‹ Joe Biden: Who’ll Stand By Our SOBs? •
Hot on the heels of historically low recruitment numbers, the Army is now reporting its highest desertion rate in nearly 30 years.
One wonders if stop-loss, prolonged tours, and the decimation of cultures and ethnicities has any bearing on a soldiers emotional fortitude and mental wherewithal.
This also comes at a time of an extraordinarily high suicide rate among veterans, whom “are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.”
It’s a good thing that the Establishment is taking good care of servicemen.
You forgot to include the increasing numbers of homeless veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan debacle.
Ramsay
Per request:
Many D.C. Veterans Homeless, Study Says: “As many as 195,800 military veterans were homeless on any given night last year”
So this is how the Shrub “supports” the troops? As a Viet Nam vet, it makes me sick to see how our troops are treated once they get home. Shame on America and this criminal administration.
We used to say back in 1970 in Viet Nam that the government said that “nothing is too good for our troops. Unfortunately we cannot give them less than nothing.” Looks like we were right then and now. Sad.
The fact that we have homeless veterens is utterly deplorable and inexcusable. But I wonder, how many of you give money to homeless people when you see them in the street? A lot of people talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk. Action speaks a lot louder than mere words. If you do give something to homeless people( many of whom are veterens) than congratulations, I commend you. Otherwise, put your money where your mouth is. Speaking of which, there is a great organization that gives care packages for our troops overseas. Go to http://www.operationgratitude.org
Why would we want to give care packages to the troops overseas? Aren’t they the ones who volunteered to go abroad and kill people they never even met? I say rehabilitate them and give them all the help they need once they’re no longer hurting other people but to send them care packages while they’re still blowing up people is to support the war effort.
RIGHT on the money!
Mercenaries are bloodthirsty animals killing and destroying whoever and whatever their masters order them to, as such they should expect no money or other benefits from humanity.
They and their families should be taken care of by their masters.
I agree with you. I was in the Navy during the Viet-Nam War and I remember when we got a bundle of letters and cookies from some third grade students. I knew they meant well but it was disturbing that these innocent kids were being fed this crap that somehow we were there protecting them and America. We were there for lots of reasons - we couldn’t get a job, we had wore out our welcome at home, or maybe we didn’t have any direction. But no-one was there because he wanted to preserve freedom. Only thing that I saw was that we loaded bombs and napalm on aircraft to dump on other human beings. I remember us always referring to them as “Gooks” and “Slope-heads”. And I remember the vicious bar fights whenever our ship got to port. Men rolling on the floor covered with puke trying to hurt each other. That and the long VD sickcall lines on ship three days after. That about sums up my impression of military life - crudeness, drunkeness, and whore-mongering There wer no Hallmark moments. Lately there has been a lot of worship of the military in this country - obviously by people who did not “have the privilege of serving”.
Yes, the establishment obviously cares. So much, in fact, that they want to force them to remain on tours so Big Brother Bush can personally take care of them.
He knows what’s best. After all, he is the “decider.”
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The Antiwar Blog on low recruitment numbers, high suicide and high desertion rates affecting the United States military. Islam and the west - opinions of a Kashmiri Nomad
Maybe someone can explain this to me, but for the life of me I can’t understand how people can freely and voluntarily choose to live in a country, any country, and not feel at least some small sense of loyalty and support for the military that defends the country. If you hate the military so much, why not move to Switzerland? They have been neutral for a very long time. But to live in America and not even care about her soldiers serving overseas? These are young kids who are there trying to do what is right. Maybe you strongly disagree with the mission and that is fine, but to not even care about these young men and women? To not even want to send them a care package around Christmas time? Shame on you all for that.
The above posters point out a real dilemma. “Support for the troops” typically means support for the Iraq war and Bush, as some Bushies have been frank enough to admit. It’s also true that glad-handing anyone in the military (and the military has become a sacred idol in America, a new secular god to be revered at all times) is also typically seen as supporting “the war on terror.”
