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juliaoceania -> RE: Active Duty Military Speak Out Against the War in Iraq (1/16/2007 11:16:46 PM)
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quote:
remember even as late as '90 seeing signs on lawns in San Diego, "No Dogs, Sailors or Marines allowed on Grass' and other fun little slogans. If one wishes to be antiwar then be so, and argue the policy, debate the whys and wherefores... but by all means do not put those men and women that are protecting your rights to do so in a bind by cutting funding, or other drastic actions; simply because of your political stance on the issue.
I do not see how I was arguing to cut funding for anything dealing with troop safety. I think you need to check who ran what when it came to sending the military out to war with not enough troops, not enough support, and not enough equipment. It certainly was not peaceniks like me who sent our young ones off to battle without body armor.... I believe it was Rummy who did that.
I have made no bones about being pro-peace.. I am PROUDLY so, but your remarks about signs on lawns and the like have NOTHING to do with me, and to be honest I find this very hard to believe seeing that most of San Diego is very pro-military.. it is a NAVAL city after all. Then you have Camp Pendelton, the hotbed of liberal politicals? OMG, hardly... Orange County is one of the most conservative areas of the country in many ways!
But basically I just wanted to say making a straw man out of me will not clear up where you got such one-sided ideas about public opinion of the outcry over what happened in Vietnam. My uncle did two tours in that war, and I am a member of one vet forum online that questions THIS conflict. I asked you a one line question, and I got not much of an answer except that your perceptions were formed through information handed to you by the military, which is what I expected.
There is nothing inherently wrong with getting your information where ever you get it, but the fact of the matter is that escalating the war only killed millions of Vietnamese and over 60k of our people, for what? I guess to save Vietnam from the Vietnamese. I prefer Smedley Butler's view of what our military should be used for, not yours... here it is
Smedley Butler on Interventionism
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm
Now you may think that it is not a civilians job to oversee what you do, but we pay the bills, we get to vote, and we have every right to not agree and to do what ever necessary under the law to change what we want.. it is called the American way, which earlier you professed to support... so stop making straw men.
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