<p>Did anyone see Frank Schaeffer’s talk at the Waring School? Lots of passion and thought-provoking material. He is an upper-crust father of a son who enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduation from the Waring School. His anguish worrying about his son opened his eyes to the inequities of our military system. He harangued the government and the elite classes for allowing the poor to carry the load and for the shabby treatment veterans and widows receive. He criticized the elite for heading off to selective schools and high paying jobs without giving a thought to those who are on the front. Not quite what the headmaster had in mind when he invited him to speak, I wager. There were very few questions.</p>
<p>anyone see this show?</p>
<p>Just one of many reasons why alot of people are very depressed regarding our next 4 years.</p>
<p>VERY depressed…</p>
<p>I was struck by the bleak financial condition of the widows. One woman received a $12,000 lump sum payment and a survivor’s benefit so paltry she qualifies for food stamps. Many of the servicemembers are underinsured. Frank Schaeffer was very angry and questioned why our government gave payments to the 9/ll victims but not to the military victims of war. He asked why the people who thought the war in Afghanistan was justified did not encourage their children to serve and were content to send the children of the poor and lower middle classes. He said the discussion gets more complicated when you talk about Iraq, which is an unpopular (justly so, IMO) war. He talked about the change in attitudes in the upper classes over the years. In WWII the Roosevelt children served, etc.</p>
<p>Just a quick thought, I grew up during the Vietnam War. The support was not there for that war. Why were we there? It seems in my generation, there have not been engagements that people feel they can support. It seems that WWI and WWII were quite different situations. I would have a very hard time sending my S to Iraq for “W” an his very questionable reasons/rationale/lies.</p>
<p>Iraq, by all means. How about Afghanistan? There was wide agreement that seeking out Al Quaeda there was a justified use of the military. I personally feel that all wars are an indication of failure and that if we had a more enlightened foreign policy most of them could be avoided. Even WWII. If we had dealt with the Germans the right way after WWI Hitler probably never would have been elected. Once our policies helped created the angry Islamic fundamentalists, and the attack on the Twin Towers was made the government felt it was compelled to go after Bin Laden, and things have been spirallilng downwards ever since. Ideally, the military would be held in reserve for occasions when we are attacked by malicious enemies. with no fault of our own. I get conflicted when I start thinking about our own culpability in creating these enemies. I would also be EXTREMELY reluctant to offer my children for military service, and my husband served twenty-three years in the Army. If pacifists ruled the world …</p>
<p>“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
Gandhi</p>
<p>The following link is to the text of President Clinton’s last memo in office. While it references the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is a message that all Middle-Easterners can take to heart and for all of us today to re-read and understand. There is only so much we as Americans can do, and we cannot solve the problems there.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.acj.org/Jan_12.htm#8[/url]”>http://www.acj.org/Jan_12.htm#8</a></p>
<p>A very good document.</p>
<p>btw, I want one of those ribbon decals for my car that says “Support our troops” on one side. The other side of the ribbon, now blank, should read: “Bring them home now.”</p>
<p>PattyKK,
I didn’t see the C-SPAN show; do you know if it will repeat? My S, especially, would appreciate Schaeffer’s position.</p>
<p>PattyKK, if it gives you any comfort, I was an owl (neither hawk nor dove) with respect to Vietnam, a hawk with respect to containing the XSSR and going into Afghanistan. And there are times that I’d certainly rather fight a small war now in exchange for fighting a large one later…cf., the German re-occupation of the Rhineland et sequitur. With that as background, I think our presence in Iraq is one of the stupidest things this country has ever done, expending blood, dollars, and political capital in a pursuit of Fool’s Gold and founded on a Big Lie worthy of Goebbels…that Iraq and 9/11 had a connection that had to be addressed. Yeah, both AQ and SH hated us and spoke Arabic, what more connection do you need? We’re managing to promote anti-US sentiment faster than we’re killing guerillas and ignoring the elephant in the room that nothing in the Mideast will achieve balance and stability until the inflamed splinter of Israeli-Palestinian relations achieves some status that both sides can grudgingly live with in peace. [Note: I think by this time there’s enough blame to go around on many sides.]</p>
<p>momof2inca: I just checked the booknotes schedule. Apparently the show I saw yesterday was a re-run of a segment first aired on December 26. I could not find any other scheduled showings, but they do re-run things periodically. I guess you could check their schedule from time to time or send them an inquiry at their contact address.</p>
<p>TheDad: I agree with your stance. The world is in such a mess that there are no clear-cut paths out of it. Do you think your daughter has any obligation to assist in the defense of the country when we are in a justified war or that we should perhaps return to the draft to equalize things?</p>
<p>PattyKK, a difficult question. I’m agin the return of a draft on the grounds that I think it makes it easier for the so-called leadership to pursue unpopular policies for a sustained time…if the volunteers dry up, then they’re out of luck. Though I translate bumper stickers like “Support Our Troops” as being equivalent to “Support Our Policies Unquestioningly, No Matter How Dumb” and thus a cynical exercise. </p>
<p>However, if my D were drafted to serve in Afghanistan, I would grimly agree. If she were drafted to serve in Iraq, you would find me in the streets. </p>
<p>Absent the draft, my outlook is “Let those who believe in it, fight it.” I can’t even honestly hold that position…because I don’t think anyone’s S or D should be there in the conditions we have created. The administration chose to believe that we’d be greeted with flowers as liberators, thus showing a colossal ignorance of the Rubik’s cube of ethnic, religious, tribal, and economic factors applying in the country. Democracy as we understand it is a pipe dream for Iraq…the choice will be two out of three between stable, democratic, and pro-American. The only reason that the Shiites are being quiet and playing ball is that if they nothing then power drops into their hands. What the Shiites in Iraq do if we become embroiled in a hot conflict with Iran doesn’t bear thinking about.</p>
