Letters to the Editor
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@tempus
Thank you so much for having the guts and heart to say what you did. As a 28-year career Air Force public affairs officer, I am proud that people of your quality served our nation and I can only try to understand what you have gone through in hindsight. If you look through the archive of my letters, you will see how dedicated I am to getting out of Iraq and taking a hard look at war and how our military is used and abused by its civilian leaders and sorry to say also some military leaders. Please come back to this thread as often as possible.
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tempus
I'm sorry for what we did then and I am sorry and very angry about what we are doing there now and what is, apparently, the plan to keep the shit going, and spreading, in the future.
The realization that you have not only been lied to but also lied to yourself is a sickening one..
I took a hell of a lot of flak for being against Desert Storm, family, friends.. Would have been business associates too but I had learned to keep my opinion to myself by that point, otherwise I would have probably lost my job.
Mark Twain was absolutely correct when he wrote "War Prayer", every prayer has a spoken and an unspoken component and almost no one realizes it.
I think between "War Prayer" and Kipling's "Tommy" it is possible to chart the progress of a great many conflicts..
I posted "Tommy" on a local non-political BBS that is nevertheless dominated by right wingers shortly after the Iraq invasion got under way. I predicted that the government would screw injured vets big time.. Needless to say I was booted off by almost unanimous demand.
But I suspect there are a couple of the old timers that remember my words..
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@Derbig
See my 8:44am post to your earlier post on the chaplain and let me know how much we differ. I also provided a link for anyone who wanted to listen to it for the first time or again.
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Derbig
The segment which describes the way he personally reduces each death listing from a person he might have known, into a statistic he can use is almost vampiric, or anthropophagous.
I recall this tune being on the jukebox in the EM club when I was serving..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_LjjI8TcQ0
To this day I have not figured out how the CO let that happen.
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or Colin Powell
Rose was actually finishing Powell's sentences for him. I was embarassed watching the show. To me Rose is a snivelling suck-up to the powerful.
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What I Couldn't Get Over
in the run-up to the War On Iraq was the results
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re: There are good things
in the world too! Plato pointed out basically that is bad news and good news. The bad news is that "evils are many and good things are few". The good news is that there are a few good things. Goodness is real, though apparently heavily outnumbered. But there it still is.
-- Jkalos
You mentioned to me the other day that you had been studying Plato while I had been studying the economics of empire. Have you studied the religious beliefs of Plato himself as verses neo-Platonic religion? If so, how different are the two; I humbly ask.
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Sorry
My post got swalloed!That's never happened before. Okay, the results I couldn't believe were the ones which were supposed to happen, and touted as such, when we invaded. We were going to loose the might of the US Armed Forces on Iraq, and the result was supposed to be them loving us and wanting to emulate us!
I thought I was going nuts at the time.
Anyway, RMP just noticed your comment directing me to your comment, and off I go to read it. Thanks for responding.
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Try an American Analogy
Why not ask a very simple question? Many of the most vociferous supporters of the Iraq War are Southerners. Our Civil War ended 143 years ago, yet there are STILL Southerners today who resent the North's occupation of the South. State offices in Georgia, for instance, do not shut down for the Federal(northern) Memorial Day; they shut down for Confederate Memorial Day. If Americans are still that bitter about being occupied by other Americans -- people with a similar ethnic, linguistic & religious heritage -- why on earth did they fancy Iraqis would welcome us?
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top notch, GG
IMO, we would all be better off if we were inundated with one interview after another featuring actual Iraqis telling us precisely how they feel about the american occupation of their country. I want my neighbors to hear these clips. I want everyone in this country to watch these clips.
Even though I'm not new to this discussion and I've thought about it all a great deal, there really is nothing like the direct impact this kind of media can have on your perspective. I am always sad for Iraqis in a sort of general way. But when I watch Iraqis make their case in that kind of interview format, the sadness becomes so much more real.
And it's my own fucking government that is causing this.
Change cannot come soon enough.
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@cejaxon
Many of the most vociferous supporters of the Iraq War are Southerners.
Yeow! That's one little box I didn't wanna open, Pandora! But I'm not a gatekeeper round here, and there it is. "Many of the most vociferous supporters of the Iraq War are Southerners."
Gosh, now that you mention it, the entire War On Iraq does seem to be conducted in a drawl. Or so I've heard.
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the forbidden 'o-word'
Ondolette commented about last night's 'Frontline' piece. I watched both shows, end to end, and the work 'oil' was never mentioned. The party line at PBS is apparently that cheney misled bush about WMDs. Honest to god, not a single mention of oil. And every single mention of the press was one which characterized them as objective and professional. They even showed the front page of the nyt with the judy miller article; not a mention of its being an intentional plant. Determined malevolence and idiocy.