uniform and under oath. Few
have. Commitment is part of our
strength as a people. But as a civilian
– an American civilian - I reject the statement out of hand. As an American and a still free man, I’m
committed to reason not to oaths of obedience.
In the final accounting, America
is a place of civilians. As such we
have a responsibility to those whose time it is to do and die. That responsibility is clear and is specific
in our nation’s Bill Of Rights. As free
Americans ours is to make reply.
Ours is to reason why.
Ours is a government by, for,
and of the people, and people is just another way of saying human beings. And what is a human being if not a thinking,
reasoning, self-aware being? As every
honorable veteran knows, when a soldier in the service of America accepts My
country, right or wrong, he does so as a deliberate act of free will and human dignity. But he does
surrogate his personal freedom of choice for some period when he takes the
oath. He does so as an act of trust,
firm in the knowledge that his civilian leadership will be a just and
responsible leadership. He trusts that
his civilian leadership will be honest and act honorably under the flag of his
country. One cannot deny, however, that
the soldiers sailors, airmen, and marines of mine and subsequent generations
have not always seen their trust in the modern crop of civilian leaders
justified. My country, right or wrong
is an illusion built and sustained upon the naiveté of our expendable youth and
that of the adults who would sacrifice them to the will of whomever holds
power. But through disillusionment
comes knowledge. Many Americans know
better. As we grow older and see our
children sent into harm’s way and used as harm’s ministers, mine, of all
generations, should be skeptical of those who send them. There were few active protests of the Korean
War. There were many protests of the
Vietnam war, but few substantive until its third year and a widespread draft
that took the privileged sons as well as the expendable sons of the
traditionally expendable classes. Iraq,
however, was protested by the world and by rational Americans from its very
first moment. But not by our
soldiers. Our soldiers cannot hold our
leaders accountable and do their jobs effectively. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die. We must speak and act for them, or we must
turn our backs and let them continue to do and die, alone, abandoned to the
will of the corrupt, the frightened, the insane among us.
When any American soldier who
has served his country in the decades after WW-II returns to civilian life,
wiser, perhaps jaded by what he’s seen or felt, and he still accepts such
platitudes as My country, right or wrong, he abdicates his will, his intellect,
and his constitutional responsibility as an American. He subjugates reason to bias.
He becomes derelict in his duty to protect the republic and the civilian
public who know not what he knows, who’ve seen nothing of what he’s seen, and
hopefully never will. When faced with
an obviously corrupt civilian government, it is a veteran’s duty to act against
that corruption in the ways our constitution abundantly provides and fiercely
protects.
We approach this duty each in
our own way. This past week we’ve seen
the usual pinheaded news coverage of
Bush administration flaks criticizing the Democratic Party’s candidate, John
Kerry, for his rebellious 1971 act of tossing his medals (campaign ribbons)
over a fence – the White House fence.
Kerry, following his Vietnam service, led the activist group Vietnam Veterans
Against The War. This writer neither
presumes to condone or to condemn the young Kerry’s actions here. His was perhaps an extreme and to many an
inappropriate expression of disillusionment with his government. But that a veteran – be it John Kerry or
John Doe - has earned medals to toss, means he once stood his ground for his
country, right or wrong. In Kerry’s
case, that three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, were earned
is fairly conclusive proof that he stood his ground more than once. That is a far, far greater expression of
patriotism, honor, and understanding of ones duty to the republic than is the
quick and mindless criticism of a
symbolic act of protest. Many of those
critics are those already guilty of abdicating their public
responsibility. I speak of the pinheads
of the corporate press. But that the
pinheads are being manipulated to critique rather than to analysis by those who
ran from the fight while under oath, and worse still, by those who would stoop
to serve those who ran, says far more than their empty words could ever hope to
say.
The administration’s flaks are
criticizing John Kerry’s actions for obvious political gain. So be it.
But, by doing so the flacks and their press lackeys are also criticizing
every veteran who speaks out against the Bush Administration’s atrocities from
the perspective of a veteran’s unique experience. In the case of many a Vietnam veteran, that is the experience of
unjust war and its ravages. For when
reason fails, when voting fails, when law fails, when discourse fails, then
protest is the veteran’s only recourse short of armed rebellion. Who
among us knows better what is being wrought in our name than does the combat
veteran? Yet we are encouraged to
criticize rather than to learn from him.