<p>I think it is touching when the elites show such concern for the sons and daughters of the folks out there in red America who provide the bulk of or fighting men. It sort of conteracts the contempt those elites feel for them on all other occassions.</p>
<p>I personnally come from a long line of draft dodgers and hope my S dodges this fight for purely selfish reasons. But there are good wars and bad wars. I thought Viet Nam was a bad war not because the goals were evil but because we did not really have a dog in that fight. The big difference between that war of my generation and this war was that charlie was never going to follow us home. If we have to fight islamofacism, and the events of 9/11 and madrid, and Bali, and so many other places show we do then I would rather do it over there than over here.</p>
<p>Patuxent, one of the flawed arguments is that the option is fighting over there versus fighting over there. That we’re fighting over there doesn’t mean we won’t get hit again here; the typical hadji in Iraq wouldn’t be slipping into NYC as alterantive if we weren’t there. The lid is on the radicals in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan only by autocratic means…we sure as heck aren’t going to be promoting democracy in any of those places any time soon. The Pakistani security forces and military are riddled with radical Islamic sympathizers and we’re one ugly coup away from Pakistani nukes falling into radical Islamic hands…now <em>there</em> is a case for quick preemptive military action, not the briar patch in Iraq. And the one thing that will bring all Iranian factions together is a US or Israeli military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities…at which point the Shiite majority in Iraq suddenly becomes very problematic. Yet the powers that be are playing this as if it were nothing more complicated than a board game where you move cardboard chits around a mapboad.</p>
<p>About Vietnam: I went to college and worked at a Navy base while doing so. On campus, I was regarded as a short-hair running dog reactionary pig because I was working for the Navy. On the base, I was regarded as a long-haired Commie symp student. Gave me a very good education on the nature of polarized politics and the thinking behind it.</p>
<p>Btw, if I’m part of an elite, would you please let my clients know?</p>
<p>Patuxent: If you get a chance to see that show you will see that Frank Schaeffer had a real born-again experience when his son joined the Marines. He said he now has more in common with working class parents in small towns than he does with his old friends, whom he called Northshore snobs. I think he really has an appreciation for how the other half lives now, and he is trying to raise his voice. Of course, I imagine he still lives in the same house and pulls in the same salary. I think he needs to be commended for trying to shine a light on the shabby benefits, etc.
I hate it when people drag out that old “better fight 'em over there than over here.” It is a very cavalier attitude and seems to say it is okay for us to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/ll and kill innocents. Hey, our innocents are not worth more than theirs.</p>
<p>TheDad: I hope that Iraq can become stable after the elections. I am extremely uncomfortable with trying to force democracy on them. They need to be the ones who decide if they want a secular democracy or some other form of government. We are being so heavy-handed. The Rubik’s Cube and the tar baby/briar patch are apt analogies.</p>
<p>Regarding the bumper sticker ribbons, my daughter stumbled on a site where you can have them custom made (Where the hell is your yellow ribbon? etc.) The possibilities are infinite. My daughter cynically comments, “People here love to support the troops, as long as it doesn’t damage their paint jobs.” My son had to write a paper on what it means to be an American the other day. He wrote, “Being an American means I live in America. It doesn’t make me better than anyone who lives in any other country.” End of paper.
Boy, have we changed from the days when we were a military family.</p>
<p>PattyKK, it will be difficult for democracy to take root when nepotism is regarded as a virtue and an obligation, not a vice. The veneer of civil institutions covers a society that is still heavily predicated on loyalty to family/clan/tribe. And where attempts at Western-style civic participation provokes incredulous “And the women too?” or else more quietly the partriarchs or husbands determining how the women will vote. The Kurds are the most Westernized of the blocs and everyone else–the Iraqi Arabs and their Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian neighbors–are wary of them and don’t want a coherent Kurdish entity, a Kuridstan whether de facto or de jure. Of the non-Kurdish Iraqi’s, maybe 25 percent <em>at the uppermost</em> buy into the notion of a secular democratic government. </p>
<p>Not that Iraq should be our sole concern. There are enough would-be ayahtollahs in this country.</p>
<p>You are in rare form today, TheDad. Would-be ayatollahs, indeed.</p>
<p>I thought parents might be interested to hear the story of one mom who protested the war in the 70’s only to have her son volunteer to go to Iraq.
</p>
<p>Alex is one of the most intelligent young men I have had the pleasure of knowing, ( and stubborn) addtionally his parents are both very educated and have prepared their children to have breadth of choices in life
I am concerned about young people particularly low income young people who have had their choices reduced for post high school ( especially with cuts in Pell grants) and see the military as a way out, but one they would not choose otherwise.</p>
<p><a href=“http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/191337_paynter20.html?source=rss[/url]”>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/191337_paynter20.html?source=rss</a></p>
<p>I had Frank Schaeffer in mind for the quintessential member of an elite more than you TheDad. Anyway I’m not going to argue politics here on this board unless it is the poloitics of education. Suffice it to say that we Americans settle these arguements at the polls and we just had one of those and the people have spoken.</p>
<p>Patuxent, fair enough. Though the speaking was a muddled roar.</p>
<p>PattyKK, the subject of the would-be domestic ayahtollahs is an extremely touchy one for me: just as I will not let anyone co-opt my flag for a narrow political agenda, nor will I let them co-opt my religion or its symbols. Doing so is pernicious and corrosive. There are both ordained and lay ministry in my extended family as well as those of religious vocation and the positions and tactics of some groups are taken very personally.</p>