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"Stop Thanking Me For My Service" – Former US Army Ranger Blasts American Foreign Policy
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has said of the upcoming Concert for Valor:
“The post-9/11 years have brought us the longest period of sustained warfare in our nation’s history. The less than one percent of Americans who volunteered to serve during this time have afforded the rest of us remarkable freedoms — but that freedom comes with a responsibility to understand their sacrifice, to honor them, and to appreciate the skills and experience they offer when they return home.”
It was crafty of Schultz to redirect that famed 1% label from the ultra rich, represented by CEOs like him, onto our “heroes.” At the concert, I hope Schultz has a chance to get more specific about those “remarkable freedoms.” Will he mention that the U.S. has the highest per capita prison population on the planet? Does he include among those remarkable freedoms the guarantee that dogs, Tasers, tear gas, and riot police will be sent after you if you stay out past dark protesting the killing of an unarmed Black teenager by a representative of this country’s increasingly militarized police? Will the freedom to be too big to fail and so to have the right to melt down the economy and walk away without going to prison — as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, did – be mentioned? Do these remarkable freedoms include having every American phone call and email recorded and stored away by the NSA?
– From the incredible letter by Former U.S. Army Ranger Rory Fanning: Stop Thanking Me for My Service
I have to admit, whenever I find myself in the midst of a large public gathering (which fortunately isn’t that often), and the token veteran or two is called out in front of the masses to “honor” I immediately begin to cringe as a result of a massive internal conflict. On the one hand, I recognize that the veteran(s) being honored is most likely a decent human being. Either poor or extraordinarily brainwashed, the man or woman paraded in front of the crowd is nothing more than a pawn. Even if their spouse hasn’t left them; even if whatever conflict they were involved in didn’t result in a permanent disability or post traumatic stress disorder, this person has been used and abused, and thirty seconds of cheering in between ravenous bites out of a footlong hotdog from a drunk and apathetic crowd isn’t going to change that. I don’t harbor negative sentiments toward the veteran.
On the other hand, the entire spectacle makes me sick. I refuse to participate in the superficial charade for many reasons, but the primary one is that I don’t want to play any part in the crowd’s insatiable imbecility. It’s the stupidity and ignorance of the masses that the corporate-state preys upon, and that’s precisely what’s on full display at these tired and phony imperialist celebrations.
As Aldous Huxley noted poignantly in Brave New World Revisited (for more see my post, Brave New World Revisited…Key Excerpts and My Summary).
Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgement or will of their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of what I have called “herd-poisoning.”
Reading is a private, not a collective activity. The writer speaks only to individuals, sitting by themselves in a state of normal sobriety. The orator speaks to masses of individuals, already well primed with herd poison. They are at his mercy and, if he knows his business, he can do what he likes with them.
While I have felt many of the sentiments expressed in the paragraphs above for a while, I never publicly wrote them down since I didn’t feel like it was my place to do so. Such sentiments carry far more weight when expressed by a veteran, and thanks to an incredible letter by ex-U.S. Army Ranger Rory Fanning, we now have such a voice.
What follows is an amazingly brave and powerful piece of prose originally posted at Tom’s Dispatch. Read it and heed his words carefully.
Stop Thanking Me for My Service
Last week, in a quiet indie bookstore on the north side of Chicago, I saw the latest issue of Rolling Stone resting on a chrome-colored plastic table a few feet from a barista brewing a vanilla latte. A cold October rain fell outside. A friend of mine grabbed the issue and began flipping through it. Knowing that I was a veteran, he said, “Hey, did you see this?” pointing to a news story that seemed more like an ad. It read in part:
“This Veterans Day, Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, Rihanna, Dave Grohl, and Metallica will be among numerous artists who will head to the National Mall in Washington D.C. on November 11th for ‘The Concert For Valor,’ an all-star event that will pay tribute to armed services.”
“Concert For Valor? That sounds like something the North Korean government would organize,” I said as I typed Concertforvalor.com into my MacBook Pro looking for more information.
The sucking sound from the espresso maker was drowning out a 10-year-old Shins song. As I read, my heart sank, my shoulders slumped.
Special guests at the Concert for Valor were to include: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg. The mission of the concert, according to a press release, was to “raise awareness” of veterans issues and “provide a national stage for ensuring that veterans and their families know that their fellow Americans’ gratitude is genuine.”
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen were to serve in an advisory capacity, and Starbucks, HBO, and JPMorgan Chase were to pay for it all. “We are honored to play a small role to help raise awareness and support for our service men and women,” said HBO chairman Richard Plepler.
Though I couldn’t quite say why, that Concert for Valor ad felt tired and sad, despite the images of Rihanna singing full-throated into a gold microphone and James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett of Metallica wailing away on their guitars. I had gotten my own share of “thanks” from civilians when I was still a U.S. Army Ranger. Who hadn’t? It had been the endless theme of the post-9/11 era, how thankful other Americans were that we would do… well, what exactly, for them? And here it was again. I couldn’t help wondering: Would veterans somewhere actually feel the gratitude that Starbucks and HBO hoped to convey?
