I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego. A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there?- Philip Martin has been a Marine for 2 years. He is in the infantry (a "grunt"), and spent 7 months in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. He went on more than 180 combat patrols in and outside of the city of Fallujah, where he was hit with 2 IEDs (luckily never injured) and was involved in a number of firefights. He is currently stationed in Twentynine Palms, CA, and due to return to Iraq for a second deployment in April 2007. He is 21-years-old. - Recommended by Shockwave at Daily Kos. Read Bob Johnson there for the neocon "new" Domino Theory.
UPDATE - By coincidence, I received a reply from another Marine - this one refighting old wars. Bruce N. Kessler in a written column believes the Shiite Iraqi Interior Ministry denials over the AP's 3 reports of 6 Sunni men at prayer burned to death by Shiite militia. Right before my decision to depart from conservative blogs for three weeks, I emailed him asking him why? He had nothing meaningful to say in the reply except for amusingly claiming the AP was providing faux news and not Fox and asked where my standards were. He never stated a source or standard for his belief.
A quick Google, which I hadn't before, finds he was a recruit in the Nixon White House campaign to counter the hippies and the majority of the American people opposing Nixon's war plans. He claims he, and not John O'Neill, was the founder of the anti-Kerry group Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace in 1971, the precursor to today's Swift Boat Liars. In May 1970 he wrote a letter to TIME magazine supporting Nixon's illegal expansion of the war into Cambodia while others were calling for Nixon's impeachment.
For a lot of conservatives, Iraq was going to be the chance to defeat the hippies from the Vietnam War and do a war right. Oops. There is a strong smell of napalm and deja vu in the air.
1 comment:
That Bruce Kesler, not O'Neill, was a co-founder is the truth-- it all happened in my home. O'Neill came AFTER VVJP was formeded and stayed at my house while preparing for the encounter with Kerry. All the founders of VVJP-- ten in all--agreed that O'Neill, having followed Kerry in the same Swiftboat unit, would make the ideal VVJPer to appear opposite Kerry-- everyone wanted debate, not star status, including O'Neill. It was only AFTERWARD that O'Neill met Nixon. Later, evil-like-Rove Nixon Press Secretary Colson told the WashPost that he, Colson, had started VVJP with O'Neill as his seed, in order to destroy it, fearing that the group-- with by then, 10,000 confirmed Viet Vets joinned-- would reject the Kissinger Paris Peace Accord. It worked, everyone quit VVJP when they read the Colson-O'Neill lie and each went his own way, O'Neill going to work for Nixon. To say that he started VVJP is as false as to say that he started the Swifties in 2004-- Rove did!
But I must say that I then considered it totally irresponsible for some of my old VVJP friends to, in 2004, sell their souls to Rove so that they could eclipse the debate of the War in Iraq with the War in Vietnam, of thrity years earlier. It is clearly a disgusting case of a generation of old farts screwing the young guys having to fight now for the sake of their privatye motives. Though I considered them all close friends, I broke with them because Iraq needed what Vietnam had gotten in full: MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE and RESPONSIBLE DEBATE-- it was Rove's job to make sure this would never happen so Bush could be re-elected. That is why I wanted to debate the Kerry position on Iraq with O'Neill. I felt he owed it to me, given that I got him his chance to get meaningful dialogue from Kerry on Vietnam.
Now with another Bush term experienced, we all got to see what cheap publicists a lot of one time heroes had become once old farts, screwing the next generation by denying dilligent debate to today's youngsters-- the opposite of the opportunity that was offered them. I too hated Kerry for his opportunistic use of Vietnam. But I did feel that he was putting before the American people for debate this useless war in which yet another generation would be wasted. Alas, I failed in my effort to promote meaningful dialogue on Iraq, as did most who tried, because Americans suffer from the Ain't my kid going to Iraq disconnect syndrome. For me, an American by choice not chance, anyone who thinks he is an American must consider EVERY soldier in harm's way as his/her son/daughter and must not silently allow to be done to any of these-- *OUR* kids-- what they would not allow to be done with their BIOLOGIC kids. But sick Rove found the little opportunist in a lot of people and he got a majority to worry more about gay marriage and cheap gas to fill-er-up their SUVs instead of the moral and responsible duty we all have towards *OUR* kids in uniform. History will mark Bush as the dirtiest and weakest and most chicken-hearted psychopathic president in US history-- all that because he chose to let Rumsfeld, Rove and Cheney do the deciding while he pretended he was the "decider."
Daniel E. Teodoru
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