Veteran's Day (1 Viewer)

number6horse

okyoutwopixiesoutyougo
Here we are at another Veteran's Day observance in the United States. In recent years, this occasion has stirred up conflicted feelings in me, personally. I am not a veteran myself (any on this board ?), but have several of them in my family - mostly Marines and Navy. I am thankful for their service and sacrifice because in most cases, I would say that we in fact do owe our current freedom and way of life to the fights they won in the past.

But nowadays?........hmmm.......

Tonight on the news I saw DICK CHENEY(!) laying a wreath at some memorial (perhaps the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - not sure) and intoning some grave and momentous words that were no doubt penned by a speechwriter doing their best to help out a draft-dodging chicken-hawk* look "dignified". Jesus - this administration has just been brutal to the men and women of our armed forces. We all saw the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital - thanks to a few reporters who WERE NOT intimidated by Bush and his PR thugs. Morale is perhaps the lowest its been since the late 60's with the "stop-loss" policy conducted by Bush/Cheney (but begun by Rumsfeld - who seems to have escaped into his underground chambers where nobody questions him and he never has to justify anything.) "Stop-loss" means that EVERYBODY is on-duty until further notice. If you enlisted in 2000 for a 4,6,or 8-year term - well you my friend are FUCKED because the military now says you CANNOT end your service as originally planned because the Middle East is just a great big playground with all kinds of opportunities for American ventures.

It is a day of conflicted feelings, but I will do my best to remember the service my grandfathers (both Marines), uncles (3 Marines, 3 Navy) and father (Navy) have made so that I can live in relative peace and liberty (for now).

God Bless (help?) America.

Yours truly,
A pissed off (but hopeful) number6horse

*chicken hawk is a term coined by legendary Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko to describe pricks like Pat Buchanan, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush who are gung-ho about military action all over the planet as middle-aged men, but opted out when it was their turn to go get their hands dirty in Southeast Asia, when they were of draft-age.
 
It is a day of conflicting feelings, isn't it.
Though they can be the perpetrators of terrible deeds, soldiers are essentially acting on the survival instinct (physical, psychological, emotional).
The soldiers don't start the conflicts, the generals don't. It's the Cheney's, Bush's and other chicken hawks like them.
I live right next door to Victoria barracks... the 25pdrs going off at 11am scared the shit out of the whole family... then the jet fighter fly-over. Expensive noise makers, wot.
 
it could be worse, it could be Columbus day, but really, i understand the feeling with Veterans day. i applaud people who put their life on the line in sake of our freedom, which most of the time was not the case, but we're in a gov't/society where they think the right thing to do is shoot back. War all the time, i get it. My dad came back from the Vietnam war all crazy, he wouldn't talk at all for awhile, i know it wasn't his choice overall to go there and fight, maybe in some inane way it was, but the overall scheme was played by some higher ups. Ah... i dunno what i'm ranting on now... there are many good people in this world, veterans too... we're all being jerked around on puppet string, more awareness. But i don't hate the troops or Veterans, i hate the chicken hawks, (like ROC said) that initiate these idiotic wars for their own principal.
 
I was channel surfing and came across the c-span coverage with Cheney sitting up there. It pissed me off, but I've been pissed off for quite some time now with this deadly Chickenhawk administration. Yes, the man who got no less than five deferments, the man that is quoted as saying "he had other things to do" in regards to service, sitting up there without a mask or some type of disguise, really disgusted me.

For the record, I remained indoors on Veterans Day, clad only in my underwear, drank and watched sporting events on television.
 
This is from The Rude Pundit. I couldn't possibly put it any better.

Here is perhaps definitive proof that there is no God, no being that gives a flying ratfuck about what occurs on Earth: when Vice President Dick Cheney placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, the ground did not open up and vomit forth the zombie corpses of the thousands upon thousands of dead there so they might rip Cheney's remaining functioning organs out and drag his heaving, screaming being into realms of hell where he might be forced to suck mustard gas, be immolated by an atomic explosion, and be burned by napalm, all while having bullets fired through his flesh and grenades with their pins pulled shoved up his ass.

Alas, no, such savage poetry of gore is reserved for the real world, the real soldiers who wreak violence and who die in the real wars for the pusillanimous men whose experience of it is to merely honor the dead while merrily sending more to die.
 
Now that sounds like something from my blog! ;)

But you know, I started watching Ken Burns' World War II documentary, The War, last night. It's about a million hours long, so I don't know when I'll finish, but already, in the first episode they are pointing out a couple of huge mistakes General MacArthur made that cost thousands of lives. So I'm not sure that previous military experience makes you any more fit to run a war.

I can't believe that I just typed that, because it sounds like a defense of Bush and his fellow imbeciles, and I'm the last person to defend anything they do. But it is interesting and kind of shocking to see how horribly ill-prepared the U.S. was to go into WWII.

Was that war any more justified than this one, or Vietnam or the Crusades? To me, the answer is (always) no. Our reasons and purpose in WWII may have been justifiable, but modern wars can almost all be attributed to ignorance, insanity and greed. So in that way this current lot of knuckleheads sort of have history on their side.

The difference now is that the government can't hide what's going on in the war as easily as they could in the 1940's and earlier. It was literally years before the American public knew the real scope of things like the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent internment of Japanese Americans. Now the kids in Iraq have cell phone cameras and email and we get to see every shitty second of the thing.

I have no respect for Bush and his crew, but that extends to all politicians. They are all only slightly different branches of the same rotten tree, and that tree needs generous amounts of blood and money to grow. And we - as a species - are all too happy to keep providing both. So whose fault is it? It would be convenient and tidy to be able to blame it all on the current administration, but I don't think you can.
 
Nothing to do with the subject but still curious: I'd like to have a confirmation Linda Bukowski's birthday is on Veteran's day.

Is Esart able to answer my question?
 
I pulled this from a journalist in Pakistan today-
"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannise them will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious or otherwise, to put shackles on sleeping men." Voltaire

Hers to us with one eye open!!
 
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