Universal Soldier

IBD Editorials

Thank You

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, November 09, 2007

IBD wrote, "Veterans Day: From Valley Forge to Gettysburg, from Pointe du Hoc to the Pusan Perimeter, and from Khe Sanh to Fallujah, we salute and give thanks to those who gave their last full measure of devotion."

What are you thanking the soldiers for? For trying to bring freedoms to Iraqis? For making more enemies for America? Are you thanking them for enabling an unnecessary war that is costing you and your children so much future debt it is devaluing the dollar and reducing your standard of living? You are an investor media. You should understand this.

IBD also wrote,"Less than a century later, this nation would be involved in a great Civil War in which more Americans would die in a single day than in four years of combat in Iraq."

So now we are deciding if a war is necessary or not in relation to causalities of previous unnecessary wars.

IBD wrote, "If casualties and uncertain prospects for success are the benchmark for giving up the struggle for democracy and freedom, Lincoln might have given up after Antietam."

So what if Lincoln had quit and not killed another half million? Do you think slaves would still be picking cotton in the south?

IBD wrote, "Washington might have given up after Valley Forge. But America does not give up, does not cut and run, and neither does its military."

Washington was fighting for independence. That which Lincoln would not grant the south. No matter how unjust the fight, we must never give up? Just keep on killing, even if the war is unnecessary. No matter how much it costs in debt to future generations, the current generation must save face?

IBD wrote, "Fortunately, we had a secret weapon - the American soldier."

The American soldier is not a secret weapon. Most countries have soldiers. Myanmar has soldiers. Pakistan has soldiers. Stalin had soldiers. Soldiers take orders! Read the appended lyrics below, Universal Soldier, by Buffy St Marie, written before 1965, long before Vietnam became a hot issue.

IBD wrote, "There would be more sacrifices. The month-long assault on Iwo Jima resulted in more than 28,000 American casualties, including 6,821 dead. Casualties at Okinawa totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing."

The battle of Iwo Jima was in March 1945. Okinawa was June 1945. All those causalities could have been avoided, and the A-bomb causalities, with better negotiations with a defeated and dying enemy. We did not just want a victory, we wanted revenge. Our lust for blood had to be satisfied.

IBD wrote, "But that does not diminish the valor and the sacrifice of the brave soldiers who held out against great odds at places like Pusan in Korea and Khe Sanh in Vietnam."

Neither Pusan or Khe Sanh were necessary. What is worse than war is old men who start unnecessary wars and offer young men as human sacrifice to the war gods.

IBD wrote, "The nature of the war that began on 9/11 is different, but the goal of the enemy is the same. It wants to wipe freedom from the face of the Earth."

The goal of the enemy is the same, but it is not to wipe freedom from the face of the earth. The goal is the same as all wars, power to those who start the wars. War is the health of the state.

IBD wrote, "But those who embrace fanatical and nihilistic ideologies, from Nazism to Islamofascism, are up against an enemy they can never understand or defeat - the American soldier."

That's probably true. I cannot understand the American soldier who will go into another country and kill innocent women and children.

IBD wrote, "As columnist Michael Reagan has said, when you're in a war zone and you're killed, you're a hero. In our book as well."

Anybody whose is on your side is a hero. You've dumbed down the meaning of hero. Telling everyone they are a hero is propaganda to get re enlistments and new recruits.

Wrote Cpl Starr: "I don't regret going, everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom."

I'm sorry to say Starr did not die for freedom. Iraq did not attack the United States, nor could they, and take away our freedoms. All the millions of pages in the federal register are laws that our own representatives put on the books that tell us what we can, cannot, and must do. No Arab, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese has taken away those freedoms. We have taken them away from ourselves. Starr died for nothing.

Charles Tolleson
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UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Buffy Sainte-Marie© Caleb Music-ASCAP
I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler
have condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.