Maybe people feel guilty that most of the time the fallen soldier cannot be held up as a fallen hero of a just and heroic cause. But this isn't the fault of the soldier, it is the fault of a military or government who endanger the lives of their own men (and women) for causes which are not worth dieing over.
I simply can't help but feel that the government and the military would have the war completely out of our minds if that were possible. They have done a damn good job so far.
First of all, I want to make it very clear that it is not the military responsible for start, continuation or end of the war. The military is not autonomous.
The military is the entity by which the war is being waged. The military doesn't get to decide when the war ends. The military doesn't get to decide what gets done and how. The military is the tool of the Government. What the military does is at the behest and order of the Government.
And by military, I am referring to the ones who are actually coming back in the coffins. Not the ones sitting in their thousand dollar chairs at their 10 thousand dollar desks in that cushy five sided building in Washington DC.
That being said. I fully agree that there shouldn't be censorship of the returning fallen soldiers. These men and women died serving their country, even through they died in the continuation of a war serves no one but the powers that be. I believe it to be a tactic designed to keep the consequences of war as much out of the public regard as possible.
I mean really, people hear of soldiers dying, but since everyone knows at some intellectual level that American soldiers are volunteers, the loss of the life isn't quite as offensive as if it were someone who was drafted and forced into combat. The latter scenario offends peoples sensibilities and is more likely to stir the masses to active protest of the war because it is viewed as a violation of our Rights. Volunteers dying evokes sympathy and empathy for the families of the fallen (in some people; most people I hope) but is tempered by the knowledge that the fallen made a choice knowing that the possible consequence of that choice could have a life ending result.
It seems that these days, Americans are less motivated by moralistic standards than by self-centered ones. I mean, if people really understood how much of our money the government has wasted (and continues to be wasted) in this war and what could happen in society if that money were redirected into education and infrastructure, disease research, drug development etc, research and development into things like renewable energy....if people really thought about how the fallout from those kinds of things could better their lives....maybe there would be more public outcry to end this war whereby only the rich get richer and the rest of us get poorer.
There shouldn't be censorship of any of the grim realities associated with a prolonged war. But the problem is that the American public is apathetic. And ignorant.
Most attempts to teach or expose people to the reality come across as propaganda by the opposite political party. And so because we've been mostly conditioned to dismiss anything from that opposite party as false, twisted logic, slanted viewpoints etc....we are more likely to ignore that which doesn't march with the party lines.
Kind of like trying to convince a religious fanatic that there is more than one right way to god.
Sometimes, I believe that it is this inflexibility of the mind that will result in the fall of modern civilization.
