Best wishes to all on this Memorial Day. It is a sobering holiday on the heels of our passing the 3000 death in Afghanistan alone. This week we also learned that half of our returning veterans are filing for disability. While some of us opposed these wars, we still are united as a country in our gratitude and respect for the men and women who have put themselves in harm’s way in foreign lands. The cost to these heroes and their families is a debt that we can never fully repay.
The last identified loss is Royal Welsh officer Capt Stephen Healey, 29, who was killed in Afghanistan. Captain Healey was a former Swansea City soccer player who once raised money for blind veterans by walking blindfolded from Chester to Llandudno. He sounds like a wonderful person and a natural leader. He was blown up by a bomb in Afghanistan after previously surviving an IED attack. After his soccer career, he joined the 1st Battalion, The Royal Welsh (The Royal Welch Fusiliers). He died leading a platoon on the tour in Helmand province. He leaves behind his father John, mother Kerry, brother Simon and girlfriend Thea. He is a credit to his country and his family.
For most of us, today is a time for family and friends. Unfortunately, our own plans for the holiday had to be set aside so that I could finish the briefs in the Sister Wives case — summary judgment motions are due on May 31st. However, we will be having a cook out in the backyard. To everyone on the blog, have a fun and safe holiday.
I just had a conversation elsewhere complaining that Saudi Arabia did 79% of 9/11 but received zero retribution. Iraq did zero of 9/11 and received destruction. Afghanistan did, then, at most 21% of it and likewise received destruction.
The person I was commenting back and forth with, after watching the MSNBC videos I linked to, said that is ok.
It is ok to let any nation kill 3,000 Americans so long as they are important enough (oil).
What do you other patriots think about that?
@SlingT – I think the draft was over in 71-72. I went in, in 78. We’re talking 40 years without a draft. No one made us write the check/cheque. Some were patriots, some had other reasons, and others needed felony waivers.
In my 9 years, 11 months and 15 days, only knew of a handful that would not have given the proverbial “all”; if not for their country, but at least for their comrades in arms.
1zb1 1, May 28, 2012 at 5:26 pm
dredd, i’m wondering if you actually read what either Mr. Shaffer wrote or I wrote:
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Ditto.
You seemed to miss that I pointed out that Saudi Arabia did 79% of 9/11, and Bush II held hands with them and protected them, as did the current regime.
He sent soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, not to Saudi Arabia.
That is probably difficult for you to grasp.
Watch the videos about the federal court case in the link above.
Here, let me do it for you again: LINK
Great wrongs should not be bowed down to by free people, nor memorialized as holy water when great evil is mixed in.
rafflaw 1, May 28, 2012 at 5:44 pm
Dredd,
The First Amendment would not exist if we didn’t win the Revolutionary War first.
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Free speech a la the First Amendment is a la the Magna Carta.
To think that war creates anything like that is surely not to grasp war.
War is the greatest danger to freedom there is:
(James Madison, “Father of the Constitution“, emphasis added). If we look to the declaration, “The first sentence of the Declaration asserts as a matter of Natural law the ability of a people to assume political independence, and acknowledges that the grounds for such independence must be reasonable:
(Wikipedia, Declaration of Independence, emphasis added). India received independence from Britain too, without a war.
Quite a large democracy now.
The things of the Bill of Rights exist for all people.
They can give them away to warrior tyrants, but no nation create them from whole cloth.
In general, like Madison said, war is the instrument to remove the pillars of freedom, not to create them (“Those truths are well established.”)
Rafflaw: “Save your disdain for the politicians who love to send men and women to their ultimate sacrifice.”
I think that is what nearly all the posters are doing. Maybe I missed the ones that criticised veterans,
Writing a cheque made payable the the USA up to and including the signatory’s life sounds like a gloriously patriotic idea.
I think it does entail a trust that the politicians who rule for the time being on behalf of the USA won’t take that cheque and blow it on nonsense and criminality.
It is possible that many individuals did honourable things in the course of the Iraq invasion and war that followed (as an example). However they would have been doing those thing in the course of an entirely dishonourable war launched on deliberate falsehoods.
Why Bush and his cronies are not serving life with Bubba is a mystery.
(( OK. It’s not a mystery. I lied, so sue me ))
(( But can you imagine it? Bush sharing a cell with Bubba – for life. Go on. Imagine it. You know you want to, even if you voted for him. Go on! ))
So that would be a “good war” 😉 At least if you’re a Colonist.
Dredd,
The First Amendment would not exist if we didn’t win the Revolutionary War first.
dredd, i’m wondering if you actually read what either Mr. Shaffer wrote or I wrote:
“Essentially, we were told to use more oil from the very places that were the cradle for the attack and buy more goods from China, not exactly our best friend.
And so as our men and woman went in harms way America itself was told to give aid an comfort to our enemies, all in the name of defending our way of life. Americans happily obliged to shop till we dropped, which, of course we eventually did in 2008.”
Apparently you did not get the reference so I will try to be more explicit for your benefit in the future.
For example, Japan, Formosa, Korea, China are the biggest trading partners with Iran. If we were really serious about them not having the bomb and avoiding another war Americans would boycott their products. If we were really serious about getting out of wars in the middle east we would stop buying oversized gas guzzling cars; we would use more public transportation; we would put on an extra sweater in the winter and turn down the heat in winter, or use less air conditioning in summer. You know what I mean, the kind of things people did during WW2. Then again, I am sure you do all those things.
A good tribute to those who have fallen before would be to fight for legislation that would require those that declare wars fight the wars. mandatory conscription of those 40 and over. With the families of politicians being the first conscripts.
1zb1 1, May 28, 2012 at 9:31 am
A recent opinion in the NYTimes struck at the essence of the problem,
“…while everyone is ready to “thank them,” few are ready to join them. It’s hard to fight for your country year after year (or watch your child do so) then recover from physical and psychological wounds when, let’s be frank — our nation doesn’t share the sacrifice. ”
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/24/how-should-the-us-support-returning-veterans/more-americans-should-enlist
The remarks underscore a far deeper problem facing our nation: the profound disconnect between our myth and our reality.
In the aftermath of 911, President Bush used the ashes of the World Trade Center to send the best of our young men and woman off to war while telling everyone else to go out and shop …
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Don’t forget letting those that did 15/19ths (79%) of if off. I am in reference to Saudi Arabia.
Bush held hands with them and protected them, as has the current regime.
The message is that you can kill Americans if you have enough oil, and we will send our soldiers off to die elsewhere fighting those who did not do it, just to protect you.
Glory be.
1zb1 1, May 28, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Apparently quibbling about the matter of what “know” means, is crucial to some people.
Thanks in large measure to the people who do know war all of us get to be part of the debate
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I like this war: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno&feature=player_embedded
bettykath 1, May 28, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Dredd, love the mug shot of the cat. quite topical.
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Never give up (in moderation.)
DonS 1, May 28, 2012 at 2:53 pm
“War is something you know nothing about if you haven’t been there … “(1zb1 1), and Dredd.s reply “Like mass murder, one knows enough about it without having “been there” or done that.”
…
Perhaps this is not the day, when we are supposed to honor our veterans, to raise such questions; or perhaps it is exactly the right day.
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Exactly.
This is the day the 1% uses to shut up people who know war is the device of the 1% for increasing their power, and plundering the 99% who fight wars and die for them.
I am quite the moderate compared to some who want all of their first amendment rights: WAR PIGS – THE FALL OF A GLOBAL EMPIRE
Each to his or her own.
Long live the First Amendment. It was not created by war.
Apparently quibbling about the matter of what “know” means, is crucial to some people.
Thanks in large measure to the people who do know war all of us get to be part of the debate. And unless one is really small minded it is possible to honor something someone has done, without taking away from what others may have done, or even how others may use their acts of valor for selfish motives or twisted ends.
Indeed, one does not have to honor war in any way to honor those who fight them on our behalf. And maybe that is the difference between those who know war and those who think they know it well enough; the difference between empathy and sympathy; the difference between being human and hating others so much for what they do that we become just as inhuman as they are.
A veteran – whether active duty, retired, national guard or reserve –
is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made
payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to
and including my life.” That is Honor, and there are way too many
people in this country who no longer understand it. — Author Unknown
“War is something you know nothing about if you haven’t been there … “(1zb1 1), and Dredd.s reply “Like mass murder, one knows enough about it without having “been there” or done that.”
Without quibbling about the matter of what “know” means, it is crucial to separate the acknowledgment of service members efforts — call them heroes if that is your mind — and the cynical war machine. In this respect, too often, the well intentioned impulse to honor service people is twisted to stifle dissent. And it is in that context that one can indeed know war well enough to not be excluded from the debate.
I remember all too well in the run up to the Iraq invasion when we skeptics and naysayers were ridiculed for our ‘naivete’ — ‘surrender monkeys’ we were. One of the most powerful obscenities that was hurled at someone to discredit their opinion was to question whether they had served in the military (Personally, I did 2 years service with VISTA establishing an inner city court-related drug program). Again, without dismissing the difference in qualitative experience between someone who has seencombat and others, there is a calumny in a democracy where such a charge can be leveled.
It reminds me when I did drug counseling, some addicts would dismiss my expertise because I “hadn’t been there” . . . of course the coke addicts would dismiss the heroin addicts; and everyone dismissed the alcoholics as just a bunch of drunks. As if knowledge of human behavior and human institutions, when genuine, were not transferable.
I see the way our brave politicians treat service vets, and I know hypocrisy when I see it. All the great words about brave heroes they spout are revealed as fraudulent by the failure to provide adequate services to help those who served the government, and the country. But the 1% don’t care about paying for what they get; they just want to get.
Perhaps this is not the day, when we are supposed to honor our veterans, to raise such questions; or perhaps it is exactly the right day.
Dredd, love the mug shot of the cat. quite topical.
1zb1 1, May 28, 2012 at 12:22 pm
War is something you know nothing about if you haven’t been there …
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Wrong. Like mass murder, one knows enough about it without having “been there” or done that.
Our governing essence, the wartocracy, is producing jingoism like it was going out of style.
This blog has a higher degree of thinking people than most blogs I have perused.
War is an alien place where everyone can kill, maim, and destroy while thinking they are doing God’s work. On both or all sides.
The 1% know this, so they have these things out on Highway 61.
This day is their Christmas, a commercial day that reinforces the emotional constructs they need to get the Universal Soldier to keep helping them transfer wealth from the 99% to them, the 1%.
Rafflaw and 1zb1, you took the words out of my mouth.
Thank you Veterans for your sacrifices.