One of the most tragic times of the year occurs in early November, where the US publicly celebrates and honors the sacrifices of the armed forces on Veterans Day. It is terribly tragic in the sense that while we see flags being waved and the collective cries of “support the troops,” these gestures and mantras tend to ignore the fact that soldiers are still dying in treacherous mountains 7,000 miles away.

And they’re not just coming home in coffins either. They’re reuniting with their families riddled with horrific and mysterious symptoms like chronic breathing problems, sleep apnea, skin rashes, nerve damage, and cancer. This is due to the presence of “toxic burn pits” at military bases like Camp Taji and Balad Air Force Base, where 150 tons of trash is burned a day. Ever since the US began lighting up Mesopotamian skies with bombs, US troops have been consistently exposed to this toxic. Due to the great reporting of The Military Times, the cause of the symptoms becomes a little more clear.

The Pentagon denies that these burn pits have anything to do with the soldiers’ medical problems, of course, since the Five-Sided-Monster generally views 18 and 19 year-olds as mere cannon fodder anyway.

What’s pleasantly surprising though is that Congress is finally getting a backbone and proposing legislation that is setting some actual guidelines regarding this waste to help protect out soldiers. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) and will be part of the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act if President Obama signs it into law. Here are some of the key provisions:

• Prohibit the use of burn pits for hazardous and medical waste except if the Secretary of Defense sees no alternative;
• Require the Department of Defense (DOD) to report to the congressional oversight committees whenever burn pits are used and justify their use, and every six months to report on their status;
• Require DOD to develop a plan for alternatives, in order to eliminate the use of burn pits; further, DOD must report to Congress how and why they use burn pits and what they burn in them;
• Require DOD to assess existing medical surveillance programs of burn pits exposure and make recommendations to improve them;
• Require DOD to do a study of the effects of burning plastics in open pits and evaluate the feasibility of prohibiting the burning of plastics.

In the grand scheme of things, these measures may not seem like much. It’s a small step, but any chink in the armor of our empire is a good and necessary one.

As Veterans Day approaches, we should not look to catchphrases and slogans to honor the thousands of veterans who have lost limbs, minds, and lives. While our “leaders” dismiss the disastrous effects that our perpetual war has on the military, truly honoring our veterans means insisting that our brutal and expensive empire (with its posthumous medals, knocks on heartbroken wives’ doors, and cross-covered graves) finally comes to an end.

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For more of Robert’s work, please visit his Libertarian Examiner blog.

It all started in Manila. When the US easily defeated a weaker Spanish fleet in the Caribbean during the Spanish-American War, the US shrugged off the modest and prudent restraints of a constitutional republic and embraced the heavy burdens of empire. Victory over Spain allowed the US to conquer Spains’ former colonies (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam) and stretched its imperial guns to the shores of the Philippines.

Imposing our will on the Philippines was no easy task, and the US Army wiped out 200,000 Filipinos who dared to resist foreign occupation. President McKinley, proud of “Christianizing” the already Catholic Filipinos, put on an emperor’s crown as he saw the Stars and Stripes fly on foreign soil, and the American Empire was born.

A couple decades later, the Japanese began dabbling in their own imperial slaughter, razing their way through the Asian mainland in a fury. US hegemony in the Pacific was soon threatened by the Japanese Empire, and the US responded provocatively with an oil embargo, selling boatloads of weapons to China, and encircling the island. The Japanese, sick of being bullied and provoked by the US, bombed Pearl Harbor (yet another US colony, not even a state at the time).

The rest, as they say, is history. The world witnessed a war that left continents in ashes, cities destroyed, millions dead and wounded, and massive ethnic cleansing. 64 years ago, WW2 finally came to a close when the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, then three days later dropped another on Nagasaki.

Anniversaries are a time for reflection, and this haunting one is no exception. Yes, these acts were war crimes and in a just world, FDR and Truman would be scorned and hated for what they sanctioned. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible, but not much is mentioned about the firebombing of Tokyo and the incineration of over 100 Japanese civilian cities under their watch.

