I am a veteran after the fashion of that unpopular conflict with Viet Nam. I never did believe we had any business in ‘Nam, although I did heartily endorse the invasion of Iraq as did President Bush and the large majority of other people at the time. Suddam and the Bathists was a scourge to human-kind. He and his cronies may have had weapons of mass destruction, they certainly would have had nukes given time. They did have horrible bio-chemical weaponry, which they had used on their own ethnic minority.
It is also likely that they would have backed disaffected Muslim Insurgents the world over. We have, knock on wood, been more vigilant and aware to the extent that we have foiled many more terrorist attempts since the war began and has kept it on our ADHD minds during the pursuit of. The war has opened up the favorability of alternate fuel sources once again, which would not have happened without the war. This is a good thing.
We have a volunteer military. They presumably knew what the military was for, before they enlisted or reinlisted. Soldiering has historically been an honorable profession. I believe it still is. Great leaders are born of the toils of war. I feel deeply for all of the fallen brave in every war we in which we have engaged. It was only about 150 years ago that our own war of un-civility killed a significant number of our male population—just over a million people. And that was over the right of states to have their own autonomy. Oddly, the debate has never been satisfactorily satisfied.
Our Civil-War was not over slavery, of course, no matter how they try to rewrite the history books. The despicable practice of slavery was widely practiced by the United States. The more-industrialized North was quicker to give up the practice. Given a few more years and the South probably would also have fallen into lock-step. The South had too much agriculture and a wealth of resources to allow them to succeed without a fight. Now we rail on the Iraqis for their own lack of civility. This, when we, the greatest nation in the world, didn’t really begin to find itself until we had our own civil war. Maybe it is a rule that nations have to have civil wars.
We can help them as referees even it we do sacrifice a relative few professional soldiers to help that part of the world stabilize somewhat. We must stabilize Iraq because we don’t live in a vacuum. And a vacuum will be left if we abandon the Iraqis in their time of need. It will come back to bite us in the butts in the name of Iranian-nuke-crazies a few years hence. Isn’t it better to have a hundred-thousand troops right on their border to keep Iran in check?
The real deal is about our big gas-guzzling cars. The USA has sacrificed over 3,000 professional soldiers because we cannot afford to let go of our interests in the region. Show me a Iraq war deserter who drives a car, and I will show you a delusional hypocrite. Ever wonder why the world hates us? We represent a relatively small portion of the world’s population and yet we consume forty percent or more of the worlds resources.
We complain(I do too) about the border spillover of migrant workers, but I sure like the fresh produce they pick. We (half and half for me, as I am about half American Indian) stole the land from them—the natives of this continent, under a doctrine of Devine Destiny. They feel they have a right to this land because of a similar doctrine. Actually none of us was there in history when those events occurred to cause this clash of cultures today.
I deplore the danger of an open border, mostly because I don’t what there to be more 9i/11’s. At the same time I am facing reality and boning up on my Spanish and encourage my kids and grandkids to do the same. I believe the Minute-men have every right to patrol the borders. I am theoretically against the influx of illegal drugs and all that goes with it. But if we were to legalize and tax the stuff, and funnel a portion of the precedes back into anti-drug advertisement and into rehabilitation and education, I wonder is we might be better off.
Yet I believe alcohol to be as bad as the other drugs. Re-legalization hasn’t done much to curb the dangers associated with alcohol, so my theoretical support for keeping drugs illegal is probably right, after all.
I am amazed at the carnage caused by drunken drivers. The numbers of people killed by guns is miniscule in comparison. solid data shows us that the arming of citizens has reduced crime, while the disarming of citizens increases crime. In the last decade alone, over half a billion people were ,murdered by their own governments after first disarming them.
Abortion is, if not murder, something very close to it. That was the normal thinking fifty years ago. Now selfish people who won’t restrain themselves and do what has been being done, more or less, for thousands of years (being responsible) want to kill innocent fetuses or near full-term babies, rather than, heaven forbid, disrupt their education or live with their parents or whatever it takes. Where’s the commitment?
Multiply-divorced people high on marijuana, booze, and cocaine grieve about global warming while tooling around in jets and big cars. I know for a fact that the world is getting warmer. I lived in Alaska during the sixties, and it is a lot milder there now. But I don’t know that reducing my use of toilet paper is going to stop the probable natural cycle of nature. The earth has, after all, gone through multiple ice-ages. I tend to be green, but not neon green. Where is the common sense to balance our lives.
The media, is by its own admission, largely aligned with liberal politics.
Rabid right-wingers are out to kill or banish those who don’t agree with them. Where’s the balance? They are, for whatever reasons suitable for another discussion, against the Bush White House. Again oddly, It is the Bush White House under the leadership of President Bush who has NOT CHANGED THEIR STANCE on the war in Iraq. All the desenters, or most at least, are the ones who have flip-flopped.
President Bush will go down in history as a brave and stalwart man who attempted to do the right thing for humanity and the USA alike. Whether he wins the war or not, will unfortunately be determined by the partisan political flip-floppers with their own agendas.
I hate to say it, but America is weak. It has a weak collective will. It lacks a collective character. We are lazy light-weight panty-waists, who are increasingly incapable of seeing the honor of dying for a good cause. We all must die one day. wouldn’t it be better to have risked death and lived or died, than to have been a nation of spineless, unprincipled flip-flopping panty-waists—0who die of old age or stress-induced cancer, or liver disease, or lung disease, or addiction to worldly clutter.
I was once full of piss and vinegar; I have honestly achieved all of my worldly goals. I can tell you that I am no more happy than when I had noting. today I am sick and tired and dying most likely from the exposures of that long-gone conflict in southeast Asia. Oh how I wish it had been for the more noble and honorable cause for which we now send our young warriors into battle in Iraq. It is the difference between dying for nothing and dying for something. In the end, that is a lot!