Perhaps that’s intended. Perhaps it’s programmed into our unique
sense of nationalism. After all,
America – through the wisdom of its founders - is mandated to be a nation of
civilians led by civilians. But our
system, as with every system of governance, is vulnerable also to the will of
the corrupt. In such a milieu, even a
civilian leader - particularly one not elected to office, nor especially bright
or demonstrably honest - can be a willing or wholly unwitting traitor to our constitutional
republic and the foundations of human dignity upon which it was crafted. Given the unimaginable power at his
disposal, such a leader can become an equally unwitting tyrant. All that is required for a system of
government – any system of government – to fail, is that both leader and led
share a mutual ignorance or bias. From
ignorance derives fear. From bias
derives irrationality and dishonesty.
No nation or form of government is immune. Our current president and the criminal manipulators and
incompetents with whom he finds himself surrounded, are empirical proof of the
American system’s vulnerability to corruption.
When I hear this president make
such infantile proclamations as “You’re either with us, or you’re with the
terrorists,” and his mangled, “I’m not about nuancing,” or his more than
color-blind “I see things in black and white,” it leaves no room for the
intelligent or the informed or the fair-minded portion of a civilian population
to exercise their uniquely human attribute of deductive reasoning. It also removes any hope or possibility
whatsoever, that one of the best and brightest has ascended the throne. Demonstration – dramatic or symbolic protest
– is the enlightened patriot’s only viable recourse.
However, for many Americans,
simplistic platitudes are the granite rocks upon which their patriotism
stands. Intractable. No thinking required. And when it comes to simplistic platitudes, My
country, right or wrong is the most simplistic of the lot. What could be a clearer declaration? What could be easier to understand? What could better appeal to, or better
reinforce adamant bias?
My country, right or wrong!
As an American I suddenly see
America as being hardly recognizable as my country at all, right, wrong, or
indifferent. I cannot help but be
repulsed beyond words by her actions in my name. I am repulsed by a once-proud and always courageous military
suddenly run by a herd of civilian murderers and thieves and being used as
their personal pirates. At the head of
them struts a miscreant whom every evidence declares should have been charged
before a military court’s martial for desertion in time of war long before
being allowed to steal and subsequently disgrace our country’s presidency and
her people.1
Yet, this never befell the fortunate son. Instead he “soldiers” on a free man. He remains free to arrange the indiscriminate slaughter of
uncounted thousands of men, women, and children in a defenseless country,
civilians who have done nothing to America more onerous than living upon the
world’s second largest and most priceless oil reserves. Make no mistake, those oil reserves are what
the deserter and his criminal handlers lust for beyond human and humane reason. They have used our soldiers to kill
thousands of innocents that they may get their already greasy hands on that
black gold buried beneath the ever more bloodied sands of Iraq. Any defenders of their homeland our soldiers
encounter are killed, and their memory publicly desecrated by a stupid embedded
American press that reports on them as the thugs and murderers. On Friday evening
in Florida the miscreant reaffirmed his delusion, "America,” he said,
“will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers." Since I doubt he was refering to his own
administration, the naïve press ate it up at face value. But that brave if misguided statement by the
president is code. The miscreant speaks
in code. It tells his handlers that
he’ll continue to provide them the ways and the means to murder
countless more civilians, and countless more than that until they get what they
came for - or more accurately what they sent America’s sons and daughters to
take for them while they sit safely at home just as each of them sat out that
‘ol crazy Asian war. It is code that
tells other of his handlers that they will be paid handsomely by the taxpaying
parents of America’s sons and daughters to manufacture the weapons their
children will use to kill the children of others. It appears that the killing of children is condoned by our
president, but only if those children have already been born.
I’m proud to say the logic
escapes me.
The logic of virtually
everything this administration does in the blasphemed name of freedom,
security, decency, escapes me. It
should revile all people of good will.
