The following is a reprint of a piece written by William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), who is a TomDispatch regular. It was also published in a Michigan Peace Action newsletter.
Since 9/11, sports and the military have become increasingly fused in this country.
Even when taxpayers aren't footing the bill for displays of massive American flags or camouflage-printed uniforms, the melding of sports and the military should be seen as inappropriate, if not insidious...
Nowadays, it seems as if professional sports simply couldn't occur without some notice of and celebration of the U.S. military, each game being transformed in some way into yet another Memorial Day or Veterans Day lite...
When I watched this year's version of the game, however, I didn't relive my youth; I relived my military career. As a start, the previous night featured a televised home-run derby. Before it even began, about 50 airmen paraded out in camouflage uniforms, setting the stage for everything that would follow. (As they weren't on duty, I couldn't help wondering why they found it appropriate to don such outfits.) Part of T-Mobile's "#HatsOff-4 Heroes" campaign, this mini-parade was justified in the name of raising money to support veterans, but T-Mobile could have simply given the money to charity without any of the militarized hoopla that this involved.
Highlighting the other pre-game ceremonies the next night was a celebration of Medal of Honor recipients. I have deep respect for such heroes, but what were they doing on a baseball diamond? The ceremony would have been appropriate on, say, Veterans Day in November. Those same pre-game festivities included a militarist montage narrated by Bradley Cooper (star of "American Sniper"), featuring war scenes and war monuments while highlighting the popular catchphrase "freedom isn't free." Martial music accompanied the montage along with a bevy of flag-waving images. It felt like watching a twisted version of the film "Field of Dreams," reshot so that soldiers, not baseball players, emerged early on from those rows of Iowa corn stalks and stepped onto the playing field.
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