Letters to the Editor
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The chart
The thing that interested me about that chart on the update was that, prior to WWII, the number of people in the military retreats to nearly 0 between wars. After WWII, we were almost continually at war, but even when we weren't, the number of people in the military stayed relatively high, although with a downward trend. We have been severely militarized since WWII -- but the downward trendline probably upsets those brave uber-warriors like Kristol and Goldberg.
Let's get that dang line back down to 0, like it was pre-WWI. That's a good military number, far as I'm concerned.
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More Writers like Greenwald and EmptyWheel
I thank you for your activism. The battle of ideas is being fought in the pages of the national media, not on the floor of congress or the senate where they shout slogans like "fight them over there," "political stunt" and "show trial" Your dissection of the right's propagandistic drivel carries the day. Thank you Gleen Greenwald.
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precisely why we don't follow them
Greenwald makes the case for why so many of us in the "9.11 Gen" don't trust those running the country/military enough to enlist: Those with power and influence today are such irresponsible hypocrits that we have absolutely no confidence in their judgment. It's one thing to follow a brave leader into a necessary battle; it's an entirely different matter to be sent to a lost cause by a bunch of effete and feckless cowards. The truly pathetic thing is that these chickhawks will never admit that they've erred; the farther sideways this misguided war goes, the more they will blame people like me for not heeding their foolish calls to die for their backwards ideology. THEY will not be responsible for anything--it will be US who have "stabbed america in the back." This pack of fakes needs to be driven as far from power as possible, as soon as possible. Americans--especially the troops--deserve so much better than these frauds.
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It's about the skin
It's amazing how many chickenhawks unapologetically state, the reason they don't fight is that well they got a life, they got things to do, I mean what about their careers, who's going to change the oil in their cars? The fact that they don't even remotely see this as being a flaw in character and reasoning is a statement in itself.
If we had a draft with ZERO exemptions or deferments, I wonder how quickly Jonah would change his tune from "America needs to get its hands dirty and go out there and be tuff, aggressive and start occasional wars", to "America needs to put diplomacy first".
I don't want a draft, but I want even less, cowardly weasels like Jonah trumpeting war when they have no skin in the game.
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Card Carrying Member of "the 9/11 Generation"
Will those of us who were 16 on 9/11 then be considered traitors if we don't support this war? If we don't go fight? If I don't even like red kool-aid??
Mr. Barnett, please stop defining my generation for me. I think we'll figure things out on our own without your help, those of us who fight, and those of us who don't.
Thanks.
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A Man With Bloody Hands
In a previous scribble, I stipulated that I was in uniform and near Saigon in early 1968 when the s--- hit the fan during Tet.
Yes, it's been a long and winding road from there.
Anyway, I long ago ceased believing that my peers who weren't "over there" at the time, and who now lead the Unilateralism-All-Over-The-Place-By-Whatever-Means-Necessary-With-Other-Peoples'-Kids crowd would cut me some slack today, or invite me over for dinner.
There is a very odd, very damning quality to the "high church" rhetoric, used by the people who want to fight in Iraq. Odd because the same tactics - "you go and I'll hold your coat" - were used forty years ago (remember: "gentlemen" paid for substitutes during the Civil War). Damning because the geezers who are at the top of the heap now seem not to have any sense of how many who did serve during the Vietnam era may really feel today. No one wants us at the table. No one wants to know us.
They didn't want to then; they don't want to now.
Some of us might have some hard questions; or, worse, maybe we'd just cry over the bubbles in our beer and embarrass everyone.
How else to explain the moves against John Kerry, Max Cleland, John Murtha, Chuck Hagel, or any other elected official with a war record from Vietnam who questioned Iraq?
Well hey, it's always fun to use quotes from people who said it better than you can.
Here are two:
"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
-Plato
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle
of memory against forgetting."
-Milan Kundera
Forget me not ...
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Re: Update
Great addition to the piece. What I would love to know, but doesn't appear to be data in the linked document to address, is whether the percentage of population serving has been rising, falling, or stable since Gulf War I. This might speak to where the hearts and minds of the american people are, regarding the oil wars.
Also:
And according to the CIA, there are roughly 108 million Americans "fit for militiary service" -- 54 million males and 54 million females who, as the CIA defines it, are able-bodied and between the ages of 18-49.
Mr. Barnett is 40 years old, I believe. There is still plenty of time, Mr. Barnett. Nearly a decade.
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Yellow Dog @ 9:08
I just bet...
...if you asked Max, the triple amputee nicely (no lift your leg to pee on a wood stump of antiwar amputee)...Max would let peaceful people borrow his leg and knock some good common sense into those that Glenn exposes?
I will e-mail those other war amputees? We can carry a leg stump and start swing limbs like a bat? Ding bats in DC need to have home-run hitters 'hit' some balls into the rotten liver river?
The next generation needs some hope!
Yellow Dog. You a gold Buddha hound dog!
There ain't nothing like a good hound dog!
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America's Toughest and Bravest™
Why are America's Toughest and Bravest™ all behind a microphone or keyboard? I'll bet that if Jonah (38), Michelle Malkin (36), and Rich Lowry (age 39) joined up, this thing would be over in "six days or six weeks. I doubt six months.*"
* Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, February 7, 2003