05/22/05

In the nineteenth century young men in Russia and Prussia fled to America to escape the draft, to escape the glorification of militarism which poisoned the life in the countries of middle Europe. Death was a daily familiar there. The youths of those countries were put in field grey and spike helmets. Frederick, the king of Prussia, is on record as having shouted at his soldiers when they hesitated in an attack, 'Advance, you dogs! Do you want to live forever?' Americans felt a righteous contempt for this brand of militarism as a left-over from the middle ages. Now we begin to honor it. Dying and killing in Iraq is heroic. Young Americans fled, and will flee in a warlike future from rather than to America. We are forced by our government to become a warlike nation like the horde of Attila the Hun, like the France of Napoleon who lost half a million soldiers in his invasion of Russia and left them in the snow while he rode back to Paris in a heated carriage. He, like Bush in his National Guard days, certainly did want to live forever...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0522-27.htm

from Common Dreams, by Hans Koning


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp