Letters to the Editor
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Garry Owen re: only represent maybe as much as 25 percent of all veterans
Agree with everything you said. Far too many vets claim they are fighting for American freedom and then condemn anyone who dares to protest and have a different opinion about unnecessary wars. They also support "Don't Ask, Don't tell," that clearly is discriminatory and denies service by men and women who would in no way cause any morale problems as European military services have proved.
I don't want to hang around closed minds in any setting and now that I am retired from the military and civilian worlds- I don't have to. That's why I love blogs. You can find a lot of open, experienced and exciting minds.
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Promises and messiahs ...Vick's dogs in Georgia
Dear Joan:
During my time with the CPA, Baghdad, in the spring of 2004, I would meet and discuss issues with a very hopeful man or woman who daily had to change names and/or clothing several times enroute to access a Zone that gave them promises.
Many, young and naive, had chased a new messiah that spoke of peace, dignity, freedom and of course material wealth. They worked in efforts named for giving justice, addressing war crimes and freeing women from the middle east's congenital yoke. It came with a promise of bringing them all dignity to that which the messiah proclaimed them endowed by birth.
As always, promises and messiahs tend to be transitory phenomenons. Chimerical and deadly is their characteristic ying and yang. Those young men and women - well, they are past and over the horizon like flotsam left in the wake of our grand ship of state.
Our soldiers who we sent to the crucible have again discovered what we are already knew. Us the older, who have shed our hard won wisdom, are being told the always obvious by the young whom we risk at our pleasure. They saw the flotsam.
And they oped'd to the vaccuum where the messiah dwells, to be proclaimed in an off week in the doldrum of the summer month when even the nightly news is barked by the second team. All else is not in sesson. And the soldiers' cries of murder and missing goals will complete with more notes on poisoned princesses and athletes with blood from animals on their hands but not on their uniforms.
These cries may not have any more life that Vick's dogs in Georgia; unless far more of us bark louder than it has sounded so far.
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Joan, OT, but do you actually read Broadsheet?
Broadsheet, Joan, is a travesty. It does Feminism no good to have your bloggers snark away at scientific studies and the scientists behind them that disagree with your bloggers agenda.
http://letters.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/08/20/pink_vs_blue/view/index1.html
Read all the letters, especially the first two pages and the last page (and especially Ondelette's letter.)
It's right out of George W. Bush's and global warming deniers playbook. If science doesn't match up with the Broadsheet agenda, it is snarked at, regardless of the merit of the snark. If science does match up with the Broadsheet agenda, it is hyped, regardless of the quality of the science.
For a male liberal feminist that prefers the reality based community, I find Broadsheet a catastrophe for feminism, liberalism, and for all of Salon.
Why don't you ask your readers of all genders, what they would like to see in a gender conversation blog?
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VFW and Legion Common Ground
I agree that both lean to the right in their "official" stance, but you'd be surprised how many regular members feel on the fence or directly opposed to what is perceived as the VFW/Legion stamp of approval for this war. Still being in, I sometimes stop at either the local Legion or VFW on my way back from drill in uniform. After the pats on the back and free drink, the next question is always "so what do you think?". Now I'm an officer, in uniform, so I NEVER just start spewing what I might if it were my close friends asking, but I temper it and offer some deeper insight than what either the right or left news gives them. I would say that more than 50% of the regular guys at both the Legion and VFW that first supported the war and its conduct, now just shake their heads and admit they were deceived and can't understand how we got here. This usually turns into a friendly argument with one of the right wingers at the place, which is always amusing to watch.
In a separate incident. I was coming back from drill to my hotel (my unit is 4 hours from my home). Didn't know it when I booked, but the Vietnam Veterans of America were having their annual meeting at the hotel. Again, I was in uniform and as I walked from the parking garage to the elevators, I had to cross the lobby. The vets had an open bar set up and about 300 were sitting and standing around drinking beer. I'm in my ACUs, I have both a CAB and ABN wings, and even though I am not SF, I served with them in Iraq so I have an SF combat patch....well you can see it was moths to a flame. Pats on the back, questions about which SF group I served with, and after chatting for a bit I started to hear someone clapping, then it grew. I turned around and I was getting a standing ovation....feeling very embarrassed I said a few words and hurried down to the downstairs bar, still don't feel like I measure up to what these guys went through. In that bar, again talking with Vietnam vets, the same thing came out, they shake their heads and wonder why and what the hell happened to get us here.
So I would say, give them a chance, go to the spaghetti dinner, you'd be surprised how many you might have views in common with. I do not agree with the VFW's policy, but I did join. Asked why, I give the same answer as to why I went to Iraq by a lefty..."Would you want only those blindly committed to the war to go? Imagine the loss of checks and balances"