Another cyber-myth busted!

Yesterday a friend e-mailed me one of those “Target stores will not give to veterans, so let’s all boycott Target” e-mails. I have heard this rumor before, from another friend who is a great supporter of the military (her father and her first husband were both service members). It just seems like a pretty strange accusation, and it bothered me that people were so up in arms about it. So I decided to take a closer look.
First of all, it’s just not true; Target gives generously to several different veterans organizations. Even the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) has published a statement in Target’s defense, here.
Target has laudable diversity and green-store policies; however, like Wal-Mart (their main competitor) they pay poverty-level wages and sell sweatshop clothing (see Alternet article). So, I’m not writing this as any sort of pro-Target rant.
But let’s look at this a little deeper. There are many, many different organizations soliciting donations from businesses every day, and several of them get refused. No business can give to everybody that knocks on the door with a hand out; we (as a country) wouldn’t get all worked up over some e-mail claiming Target refused to fund the Podunck County FFA. But in our war-glorifying culture, anything for “veterans” is sacrosanct.
For myself, I wouldn’t care even if they really didn’t give to veterans’ groups. The military already sucks up somewhere around 49% of our country’s total budget (see the War Resisters League pie chart). I will grant you that many (maybe all) veterans aren’t getting the benefits and care they were promised, but that is something to be taken up with Congress, not by soliciting individual hand-outs.
In the e-mail, the stated reason the author was asking for a donation was to fund some Veterans Memorial something-or-other. Personally, I think we have enough damned Veterans Memorials. Nothing against any veterans or anything, but any town with more than 100 people in it has some sort of “Veterans Memorial” park, cemetery, statue, stadium, park bench, plaque…you name it. We have a park and two cemeteries dedicated to veterans right here in Fayetteville. So, enough already. How about a memorial to the marching workers who fought and died so that we could have a weekend? Or so children wouldn’t have to work in factories and coal mines? Or to teachers? I know we do have some non-veterans memorials, but it’s not exactly a national priority like veterans memorials are.
And let’s face it – why else would people volunteer to essentially become property of the U.S. government, be separated from family and friends for years at a time, and be put into situations where they are going to be shot at, unless society at large kept creating this whole mythology where being a soldier and then a veteran makes you a hero, a sort of uber-citizen, worthy of more praise and admiration (and health care) than anyone else?
I know this makes me sound anti-military. I want to be very clear here: I am not anti-soldier. I do admire them and sympathize with those that felt like there was no other way they could provide for themselves and their families. I worry about them; I don’t want them sent off to be blown into hamburger! But, I am anti-military-industrial complex. And these jingoistic “Support Our Troops/Veterans” ploys are simply calculated PR strategies to rally support behind not our troops, but the powerful war profiteers who get rich by sending them off to die. So no, I do not get all teary-eyed on cue as soon as the words “9/11″ or “World Trade Center” are spoken. I do not automatically fall in line in support of any cockamamie scheme with the word “Veterans Memorial” in front of it. I am not “patriotic.”