Virtually everything being carried out in our name by these madmen is in
violation of our American constitutional principles, yet we hear nothing of
substance from the self-proclaimed patriots who seem to be everywhere one looks
today.
We are truly a nation whose
majority population believes in, My Country, right or wrong.
But that phrase, its origins and
its true meaning will resonate with and disturb free thinking Americans every
time we hear it, and the more often we hear it, the more clearly it illustrates
how far we’ve fallen as a peoples.
For the phrase – My country,
right or wrong - as a direct quotation, is incorrect. In fact, just like virtually everything else the majority of
Americans are willing to believe, it’s wrong as hell.
The actual quotation, as spoken
by the celebrated German-born, United States Senator, Carl Schurz back in the Nineteenth Century, is very
different from that with which we’ve grown familiar and to which we’ve obediently
ascribed in the post-millennial darkness that is Twenty-First Century
America. It’s worlds-apart
different. It’s true meaning diametric
to the blind obedience implied by the corrupt, “My Country, Right Or Wrong.”
Of course those self-appointed
guardians of mindless loyalty who so fondly call themselves patriots in today’s
kinder, dumber America, would not only encourage the popular corruption of
Schurz’s actual, and brilliantly Jeffersonian original words, but would be very
happy to never so much as see the entire statement in historically accurate
context. So, on the assumption that our
self-appointed leaders and simplistic herd of “patriots” would have lost
interest in this tome by now, (we are, after all, several pages deep, and still
no hint of cartoons or feel good platitudes) here’s what the man – and true
patriot – Carl Schurz actually said.
You’ll find it incredibly relevant today.
“My country,” declared Senator Carl Schurz, “If
right, to be kept right, and, if wrong, to be set right.” What, I ask, could be more different
from the simplistic if not wholly mindless, My Country, Right Or Wrong, to
which we’ve become conditioned?
Nothing, that’s what. Nothing could be more different in its
meaning and intent as the foundation of a democratic republic than those two
phrases are, one from the other.
But that’s not all Senator
Schurz said that day. “The American
people”Schurz continued, “should be specially careful not to permit
themselves to be influenced in their decisions by high-sounding phrases of
indefinite meaning, by vague generalities, or by seductive catchwords appealing
to unreasoning pride and reckless ambition. More than ever, true patriotism now
demands the exercise of the soberest possible discernment.
“I am far from denying that
this republic, as one of the great powers of the world, has its
responsibilities. But what is it responsible for? Is it to be held, or to hold
itself, responsible for the correction of all wrongs done by strong nations to
weak ones, or by powerful oppressors to helpless populations? Is it, in other
words, responsible for the general dispensation of righteousness throughout the
world? Neither do I deny that this republic has a mission, and I am willing to
accept what we are frequently told, that this mission consists in ‘furthering
the progress of civilization.’ But does this mean that wherever obstacles to
the progress of civilization appear, this republic should at once step in to
remove those obstacles by means of force, if friendly persuasions do not avail?
Every sober-minded person
will admit that under so tremendous a task any earthly power, however great,
would soon break down.”
Quite different from, My
Country, Right Or Wrong. Don’t you
agree? In fact, the actual statement is
about as different in its meaning as it could possibly be from the dumbed-down
byte with which we’re today familiar.
When looked at in context, if we
were to but replace the word “civilization” with the popular noun of the moment
– democracy – the entire statement could have come from one of the few
patriotic Americans who grace that same senate floor today. One can almost see Robert Byrd, his hand
and voice shaking less with age than with outrage, as he rails against this
thing – this unrecognizable thing – which the land and the idea that we still
call America has become at the oh-so-steady, blood and oil stained hands that
now hold our nation’s tiller as they drive her steady onward, straight on to
the waiting rocks.
-END-
About The Author
Dom
Stasi is Chief Technology Officer for a national satellite network based in Los
Angeles. He was the original chief
engineer who helped design and build both HBO and MTV’s satellite
infrastructures. Mr. Stasi flew aerial
reconnaissance during the cold war and was a member of the Project Apollo
technical team. A frequently published
science and technology writer, the opinions expressed in this piece are solely
his own.
1.
thomasmc.com/1008a.htm