I support our troops, I honor their service, and that is why I don’t want any more of them to die. I'm deeply saddened with every war death on either side. I lost friends, some of the best friends I had in my life, in Vietnam, both American military and Vietnamese civilians. I learned things from that experience that one would be better off never knowing. One was the inevitable transience of life and the stark and tragic realization that anyone can be struck down at any time. The other was the capacity of our sworn leaders to turn to the cameras and with a smile, a grimace, or a smirk to lie prolifically. I learned that the lives of others are generally quite meaningless to people in power. That far too often, in fact, in nearly every instance, wars are not fought for anything viable, or worthwhile; that the reasons for war are more often rhetorical than actual. That those reasons are nearly always clothed in the rhetoric of "freedom" and "democracy" and other high sounding notions or concepts that have little or nothing to do with the real reasons for wars, the egos of people in positions of power and the dreams and greediness of people who have their minds on their wallets or their eye on "their place in history." Who after all could generate sympathy or support for the countless deaths of American citizens by claiming to fight for tyranny, despotism, and the ruthless murder of untold thousands in the pursuit of economic imperialism?
Millions of Vietnamese, North and South, Laotians, and Cambodian civilians lost their lives during the Vietnam War, and for what? All during that war we heard over and over and over again how if Vietnam fell the rest of the world would go Communist. The virulent war-mongers of that period pointed to the statements and writings of Communists all over the world who claimed unabashedly that they were set on world domination and that they would bury the United States. None of that happened. Now the war-mongering fools of today are pointing to the statements of angry and foolhardy Islamic radicals who are supposedly proclaiming a New Caliphate which will conquer the world and rule it with the iron fist of Islamic law. Of course these threats are more reminiscent of the 7 teenagers in Florida who were going to take over the United States with no plan, no weapons, no money, and no shoes, than a threat we need concern ourselves with too seriously. But the paranoid need little more than a book, a treatise or a rambling and incoherent statement from a madman to run screaming through the streets in the fashion made famous in 1950s horror movies, themselves subversive responses to the hyperbolic right wing reaction to the so-called and overly-hyped "Soviet threat."
AMC is showing Army films all weekend. Everything from World War II--Tora Tora Tora, Patton, etc--to Vietnam's, Green Berets! These offerings are all designed to generate support for war and to celebrate the heroism of our fighting men. Present by their absence are all those great anti-war films that have a far less celebratory tone. Ironically, it’s not PC to show anti-war films on Veteran’s Day. But I can't celebrate war. As I do every Veteran's Day now I will watch the Vietnam War documentary, Hearts and Minds--it more accurately reflects how I feel about war--and I will cry for all those senseless murders and killings and deaths and wonder why I was spared while people with so much more to offer the world were shot down in their prime for nothing. And like I have so many times, I will hope for some kind of understanding, some kind of catharsis, some kind of relief, some kind of peace, some kind of closure, but I already know none of this will be forthcoming. Not today; not ever. There is no coherency to insanity, no logical reasons for stupidity, no relief from the empathetic pain for those others less fortunate now gone to dust, and no redemption for those who blindly supported the leaders who drove our troops to their deaths. We have to bring the troops in Iraq home now, and Bush should apologize to each and every one of them and their families for all the asinine and ignorant assumptions and decisions that he has made that resulted in so many senseless and useless deaths and so many life-altering injuries--but he won't. He's not human enough to do the right thing. He'll place some worthless wreath on the grave of some unknown soldier (because whether we survive or die we all return to obscurity; the survivors to ultimately live mostly alone with whatever war has wrought), and he'll speak some mindless drivel about how much he appreciates the service and how important it is that we continue the fight for "freedom and democracy" over there, while his every initiative is chipping away continuously at "freedom and democracy" over here. He'll also go on about how more people have to die so that the previous deaths will not have been in vain and tell us that we are on the cusp of victory and that the enemy will soon be vanquished. What hubris, what blindness, what ignorance, what arrogance. Face it, 54,000+ in Vietnam dead--In Vain. Nearly 3,000 dead in Iraq; and who knows how many of the 20,000+ seriously injured will wish eventually they had died--In Vain for Vanity Only.