More than examining the horrors that occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945, the nuking of Japan should be a reminder to the entire world of the dangers of nuclear war. The Cold War is over, and the thought of nuclear war has somewhat faded from the American mind, but the threat is not entirely hidden. There are still nine countries (US, Russia, Israel, England, France, Pakistan, India, North Korea) that have a combined 27,000 operational nuclear weapons that could destroy plenty of Earths.

The threat of nuclear war is even more dangerous now considering that the ones dropped on Japan were 115-ton bombs, which are slingshots with rocks compared to the nukes that the US and Russia now possess. In a matter of 15 minutes, the US and Russia could conceivably launch 100,000 Hiroshimas.

President Obama deserves some credit for publicly embracing the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, talking with Russia about nuclear disarmament, and initiating talks in the Senate about finally signing the long overdue Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (which would effectively ban the production of nuclear material for weapons). Despite these positive signs, the Obama Administration will still spend $6 billion this year researching new ways to incinerate the world.

The anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan may be in the past, but they serve as a constant reminder of the incredibly destructive power of modern warfare.

Please check out Robert’s Examiner blog here.

June 30th was a day for Iraqis to celebrate, as U.S. troops finally withdrew from their major cities. After more than six years of foreign soldiers kicking in doors, paying off murderers, and soaking villages with white phosphorous, the Iraqis finally gained control of their land (and their problems).

This is part of Obama’s new “grand strategy” to “pull out” from Iraq by December 31, 2011, and until then U.S. forces will remain as night watchmen and have permission to enter cities only when the Iraqi government asks them to. U.S. puppet Prime Minister Malaki is hailing this as a “victory” for the Iraqi people, though there are still going to be 130,000 troops waiting for his call to crush anyone him and his Army can’t handle on their own.

This partial pull-out is nothing more than a metaphorical passing of the emperor-torch to Malaki, who now has the “sole” authority to request American troops. Obama’s new “grand strategy” (the perfect name for a plan coming from the Egomaniac-in-Chief) in Iraq is a way of making it seem like U.S. troops are being taken out of harm’s way so that he can justify keeping them there as long as possible.

The point of the invasion of Iraq was never to declare “victory” and go home. Empires don’t go home, and the U.S. invaded Iraq to continue its expansion of bases and Vatican-size embassies, expand its hegemonic influence in the region, and take out one of Israel’s biggest threats. Gen. George Casey, who used to be in charge of all forces in Iraq, has suggested U.S. forces will have to stay in the region for at least ten years. Well, ten more years isn’t really that long of a time compared to the sixty-four years (and counting) that the U.S. has occupied Germany and South Korea.

Iraq truly is a mess, which is why U.S. troops aren’t going to be knocking on their parents’ or wives’ doors anytime soon. Iraq is an artificial country with at least three different major ethnic tribes competing for power. The only way Iraq can heal these divisions and remain unified is if an ugly civil war occurs, and the winning faction holds the fractured country together by force, i.e. Saddam. Ivan Eland highlights some of the reasons why Iraq is broken beyond repair: a corrupt Parliament, hatred of U.S. forces, poor to no training of the Iraqi Army, factionalism, suicide bombing after suicide bombing, and basic sanitary services are still a rarity.

The U.S. military, overstretched and broke, was given the impossible job of  fixing these problems, some of them centuries old, and now will be waiting on the sidelines if (when) they are needed for support. When will the American Empire learn that the world’s problems are too complex and too numerous to be fixed by our “surges” or our massive indiscriminate bombings?

Obama, like any good emperor, is convinced that the mess in the Middle East that he inherited can only be solved by overwhelming and crushing force (on a side note, the Air Force bombed a funeral the other day. We won’t even let them bury their dead before we create new graves to fill). This is why he is also sending thousands of more young Marines to Afghanistan and ordering soulless drones to fire missiles at anything and everything in Pakistan. The option of withdrawing and dealing openly and diplomatically with Iraq and her neighbors never seems to cross the mind of the U.S. war machine and the empty-suited emperors in the White House.

The U.S. is occupying over 120 countries with over 800 bases around the world, and Iraq is just another colony in our empire of bases, and we’re not leaving anytime soon.