I know you are but what am I?
That is as ridiculous statement as saying “The war was about state’s rights, not slavery!”, just from the other side. There were reasons for the Confederacy to exist other than slavery- the first attempt at secession was over tarriffs and that issue was very much still relevant in 1861, and then there’s the fact that state’s rights WERE an issue. I don’t deny, never have denied, and have challenged those who do deny that slavery was not first and foremost the issue that cause the war, but on the bigger scale it was about the same cause that almost every other war ever fought was about (and that every war ever fought was about to some degree): ECONOMICS. As mentioned before in either this or one of the countless other “I’m Anti-Slavery! There, I Said It! Jealous?!” cage fights, the Revolutionary War was still literally alive in the memories of thousands of people who could remember the times, some of whom had even fought in the battles, when Fort Sumter fell.
As far as what the flag means today- I might get pitted for this and if so it’s a misunderstanding of what I said, but I’ll say it anyway, what the hell. Because it’s almost inconceivable to understand a time when American states were invaded by other Americans and more men died in a single battle than on 9-11 and that was far from the end of the war, let’s make an analogy that doesn’t require imagining a pasture cum morgue in Maryland or Virginia but something we hear about on the news everyday- the War in Iraq.
Okay, I’m against the War in Iraq. IMHO it never should have happened, it was the result of greed, idiocy, willful deceptions, spirited misguided patriotism, and many other factors, none of them noble. I am one of tens of millions of Americans who feels this way and strongly.
What do you hear though almost everytime you hear a politician or a writer or a celebrity or an actor or whoever condemn the war in Iraq? You hear the rider “but I support the troops” added on at the end, “While I support our troops, I feel that…” as a preface. Now if you feel, as I do, that the war was and is unjustified, that the US has no business being in Iraq and absolutely cannot win and does not even know what victory is, and after you read about things like Abu Ghraib and the David Motari ‘puppy’ incident and that by the most conservative of accounts tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and thousands more detained on the most specious of evidence and many girls have been raped and a million or more Iraqis have been made into refugees, all for a war that should NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE… why on Earth should you support our troops?
Wouldn’t it be more logical to say, as many Americans did say in Vietnam, “These people are killing the innocent… they’re murderers… they deserve anything the alleged ‘enemy’ does to them!” After all, consider if you can even wrap your little mind around it the flip-side: imagine that China, already much larger than US, becomes much richer and much more militarily powerful than we are, and invades us. Their invasion is the result of propaganda by their leaders, total lies that the US has missiles they plan to deploy on Beijing and Tianjin or some other nonsense just to be mean and ornery and the Chinese tell their people “we must take the US out before we take them out”. Soon there are attacks on coastal California, thousands of people are killed in San Francisco and Chinese tanks are in the Rockies and continue moving and the other coast is attacked and D.C. falls and the Smithsonian is looted and Chinese troops sexually humilate Americans whose arrests weren’t even genuine and the country is in absolute utter chaos even after a puppet government is installed- would you EVER think “China is evil and their attack must be destroyed! I want to see every last Chinese soldier out of her! I want to see Beijing in flames!.. but I support their troops. After all, most of them didn’t rape anybody and they’re just doing their jobs…”
No. You’d want to see every Chinese soldier fucking dead. You probably wouldn’t particularly care whether he committed war crimes, whether he’s a great guy who has a wife and twin boys back home or not, if you had your way he’d be dead, because he’s invaded your country. So why say “But we support our troops” about the American troops in Iraq when the war is morally wrong and they’re actually the bad guys?
Let me add here, I really do “support our troops”. I want to see them all come home safely. Even though I believe the war to be unjustified and immoral I don’t believe the troops are evil. Oh some are evil, I’m sure, but most are people- from teenagers to grandparents with most in between but towards the younger end- who enlisted in the army for a variety of reasons, though probably a very low percentile of them enlisted because of a burning desire to fight Iraqis. They went to war because there’s a war on and that’s what soldiers do; they didn’t really have a choice the military gets really pissy if you don’t show up for a war I’m told.
And for the others, well- I support them because they’re us. They’re Americans. I want the war to end but I don’t want them to be casualties. This may sound irrational, and perhaps it is- but because they are Americans I feel a connection to them, regardless of the morality of the reasons they’re fighting. (Now you could say “Well what about the Iraqi suicide bombers and fighters- do you support them? They’re fighting for their soil and their way of life and their beliefs?” and you’d have a point, but the answer is “I have sympathy for them to some degree because however great our cultural and linguistic differences are they are humans, but I don’t support them because I don’t feel a connection to them, and in the event of a showdown twixt them and our troops my prayers [such as they are] support our troops”.)
Okay, this is a long way of saying that while to some the Confederate flag is an openly racist banner- just as to the Nazis and the KKK various Christian symbols were used to symbolize hate and irration- to most I honestly don’t think it is. To most, however naive or irrational they may be, it is not their intent to be racist. Most understand that the causes of the war were immoral and unjustified and the entry of the south completely stupid and their defeat almost a given from the get-go, at least in retrospect.
But they support the troops.
Not for rational reasons, but because the troops were their ancestors. They live in the same region, endure the same heat, the same “proud man’s contumely” from each “gale that sweeps from the north” (to weave quotations from two disparate if equally famous oratories), they have the same name, they speak the same language, they have the same blood, and while some of the men were certainly evil for some of all groups of men are evil most weren’t and they weren’t fighting for slavery or for tarriff reform but because there was a war on, their land was under attack, they didn’t have much of a choice to begin with (all southern men of fighting age were conscripted) but because that’s what men did when there was a war on: they fought for their side.
And seeing as how I’ve been writing digital reams in defense of a cause I don’t even believe in (repeat: on a personal level I am ethically and aesthetically and in terms of sensitivities AGAINST public displays of the rebel flag, though not as much as I’m against Ignorance on Parade floats bearing people who think being anti-slavery is some achievement 142 years after the 14th Amendment [tell me: where do you stand on the Johnson impeachment? I think he’ll get off personally] ) I’ll also yield the field. Tis yours, hoist the flag of the Vatican, the Black Panthers or the Jolly Roger, sing a rousing nasal chorus of John Brown’s Body and claim this thread for the cause of Abolitionism.
