Requiem for My Country

Requiem for my country

Louis L. Brossard August 2005

I was a month away from turning into a teenager when Pearl Harbor was hit. I therefore missed being drafted into that war by a year and a half. It was the last American war that one might call honorable. As a very young man I would have served with pride in that war. I wore the title of “American” with pride. I now realize there are serious questions about the use of the atomic weapon at its end and the blanket bombing of non-strategic cities in Germany, the worst of which was Dresden. But few question the need to go to war. Mine was not a war. I was drafted into the Korean Police Action and served my two years in Heidelberg Germany.

We have had only one war as wrong as the one we are presently prosecuting in Iraq, which was in Viet Nam. Our present war is dishonorable. It violates the principles that are essential core values of my country. We invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses for specious reasons and hidden agendas. High ranking men who otherwise had served honorably soiled that honor by remaining silent or acquiescing in its support. My government calls me unpatriotic when I condemn the nefarious actions of these leaders. They preach ethical values when they commit the most evil act humanly possible, that of killing the innocent. It is not I who lack patriotism and a love of my country.

I now walk in shame for the actions of my country. The title of “American” is no longer that badge of pride I once believed it was. The actions of my government are almost universally disdained by the people of the world. I feel helpless to stop the continuing evil being committed in my name by men of hubris and greed. There is no limit to their nefarious lies and deeds.

Then I think back to that feeling of righteous pride I felt in my youth during World War II. There were German citizens then who felt just as helpless and outraged as I do now. They felt as estranged from their beloved Fatherland as I do now. Most of my fellow countrymen supported our unjust invasion of Iraq and I am included in that group by my birth, not by my belief. I don’t understand how the values I believe to be my country’s can allow my fellow citizens to support this war. And I don’t want to be included in that category of Americans who praise the actions so antithetical to what I believe to be American fundamental values. I am an intellectual refuge in my own country. Or is it still my country? Did my country die to be replaced by this plutocracy of overwhelming power and endless greed?

I hope this is just a temporary interruption in the liberty and justice for all that I was taught to be the American imperative. Redemption will be a long and hard road to follow after this egregious adventure is over. I hope I live to feel again the pride that I had as a youth.