From Pine View Farm

Thoughts for Memorial Day 3

As my First Son nears the sixth month of his 12 15-month stay in Afghanistan, from today’s local rag, by W.D. Ehrhart, who earned the Purple Heart, the Navy Combat Action Ribbon, and two Presidential Unit Citations in Vietnam (emphasis added):

I begin to suspect that the politicians and generals who tell us that we must sacrifice our children for the cause of peace are perhaps being just a bit disingenuous. I didn’t see any politicians in the rice fields of Vietnam, and precious few generals died there.

(snip)

More recently, we were told repeatedly that we had to send our children into harm’s way because Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a direct and immediate threat to the peace and security of our country. Four years later, 3,200 more young Americans are dead, and 30,000 have been wounded. We all know that we went to war for a lie; Mr. Bush asks us to be patient; Congress dithers over nonbinding resolutions; and there is no end in sight.

Have the dead and wounded of our latest war sacrificed for their country? I don’t think so. Nor do I think my friends Kenny and Randy died for their country in Vietnam. They died for the fantasies and machinations of arrogant powerbrokers the American people repeatedly and mistakenly put our confidence in, generation after generation, too ignorant ourselves, or too spineless, to separate the rhetoric of patriotism from the substance of patriotism.

Does supporting the troops really mean sending them to die for a lie and for the “legacy” of a discredited liar?

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3 comments

  1. Karen

    May 24, 2007 at 4:36 pm

    The spelling will be wrong, but you’ll get the point.

    GB is a proven liar. He’s also a megalomaniac, with delusions of grandeur. He could quite possibly exhibt signs of paranoia, though that kinda iffy.

    Then there is the House and the Senate. They talked a big game, which has gotten them into office, but they have done nothing. They don’t have the numbers to over ride a veto, so they cave. And collect the salaries that they get. For what? Doing what the grandmother from San Francisco does best: Talk.

    GB, his wife, his mother, and his father, should all be proud of themselves. Of the lives that they’ve cost.

    I sincerely hope each and every one of them dream, EVERY NIGHT, of the lives they have cost, and continue to do so, for no reason at all. I hope GB and company are alive to see history paint him as the worst in presidential history. I really don’t think there has been much worse.

     
  2. Frank

    May 24, 2007 at 6:21 pm

    Karen, they don’t give a damn.

    It stinks, but there it is.

    They value lies over lives.

    What the hell have we come to?

     
  3. Karen

    May 25, 2007 at 5:21 pm

    Check out Polman & the 1st 4 comments. #4 is great.