{"id":32143,"date":"2018-03-09T14:37:22","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T19:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32143"},"modified":"2018-03-09T14:37:22","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T19:37:22","slug":"the-illusion-of-war-without-casualties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32143","title":{"rendered":"The Illusion of War Without Casualties"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Illusion of War Without Casualties<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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America\u2019s wars in the post-9\/11 era have been characterized by relatively low U.S. casualties, but that does not mean that they are any less violent than previous wars, Nicolas J.S. Davies observes.<\/p>\n

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Last Sunday\u2019s Oscar Awards were interrupted by an incongruous propaganda exercise<\/a>\u00a0featuring a Native American actor and Vietnam vet, featuring a montage of clips from Hollywood war movies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Coffins of dead U.S. soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in 2006. (U.S. government photo)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The actor, Wes Studi, said that he \u201cfought for freedom\u201d in Vietnam. But\u00a0anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of that war, including for instance the\u00a0millions of viewers who watched Ken Burns\u2019 Vietnam War documentary, knows that it was the Vietnamese who were fighting for freedom \u2013 while Studi and his comrades\u00a0were fighting,\u00a0killing and dying, often bravely and for misguided reasons,\u00a0to deny the people of Vietnam that\u00a0freedom.<\/p>\n

Studi\u00a0introduced the Hollywood movies he was showcasing, including\u00a0\u201cAmerican Sniper,\u201d\u00a0\u201cThe Hurt Locker\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cZero Dark Thirty,\u201d with the words, \u201cLet\u2019s take a moment to pay tribute to these powerful films that shine a great spotlight on those who have fought for freedom around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

To pretend to a worldwide TV audience in 2018 that the U.S. war machine is \u201cfighting for freedom\u201d in the\u00a0countries it attacks or invades\u00a0was an absurdity that\u00a0could\u00a0only add insult to injury for\u00a0millions of survivors of U.S. coups, invasions, bombing campaigns and hostile\u00a0military occupations all over the world.<\/p>\n

Wes Studi\u2019s role in this Orwellian presentation made it even more incongruous, as his own Cherokee people are themselves survivors of American ethnic cleansing and forced displacement on\u00a0the Trail of Tears from North Carolina, where they had lived for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, to Oklahoma where Studi was born.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Illusion of War Without Casualties America\u2019s wars in the post-9\/11 era have been characterized by relatively low U.S. casualties, but that does not mean that they are any less violent than previous wars, Nicolas J.S. Davies observes. Last Sunday\u2019s Oscar Awards were interrupted by an incongruous propaganda exercise\u00a0featuring a Native American actor and Vietnam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6963,11789,827,862,19196],"class_list":["post-32143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-nicolas-j-s-davies","tag-united-states","tag-war","tag-war-casualties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32144,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32143\/revisions\/32144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}