Letters to the Editor
Nita Martin
Published Letters: 270 Editor's Choice: 62
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@calmer and Garry
[Read the article: Another price of war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It all makes sense if you just define "anonymous" as "self-loathing".
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Sticks and stones....Garry
[Read the article: Another price of war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...as much as it hurts me to say it, I'm painfully glad the editors allow a vituperous troll to spew what basically amounts to ranting nonsense.(within reasonable limitation) That allowance doesn't validate it as rational opinion, or valuable.
If "anonymous" lost the right to be a jerk on a public forum, I might lose the right to call the President of the United States a blithering jackass.
See how that works. Give a little, get a lot. Who cares about some nameless troll. I'm thankful the media hasn't been infiltrated and subverted to the extent that I no longer have the right to call 'em as I see 'em. No matter what. I can even say fuck, if I do it unoffensively enough.
So tune it out and know that there are those of us who like your impassioned and intelligent posts, and value our own uncensored rights. Anything else is just crap.
And for the record, I don't think people who post this stuff loathe the military. I think they loathe everything. And kick dogs too.
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Garry...
[Read the article: Another price of war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We must have been typing at the same time. Anyway...
You know, by now, I'm sure, that I have two sons in the Marines, both have been to Iraq. Three tours total. I started a new job last year, and a co-worker saw pictures on my desk of my two sons in uniform. I mentioned that one of them was in Iraq again, and I wasn't happy about it. He said, somewhat maliciously, "well, they knew what they were signing on for."
No they didn't. Not this. No one in the military signed on for this. My sons are both very dedicated, brave. They suck it up, and they have never complained. That's what you do when you have the heart to put your life on the line for your country.
The reason some people have to pull this "they knew what they were getting into, they should have been smarter" baloney is that they don't have the heart themselves to put anything on the line. And they have to convince themselves that their support of insanity is justified, because, somehow, no one is responsible for the fact that people die. Not the President, not the administration, not congress, not them. It was a personal choice. Stupid is as stupid does.
Only that was NOT the choice these people made. Giving your life and liberty in service is a noble thing. No one throws something that precious away. This country made a contract with those people. And inherent in it was the promise that they would never make this sacrifice for nothing. That's why people signed on...they believed their commander-in-chief would look out for them. And that we would all have their backs. Not that "you spin the wheel and you take your chances."
People who make this argument are trying to make themselves feel less guilty for living out this failed administration's policies and war of choice on the backs of the men and women who serve their country. You can't support the war AND support the troops. So this is the out. "They made their bed...let them die in it".
Ignore the trolls, just as I ignored the raving Republican asshole who greeted my first day at work with the opinion that if my son died, it was his own damn fault.
This troll sounds strangely like a certain David, who has disappeared, or gone anonymous, and once accused me of being a bad mother because my sons enlisted. So there you go. If we ignore them...they'll go away. Or at the very least be terminally frustrated. What? Did you hear something? I didn't.
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Expectations? Oh. Oh. I know this one.
[Read the article: Another price of war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anonymous...
One of my sons enlisted long before 9/11 and Bush. He passed on Georgetown Law School and chose the military because he thought he could bring something to it. He respected the institution of the Marine Corps. And he wanted to be a part of something that combined discipline and strategy. Brawn and brain. He knew it would require him to live up to his potential. Up or out.
On his last tour, his men were sent out on one of the most dangerous stretches of road to protect a Halliburton....ICE CREAM TRUCK!!! He asked me how he would tell the mother of one of his men how her son had died if there had been casualties.
My second son enlisted in the reserves a few days after 9/11. He expected to go to Afghanistan and hunt down the people who had brought such pain and tragedy to us. As we know, that WASN'T SADDAM HUSSAIN. IT WASN'T IRAQ. He's still in the reserves and Bush says he doesn't think much about Osama Bin Laden anymore.
Most of the people in the military did not enlist to fight Bush's battle of the ego. In fact most of the people who are being buffetted back and forth in the National Guard units, were in service long before Bush. Their expectations were to be available to help their friends and neighbors in their home state in times of national disaster. Like Katrina...case in point.
People in the reserves enlisted to be available in times of real need. Not in Iraq, caught in the crossfires of a civil war. They did not enlist to be the private army of a man playing war from the comfort of his sun-rug bedecked office.
Most career military likewise were in place before 9/ll and did not enlist to fight in a war based on rigged intelligence and neocon wetdreams.
The idea that all of those people walked into this in full swing is nonsense. Get over it.
So. Ex.pec.ta.tions.
Fight when NECESSARY.
Be treated with dignity and respect in exchange for their service.
Never, ever, be used as the pawns in a political game.