Banners equal blind nationalism

Despite being turned down last year, Chico Military Heroes again burdened the City Council with its military banners project. During a recent council meeting, it seemed awfully fortuitous for the banner group that the last five or six speakers were supporters of the project. They closed the public comment portion of the gathering in a sequence of well-orchestrated patriotic rhetoric blindly dealt to ignorantly sacrifice our children to military service.

Chico Military Hereos’ presentation, filled with manipulative maneuvering under the guise of patriotism, secured its goal. The banners are now approved to fly along a prominent Chico thoroughfare, surrounded by commercial and residential development.

Those banners will only entice our youth to sign up to a perceived hero status of military service defending freedom, when in fact it instead uses children as pawns in the corporate strategy of procuring resources and regional power away from foreign populations via the might of the military-industrial complex.

The project fraudulently depicts one’s military service alone as some heroic deed, which is but further propaganda in an attempt to win favor and justify the unethical activities and waste of tax dollars prevalent throughout the military-industrial complex for the benefit of war profiteers.

Victims of these engagements are many and these are the facts our youth entering the military need to know: Since 1999, there have been more than 5,773 U.S. military deaths. An even harsher statistic is that there have been more than 128,000 veteran suicides; those who returned home unable to cope with the memories of war, or find employment to support themselves, or readjust to civilian life because they didn’t have the help and support needed to do so. There are more than 50 homeless veterans right here in the Chico area.

Perhaps the members of the City Council who supported this project could use their time and energy to help existing veterans in need—rather than adding to their numbers under false pretenses.