25 June 2008

The Kill-Bot Factory

Tonight, on "Eye on Springfield": just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it "the Army", but a more alarmist name would be "The Kill-Bot Factory."
Yesterday evening found me at the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial for one of the Sunset Parades. First a Marine band unit played some medleys, and then some show-off-rifle-drill companies performed.

The band unit was underwhelming. It was just marching-band fancy-footing, and not particularly interesting at that. They played the American national march (I did not know we had one), Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," and I thought of Popeye gettin' his spinach on. Mainly what I noticed about the band unit, though, is that they were dressed, more or less, as Redcoats: white-belted red tunics, white pants, and black shoes. Sure, they were pants rather than breeches and white hats rather than black; but on a field full of Marines, the tunics & pants are what stood out.

Then the rifle companies came out, differing from the band unit in having navy-blue tunics and rifles rather than instruments. And what did they remind me of? Why, the American Continental Army and royal French Army. And that was just when they first appeared from behind the memorial monument. As four companies came marching along with shouldered rifles I imagined miles-long columns of Federals marching to Gettysburg. As they fixed bayonets and stood in formation for inspection & review, and officers with drawn swords inspected & reported, I imagined infantry assembling for an orderly assault march against well-defended heights. The kind that, I read somewhere recently, failed 90% of the time in the U.S. Civil War. I looked at four companies of men in dress uniform for a parade, and I saw four companies whose raison d'ĂȘtre is killing people. For the first time at a military parade I felt the weight of the American armed services pressing invisibly behind the units on parade.

The units performed well. The parade was interesting to watch, and it was horrifying to see.

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