Yet these soldiers are our own countrymen, even if they’re misled and exploited by the warmongering buffoons in Washington. It’s hard to grant them a hearty “job well done” when in fact what they’ve done, at their masters’ behest, has been entirely illegal and immoral. But how can we turn our backs on our relatives and friends in the military? I’m unsure exactly where the line is. My support for the soldiers is to bring them back to America, safe and sound, and not render comfort to an operation that is grotesquely wrong.
Here’s a good excerpt from an article by Michael Moore . . .
. . ., perhaps we should ask ourselves if what we are doing is signing a death warrant for people we don’t even know . . . millions of dollars of bombs and missiles — that you and I paid for — are being used to kill people . . . That makes you and I culpable in their execution.
Did you personally know any of the people who were killed last week? Had they ever done anything to harm you? How about the children who were blown to bits . . . Had they ever threatened you in any way to cause you to have to kill them in self-defense? Can you tell me why you would want to take their lives?
I’m sorry to personalize it in this way, but this slaughter is being conducted in your name and mine, and I’ll tell you, this is blood I don’t want on my hands. We will all have to answer for this some day, and I would like to be able to say that I did not sit by silently while this was being done, and that I did whatever I could to stop it as soon as possible.
. . . this is the question I always ask myself when confronted with whether or not I should ever support a war: Do I believe strongly enough in this cause that I MYSELF would be willing to risk my life to go over there and square it with my conscience to kill.
Please call or write your member of Congress, send a letter to the editor. This is OUR country, not theirs and the corporate interests they really represent. It’s time to start taking it back.
Each cruise missile that is launched could have built a dozen schools or hired another hundred teachers or provided health care to a thousand people. Those millions of dollars could have been spent saving lives and educating children.
“These are young kids who are there trying to do what is right. Maybe you strongly disagree with the mission and that is fine, but to not even care about these young men and women?”
They are MERCENARIES and as such they are not defending America but rather SERVING and IMPLEMENTING the AGENDA of their MASTERS.
They would be shooting TERRORIZING and TORTURING US just as they do Iraqis, Afgans and others before them.
Bushes neo-fascists with the help of the other faction A.K.A Democratic Party, have DESTROYED the Republic and the Constitution.
You’re mistaken when you assume that I don’t care about American soldiers serving overseas. It makes me angry to see them being used and being disabled as well as killed for no good reason. The only morally justifiable war is a war of self-defense, and obviously the Iraq war is not that. These poor kids signed up to defend America, not to offend other poor kids overseas. So their sacrifice is pointless because the fact is that even if they try to “do what’s right” they can’t. It is morally wrong to go to someone else’s home and destroy it and kill their family when they’ve done nothing to you. Aren’t you angry that our sons and daughters are being used in this way? And in terms of sheer numbers, aren’t you even more outraged by the death of a million Iraqis to our approximately 3800 soldiers? Or do you think that an American life is worth more than an Iraqi life?
“Maybe someone can explain this to me, but for the life of me I can’t understand how people can freely and voluntarily choose to live in a country, any country, and not feel at least some small sense of loyalty and support for the military that defends the country.”
It’s been an awfully long time since any troops fought to defend AMERICA. In fact, what our troops are doing is making us less safe from foreign threats, while enabling the government to restrict our freedoms. Our troops are woefully misguided; I think the fair and proper words are “used” and “brainwashed”. I have sympathy for many of them (as you probably don’t care to admit, there are many thugs, criminals, and gang members who’ve been joining the military of late). I’ve always given to veterans organizations, both in private and in public where I’m forced to through paycheck confiscation. EVERY taxpayer gives to the vets. My suggestion is to not lie them into such awful situations in the first place, but that sort of concept takes logic and true compassion. That also deprives people like you of heroes to worship.
“If you hate the military so much, why not move to Switzerland? They have been neutral for a very long time.”
