{"id":32757,"date":"2019-03-06T15:09:33","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T23:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=32757"},"modified":"2019-03-06T15:09:33","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T23:09:33","slug":"the-great-con-of-american-patriotism-with-ron-kovic-and-maj-danny-sjursen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/06\/the-great-con-of-american-patriotism-with-ron-kovic-and-maj-danny-sjursen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Con of American Patriotism, with Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen"},"content":{"rendered":"

From TruthDig <\/a>and KCRW<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

American soldiers born decades apart in the state of New York, Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen are two crucial dissenting voices that have experienced first hand the futility and brutality of America\u2019s interventionist wars. Kovic, a marine veteran who was paralyzed in the Vietnam war, has spent the rest of his life fighting against the U.S. war machine. The film Born on the Fourth of July<\/a><\/em>, starring Tom Cruise, was based on his book, works he\u2019d hoped would combine with his activism to dissuade young people from buying into the toxic patriotism that leads Americans to fight destructive, ultimately pointless wars.<\/p>\n

In the latest installment of \u201cScheer Intelligence,\u201d Kovic tells Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer, \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop speaking against that war. I was arrested a dozen times, every single day was life and death. Every single day I know that there could be another young man like Ron Kovic being paralyzed, another young man from a town or a farm somewhere in this country, being killed in that war that had to stop.:<\/p>\n

Yet Sjursen, who says he watched the film based on Kovic\u2019s life before he was even of age to join the military, explains he sadly wasn\u2019t able to hear past what he calls the \u201cfaux patriotism\u201d that pushed him to attend the military academy West Point, as well as do tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

“I think the fact that I didn\u2019t learn the lessons from Ron Kovic\u2019s story,\u201d Sjursen laments, \u201c[is] proof of the power of the masculinity that is associated with military service, and this notion of nationalism and patriotism. It\u2019s so prevalent that it\u2019s, in some ways, if it\u2019s not fought every day\u2026it will continue despite the lessons before us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to their brutally honest discussion about the vital need to reframe patriotism in the age of the \u201cforever wars\u201d and the current state of the military industrial complex. <\/p>\n