<p>As I said before, I witnessed first-hand the devastating psychological aftermath of war when I was volunteering in a homeless center. So many of the sickest, saddest, most messed up people I met were former soldiers who had actually served in combat situations (as opposed to flying over Texas airspace).</p>
<p>Perhaps so, Xmusic.</p>
<p>But as I would not offer such derogatory advice to anyone on a birthday; I would less likely offer an ad hominem to a soldier on Thanksgiving Day…unless they were seeking my advice which would surly show that they were unbalanced enough to seek it from a amateur like me and thus specifically prove that they needed advice, even if not mine…or the know-it-all doomsayers in that thread.</p>
<p>It seems to me that it is in bad taste…for those who worry at all about such things as taste. There are, of course, those who value ideas and politics (their own) above all else–on any day. </p>
<p>Truly, we are all different.</p>
<p>Dorothy–I think we all value our own ideas and politics quite highly. It’s pretty obvious from this thread, don’t you think?</p>
<p>Who said anything about a birthday? Is there a code here we are supposed to understand?</p>
<p>try to read slowly…</p>
<p>again…</p>
<p>{key: “Thanksgiving Day, Birthday, Hanukah, Smoked-Sausage”–one of these things is not like the other}
Three of them are, and two of them are central to understanding post#222.</p>
<p>Still having trouble: pm Hindoo.</p>
<p>Hindoo, of course you are right. Though, there is always a good time and place. Sometimes only silence is the soul of wit; not even brevity.</p>
<p>Since my comments only seem to get all of you more riled up, perhaps it’s time I stopped posting on this thread. I do have some final thoughts, of course.</p>
<p>Everyone has a right to an opinion, and here’s mine. I think it’s specious to claim to support the troops while opposing their mission. The way many of you talk about them as victims seems disrespectful to me. There are people (even some CC posters) who work for the defense of this country – it’s seems silly not to listen to them. I would include Bush as Commander in Chief and former National Guardsman, and Cheney as VP and former Sec Def. </p>
<p>I never claimed that I have ever served in the military – at my age, it’s not an option! But I am close to those who have. The continual rant that if we support the war we should hog-tie our kids and ship them out is ridiculous. The inverse is to suggest that those who oppose the war can’t complain unless they are active duty or have a child or spouse who is in Iraq. </p>
<p>At this point, the conversation sounds like a playground fight to me. I’m not about to suddenly join the left, and I doubt that anything I could say would persuade others to join my view. Time will tell.</p>
<p>“Everyone has a right to an opinion, and here’s mine. I think it’s specious to claim to support the troops while opposing their mission.”</p>
<p>I absolutely agree! (see, we sometimes see to eye.)</p>
<p>SJMOM: It shouldn’t be about left and right. It should be about what’s right. And in a democracy, we are all bound to use our brains, educate ourselves, and face hard facts. </p>
<p>If you can’t understand how someone could differentiate between how someone could cherish each soldier’s – and each person’s life – at the same time saddened that they are on the losing side in a war that was poorly conceived, in my opinion and now the opinion of a majority of Americans, and more poorly executed, then you are aren’t trying hard enough. If you think the war serves a worthy purpose – still serves a worthy purpose – articulate that. I will listen with an open mind, probably ready to debate you to be sure since I clearly have strong opinions about this and have taken pains to educate myself (since I consider that my duty as a thinking citizen). But please, don’t sigh and say that I can’t possibly support the troops because I believe they are on a fool’s errand – that either I am with them “all the way” as you might speciously characterize it or not at all. Do you know how moralistic and insulting that sounds? Because I am against this war, I am ipso facto a non-supporter, a hater of our troops? Or a bad patriot?</p>
<p>I would enlist and put my own life on the line in a New York second if somebody could wave some kind of magic wand and tell me that fewer of our soldiers would die and we would prevail in Iraq to meet the objectives that were set for this war. I really would.</p>
<p>For my friend who just got back from serving in the army in Iraq, I got up in front of a huge group of friends and nearly cried in celebration that he had made it home safely. And a couple of nights later I sat down and had a long talk with him about why I had always thought the war was ill-conceived. It’s not that hard to make that kind of distinction, really. But I think essentially your reasoning (and that of Mini’s) is implying that I have no right either to have worried about and been happy he made it home safe and at the same time discussed with him that I had thought he was on a fool’s errand.</p>
<p>And who said anything about hog-tying children and sending them overseas? Where did that come from? I guess I need to go back and re-read the thread.</p>
<p>I am sorry if you think we’ve been playing too rough here, but these are serious topics and they require you to try to step out of rhetorical formulas and make your case based on facts and reason.</p>
<p>“And who said anything about hog-tying children and sending them overseas? Where did that come from? I guess I need to go back and re-read the thread.”</p>
<p>I think that came from those of us who said that avid supporters of the war should be willing to sacrifice their own children to such a worthy cause as Iraq. In my case, it was merely rhetorical commentary, but in the process, I managed to offend someone I have come to respect. So …</p>
<p>“But I think essentially your reasoning (and that of Mini’s) is implying that I have no right either to have worried about and been happy he made it home safe and at the same time discussed with him that I had thought he was on a fool’s errand.”</p>
<p>I think you have every right to be worried about your friend and be happy he made it home, and to discuss with him that you think it is a fool’s errand. That goes with the fact that he is a human being for whom you care, as it should. (I would have added that you have every right to provide material support to him and as his family, as I do with a military family in my Meeting.) But none of this has anything to do with “supporting the troops”. I DON’T support the troops, I support human beings who have been lied to, deceived, cheated, and are paying the consequences for the Administration’s malfeasance, and I sincerely wish them better - they DESERVE better, military or not.</p>