Soon we will begin hearing, if we haven't already, how we must save face by making sure that we have done what we set out to do--whatever that might have been. However, besides giving Bush a war to fight so that he could be a war-time President, strut around like Patton and pretend he was somebody after leaving his own post and bailing on the military rather than submit to a drug test, this war has been a complete and senseless waste of human life, human potential, national wealth and American prestige. Bush lied to create a reason for war, sent troops into combat without the proper equipment, forced many of their families onto welfare, refused to raise their pay to a living wage, and is abandoning them now that they are injured seriously for the remainder of their lives. I don't care how many Rumsfelds get fired, this is Bush's war based on Bush's lies. Support the Troops on this Veteran's Day. Sit down right now and write your duly elected Representatives in Congress (both in the House and the Senate) a letter in support of our troops calling for an end to the Iraq War, the withdrawal of our troops and the impeachment of George W. Bush.
Support Our Troops; Honor Their Service; Impeach Bush NOW!
Millions of Vietnamese, North and South, Laotians, and Cambodian civilians lost their lives during the Vietnam War, and for what? All during that war we heard over and over and over again how if Vietnam fell the rest of the world would go Communist. The virulent war-mongers of that period pointed to the statements and writings of Communists all over the world who claimed unabashedly that they were set on world domination and that they would bury the United States. None of that happened. Now the war-mongering fools of today are pointing to the statements of angry and foolhardy Islamic radicals who are supposedly proclaiming a New Caliphate which will conquer the world and rule it with the iron fist of Islamic law. Of course these threats are more reminiscent of the 7 teenagers in Florida who were going to take over the United States with no plan, no weapons, no money, and no shoes, than a threat we need concern ourselves with too seriously. But the paranoid need little more than a book, a treatise or a rambling and incoherent statement from a madman to run screaming through the streets in the fashion made famous in 1950s horror movies, themselves subversive responses to the hyperbolic right wing reaction to the so-called and overly-hyped "Soviet threat."
AMC is showing Army films all weekend. Everything from World War II--Tora Tora Tora, Patton, etc--to Vietnam's, Green Berets! These offerings are all designed to generate support for war and to celebrate the heroism of our fighting men. Present by their absence are all those great anti-war films that have a far less celebratory tone. Ironically, it’s not PC to show anti-war films on Veteran’s Day. But I can't celebrate war. As I do every Veteran's Day now I will watch the Vietnam War documentary, Hearts and Minds--it more accurately reflects how I feel about war--and I will cry for all those senseless murders and killings and deaths and wonder why I was spared while people with so much more to offer the world were shot down in their prime for nothing. And like I have so many times, I will hope for some kind of understanding, some kind of catharsis, some kind of relief, some kind of peace, some kind of closure, but I already know none of this will be forthcoming. Not today; not ever. There is no coherency to insanity, no logical reasons for stupidity, no relief from the empathetic pain for those others less fortunate now gone to dust, and no redemption for those who blindly supported the leaders who drove our troops to their deaths. We have to bring the troops in Iraq home now, and Bush should apologize to each and every one of them and their families for all the asinine and ignorant assumptions and decisions that he has made that resulted in so many senseless and useless deaths and so many life-altering injuries--but he won't. He's not human enough to do the right thing. He'll place some worthless wreath on the grave of some unknown soldier (because whether we survive or die we all return to obscurity; the survivors to ultimately live mostly alone with whatever war has wrought), and he'll speak some mindless drivel about how much he appreciates the service and how important it is that we continue the fight for "freedom and democracy" over there, while his every initiative is chipping away continuously at "freedom and democracy" over here. He'll also go on about how more people have to die so that the previous deaths will not have been in vain and tell us that we are on the cusp of victory and that the enemy will soon be vanquished. What hubris, what blindness, what ignorance, what arrogance. Face it, 54,000+ in Vietnam dead--In Vain. Nearly 3,000 dead in Iraq; and who knows how many of the 20,000+ seriously injured will wish eventually they had died--In Vain for Vanity Only.
Soon we will begin hearing, if we haven't already, how we must save face by making sure that we have done what we set out to do--whatever that might have been. However, besides giving Bush a war to fight so that he could be a war-time President, strut around like Patton and pretend he was somebody after leaving his own post and bailing on the military rather than submit to a drug test, this war has been a complete and senseless waste of human life, human potential, national wealth and American prestige. Bush lied to create a reason for war, sent troops into combat without the proper equipment, forced many of their families onto welfare, refused to raise their pay to a living wage, and is abandoning them now that they are injured seriously for the remainder of their lives. I don't care how many Rumsfelds get fired, this is Bush's war based on Bush's lies. Support the Troops on this Veteran's Day. Sit down right now and write your duly elected Representatives in Congress (both in the House and the Senate) a letter in support of our troops calling for an end to the Iraq War, the withdrawal of our troops and the impeachment of George W. Bush.
Support Our Troops; Honor Their Service; Impeach Bush NOW!
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