I’m glad to see that you DID pay attention to at least one of my previous posts because now, even though you still use the same tiresome routine about “loving it or leaving it” (as though those are our only TWO free choices), you’re using Switzerland as your option. Of course, your statement betrays yet even more ignorance. If one hates the military but longs for freedom, Switzerland would not be an option since they have compulsory military service. While you wait for another country to fill the gap, I’ll add a little background about why people don’t move as if you actually believe in that absurd ruse. Maybe we don’t move because of the language? The expense? Finding a home? A job? Family? Friends? Maybe — just MAYBE — we want to stay here where we were born, in OUR homes and hometowns. Maybe we prefer to stay here to follow our right and DUTY, of putting this country back on its rightful track. “And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?” Thomas Jefferson was right, but people like you imply that we must accept your un-American status quo despite the fact that we patriots see the country going down; that we patriots see self-serving politicians lying the nation into its final demise. You denounce our insistence that our fallible, compromised politicians, who’ve been proven to have lied be called to task for it.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…
That’s all of us here Tim: the governed…
— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
That’s our government right now…
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…
It’s our RIGHT to alter it. We choose to excerise that right instead of running away. We’re using the tools that were lawfully given to us.
“But to live in America and not even care about her soldiers serving overseas? These are young kids who are there trying to do what is right. Maybe you strongly disagree with the mission and that is fine, but to not even care about these young men and women? To not even want to send them a care package around Christmas time? Shame on you all for that.”
The purpose of this thread and most of the responses to it is to lament the deplorable treatment of soldiers and veterans and you conclude that people here do “not care about these young men and women”. The negative posts simply state a truth: the soldiers volunteer to kill people without having first familiarized themselves with the facts — ALL sides (the February 2006 poll finding 80% of them believing they’re in Iraq to avenge 9/11 shows a shocking unfamiliarity with even the bogus neocon reasons for being there). They could have familiarized themselves with the contemporaneously lies at the time they joined and/or the lies we’ve historically been told about our wars. They could also have familiarized themselves with the outrageously shoddy treatment they would receive in and out of the service. Instead they chose honor and glory, just like the Marine Corps ads (or more likely, they chose the Army to pay for college, NOT to die or be hideously maimed).
“These are young kids who are there trying to do what is right”? I always think of our drill sergeants in basic training refering derisively to misguided youngsters as HEroes when they do something stupid even if — especially if — they think it’s right. There is no more fitting commentary than that. Their good intentions still pave a road to hell, a road that all of us a forced to travel whether we like it or not. Some people will take this more gracefully than others but either way, you’ve no right to expect anyone who sees the damage these troops do in their names to treat the troops as you wish simply because you’re still willing to parrot the lies. You claim to support our troops when they’ve been lied to; you KNOW they’ve been lied to, yet your pride and politics prevent you from admitting it. Your pride and politics come before their very lives. We say these people shouldn’t be placed in harm’s way for lies; you say they should. And you say WE don’t give a damn about them? Please don’t express your shame Tim. Your hypocrisy and your wrongheaded pusilanimous pursuit of self-preservation are deserving of too much of it to go around.
Swami, thank you for your thoughtful comments. Since I don’t have much time now I can’t address all of them but I wish you would clarify a few things. You quote from the Declaration of Independence. Do you believe that this nation is not being governed by the “consent of the governed” and therefore an armed revolution must take place? Jefferson wrote this in 1776 as a prelude to going to war with England. Do you honestly believe our government has become tyranical? Are you saying that President Bush was not elected, or Clinton. or the Elder Bush? Are you really saying that? You may not agree with the government but what you are doing is calling for an armed revolution. Do you think George Bush is unelected and illegally serving, taking away our fundamental rights? You can’t be serious. You don’t honestly think he is that powerful.He is no different than King George III, about whom Jefferson was writing?
Just because you don’t like what the government is doing does not give you a right to “alter” it. The South tried that during the Civil War. If you are unhappy with the policies of your government than by all means protest and seek change at the ballot box. But to call for armed revolution? Don’t you think you are going too far?
If you really feel that way should you not renounce your citizenship and move to a country where you can work to undermine the United States?
What does the word LOYALTY mean to you? Don’t you think you owe at least some minimal amount of loyalty to your country? You know a man by the name of Socrates knew a lot about loyalty. Even when the people of Athens were going to put him to death for “corrupting the youth” he still remained loyal to Athens. He reasoned that since he lived there his whole life, just because an injustice was being committed did not mean he could become a traitor to the city of his youth and the city that nurtured and protected him for most of his life. Maybe read up on Socrates and then tell me if you really feel so disloyal to the United States.