" U.S. Forces give the nod (brungidy brung, brungidy
brung)
- (guitar riff) say goodbye to your country."
-- Midnight Oil
Bart,
Your defence of your articles on the soldiers
on Letterman who were returned POW's
and on Private Lynch struck me as incongruous,
but I put it down to the fact that you're
a man of contradictions who, when writing
during or after a session on the Chinaco or
the wacky weed, shoots from the lip without
necessarily engaging the brain.
You're saying my positions have been inconsistent?
I look forward to reading your examples.
This is O.K. by me, because mostly you're
Clinton-like-a-laser focused on bringing down that
obscene little faker that is currently
your President. However Mark G's letter, and your reply,
has prompted me to throw my hat in the
ring and offer another point of view.
As an Australian ex-serviceman, I know a
little about the military. In '69, I was in Subic Bay
in the Philippines, and I met a lot of
American guys on R+R from Vietnam. I'll never forget what
one of them said to me, and I quote- "man,
the gooks, they're gettin' screwed bigtime".
That's not a nice thing to say, but it's certainly understandable
in wartime, especially when many of
those men were dragged 12K miles away from home to fight in a
steamy jungle against their will.
If somebody was shooting at me, I would say many bad things about
them.
I don't need to remind you , but it requires
stating that 1,000,000 women and children were killed
in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during that
conflict. You have published pictures that I've sent you
from anti-war demos in Australia.(#999
and #1042), and the motto was, "Remember Vietnam".
While the average guy in the forces (no
matter which country) is honourable, well motivated and
honest in his desire to protect his country,
the people that control the power behind the scenes often are not.
I agree...
I doubt that you can name me a war in the
last 50 years that involved the military of the U.S. that was
genuinely in defence of your country. To
the contrary, those good young men have been called upon to
commit bloody slaughter on people who are
nowhere near as well armed or provisioned, and for no
good reason than to pursue a ridiculous
political point of view held by the morons who occupy the
political offices of your country, or to
benefit the obscenely rich in your country, or in dubya's case, both.
I don't get your point. Are you saying
I should view servicemen with more distrust?
Also, those in power choose the men in the
military who are not so honourable to perform dreadful acts
(Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, the training
of terrorists at Fort Benning ), and to carry out covert acts of
violence against other nations, often against
elected governments that don't toe the U.S. line. Also, the
military hardware that America sells to
any sociopath who's of use has kept the world destabilized for years.
The only thing your country has to
fear is not that someone will attack your country, but that the machinations
of the C.I.A. and their associates will
bring retribution in the form of an organised terrorist attack.
( How many sites have you directed me to
that show that the events of 9/11 were at least motivated by
the current regime, and at worst planned,
trained and allowed to happen.
You've often said that if the F.B.I. hadn't
been sniffing Clintons zipper, 9/11 may not have taken place.)
Anyway who's going to attack a country
which holds 10,000 nuclear weapons, 30,000 metric tons of
poison gas and bio-weapons, and thinks
they can hear a God who's promised Armageddon?
Mate, I've loved America since I was a child,
and when you love something as a child, even
when you grow up and see that nothing's
perfect, you still love that which you loved as a child.
So I'm praying like crazy that the good
people in America can take back the reins of power of the world's
greatest democracy, but I leave you with
a quote from Chris Floyd, that you directed me to....
Intellectualism and peaceful co-existence
are mocked by the barbaric, dyslexic, brutal behaviour of the
world's most powerful man, though in all
likelihood he's nothing more than an icon of "the shadowy military
oligarchy, created after world war 2 -
the infamous 'National Security State' , a military-corporate complex
financed by the looting of the public treasury,
protected and promoted by a hydra of secret agencies and
covert armies, driven by the fomenting
of ceaseless war, which now, having reached it's apotheosis, stands
triumphant and alone, having at last devoured
the body politic upon which it has fed for so long."
Good luck, mate, and
God (no definition) bless you and yours
Coop
Coop, we agree that Bush is a murdering bastard, trying to take
over the world,
but how does that fit into my liking the POWs on Letterman's
show?
Where was my inconsistency?