<p>So do we all.</p>
<p>Mini–Very well said, in differentiating between “troops” and “human beings.” Never thought of it that way, but I should have.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nysun.com/article/48084[/url]”>http://www.nysun.com/article/48084</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>From Bob Greene’s book-The Homecoming:</p>
<p>
[Questioned 1,000 Vietnam Vets in researching his book.}</p>
<p>From Publisher’s Weekly review:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Change in attitude? So ol’ Keith doesn’t remember this, does he (well, he was only around ten at the time of the war, so we’ll cut him some slack…?), but I do. And I find some posts here coming “dangerously close to a place America must never go” also.</p>
<p>That gets old.</p>
<p>Find me ONE - just ONE - even ONE documented case of an Iraq veteran being spat upon by anti-war protestor. Come on, one please. </p>
<p>Put up.</p>
<p>(For the record, I CAN document an Iraqi war veteran being spat upon - and his life threatened - but not by anti-war protestors. Cumberland, Maryland - 2004 - Spc. Joseph Darby, 372nd Military Police, who turned in the photos and reported the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Outed, by the way, by Donald Rumsfeld on national tv.)</p>
<p>Hereshoping: Nice try. This is an attempt to see the Iraq War and how the soldiers are treated through the prism of Vietnam. It’s a bunch of baloney. As in an earlier post below, regurgitated here in all it’s longwindedness, many who have been against this war recognize how poorly Vietnam vets were treated. It’s just not the case with Iraq. And wouldn’t your concern be more adequately directed at getting out of harm’s way our poor soldiers who are going out on the streets of Iraq every day without knowing around which corner an enemy will be or under which bag an IED is placed – for no worthwhile purpose?</p>
<p>"A lot of the concern about not supporting the troops, as I have understood it, is that we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam. There were soldiers who came home from that war and they were spat at, reviled, treated horribly by people who felt they should have shown moral courage by going AWOL or otherwise resisting the draft and their duties. These people went through the grinder of Vietnam and came home to find themselves abused. I have always thought that a lot of the POW-MIA movement grew out of the guilt some people felt this happened.</p>
<p>Anyway, it is a rather crass and gross misrepresentation of people like me who were against this war from before the beginning to say that we all are liberal pansies or disloyal or inadequate patriots. Or even that we are pacifists all. </p>
<p>The media, I felt, has fed this perception, that people are either anti-war or behind this war. I am not anti-war. I am anti-stupid-war. It didn’t take a genius to see that fighting in a Muslim land where there are ethnic and religious divisions and no history of civil society or democracy – it didn’t take a genius to see this was going to be a difficult if not impossible nation-building exercise. To say the least.</p>
<p>I was 100% for the troops. I wanted them to stay home and not be sent on this fool’s errand. If I see a soldier in an airport I am in, I am friendly and respectful and wish them well. One time I got into a long discussion and did fess up to being against this war, but I didn’t rub it in the soldier’s face. There’s nothing he could do.</p>
<p>Anybody who upholds this dichotomy of either you are for this war or against the troops should stop calling themselves educated. You, many of you, are on this board to send your kids to avoid the kind of shoddy thinking that that implies. Maybe you need to go back to college, if you can’t see beneath that rhetoric. And by the way, I am not pointing at anyone in particular, so much as the posting of this title as if it should be that a difficult concept to sort out (though it’s not entirely clear what the original poster was exactly trying to say). It’s not. "</p>
<p>Stop the shoddy analogies, hereshoping. They cloud the real issues, and only some rarified kooky faction really believes them anyway.</p>
<p>HH–I don’t think I’ve heard much anger toward American soldiers in Iraq, but I do know there was much misplaced hostility toward Vietnam era soldiers. My brother-in-law was a fighter pilot back then. He personally had no problems, but was well aware of and extremely hurt by the vile treatment many soldiers received in that era upon returning home. So, I think Olbermann was flat-out wrong in that respect. As a result of that shameful episode in our history, I think most people have tried to be extremely supportive of the Iraq-based soldiers today, if not of the war itself.</p>
<p>Thank you for your respectful responses, guys. 
(Sarcasm excluding you, Hindoo.)</p>
<p>That gets old? You got that right. Jane “Hanoi” Fonda and the rest of the granny-hippie crowd are basically just reminiscing. Sad.</p>
<p>I’m waiting. Put up.</p>
<p>I don’t need to “put up.” I remember.</p>
<p>You, on the other hand, were too busy getting stoned and educated to remember, I take it.</p>
<p>Bedhead: You are hilarious: the AWOL-avoid the draft-stay home and fake college-get stoned crowd **FELT **the GI’s should have shown moral courage by going AWOL or otherwise resisting the draft?</p>
<p>Are you serious? How old are you, Bedhead?</p>
<p>Hereshoping: That’s what I said essentially, though I used slightly less salty language. Go back and re-read it. But yes, the people who spat at the soldiers coming home and/or whatever else they did – even if was just cold-shouldering – felt the soldiers should have gone AWOL or resisted the draft. As I understand it, that did happen. But that’s not happening now. So why the canard suggesting that it is? That was a different time. Now we (the Royal We, I was too young) don’t blame the soldier for the Commander-in-Chief’s crimes or mistakes.</p>
<p>In case my writing caused confusion, the “these people” starting a sentence mid to late in the paragraph was meant to refer to soldiers. Maybe that’s where the confusion arose, and sorry if I was unclear.</p>