I went home and cooked dinner for my wife and little girl in a semi-depressed state, thinking about that word “valor” which was to be at the heart of the event and wondering about the Hall of Fame line-up of twenty-first century liberalism that was promoting it or planning to turn out to hail it: Rolling Stone, the magazine of Hunter S. Thompson and all things rock and roll; Bruce Springsteen, the billion-dollar working-class hero; Eminem, the white rapper who has sold more records than Elvis; Metallica, the crew who sued Napster and the metal band of choice for so many longhaired, disenfranchised youth of the 1980s and 1990s. They were all going to say “thank you” — again.
Raising (Whose?) Awareness
Later that night, I sat down and Googled “vets honored.” Dozens and dozens of stories promptly queued up on my screen. (Try it yourself.) One of the first items I clicked on was the 50th anniversary celebration in Bangor, Maine, of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the alleged Pearl Harbor of the Vietnam War. Governor Paul LePage had spoken ringingly of the veterans of that war: “These men were just asked to go to a foreign land and protect our freedoms. And they weren’t treated with respect when they returned home. Now it’s time to acknowledge it.”
Vietnam, he insisted, was all about protecting freedom — such a simple and innocent explanation for such a long and horrific war. Lest you forget, the governor and those gathered in Bangor that day were celebrating a still-murky “incident” that touched off a massive American escalation of the war. It was claimed that North Vietnamese patrol boats had twice attacked an American destroyer, though President Lyndon Johnson later suggested that the incident might even have involved shooting at “flying fish” or “whales.” As for protecting freedom in Vietnam, tell the dead Vietnamese in America’s “free fire zones” about that.
No one, however, cared about such details. The point was that eternal “thank you.” If only, I thought, some inquisitive and valorous local reporter had asked the governor, “Treated with disrespect by whom?” And pointed out the mythology behind the idea that American civilians had mistreated GIs returning from Vietnam. (Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the Veterans Administration, which denied returning soldiers proper healthcare, or the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, organizations that weren’t eager to claim the country’s defeated veterans of a disastrous war as their own.)
When it came to thanks and “awareness raising,” no American war with a still living veteran seemed too distant to be ignored. Google told me, for example, that Upper Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, had recently celebrated its 12th annual “Multi-Cultural Day” by thanking its “forgotten Korean War Veterans.” According to a local newspaper report, included in the festivities were martial arts demonstrations and traditional Korean folk dancing.
The Korean War was the precursor to Vietnam, with similar results. As with the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the precipitating event of the war that North Korea ignited on June 25, 1950, remains open to question. Evidence suggests that, with U.S. approval, South Korea initiated a bombardment of North Korean villages in the days leading up to the invasion. As in Vietnam, there, too, the U.S. supported a corrupt autocrat and used napalm on a mass scale. Millions died, including staggering numbers of civilians, and North Korea was left in rubble by war’s end. Folk dancing was surely in short supply. As for protecting our freedoms in Korea, enough said.
These two ceremonies seemed to catch a particular mood (reflected in so many similar, if more up-to-date versions of the same). They might have benefited from a little “awareness raising” when it came to what the American military has actually been doing these last years, not to say decades, beyond our borders. They certainly summed up much of the frustration I was feeling with the Concert for Valor. Plenty of thank yous, for sure, but no history when it came to what the thanks were being offered for in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan, no statistics on taxpayer dollars spent or where they went, or on innocent lives lost and why.
Will the “Concert for Valor” mention the trillions of dollars rung up terrorizing Muslim countries for oil, the ratcheting up of the police and surveillance state in this country since 9/11, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost thanks to the wars of George W. Bush and Barack Obama? Is anyone going to dedicate a song to Chelsea Manning, or John Kiriakou, or Edward Snowden – two of them languishing in prison and one in exile — for their service to the American people? Will the Concert for Valor raise anyone’s awareness when it comes to the fact that, to this day, veterans lack proper medical attention, particularly for mental health issues, or that there is a veteran suicide every 80 minutes in this country? Let’s hope they find time in between drum solos, but myself, I’m not counting on it.
Thank Yous
While Googling around, I noticed an allied story about President Obama christening a poetic sounding “American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial” on October 5th. There, he wisely noted that “the U.S. should never rush into war.” As he spoke, however, the Air Force, the Navy, and Special Forces personnel (who wear boots that do touch the ground, even in Iraq), as well as the headquarters of “the Big Red One,” the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, were already involved in the latest war he had personally ordered in Iraq and Syria, while, of course, bypassing Congress.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Damn, I voted for Obama because he said he’d end our overseas wars. At least it’s not Bush sending the planes, drones, missiles, and troops back there, because if it were, I’d be mad.
Then there were the numerous stories about “Honor Flights” sponsored by Southwest Airlines that offered all World War II veterans and the terminally ill veterans of more recent wars a free trip to Washington to “reflect at their memorials” before they died. Honor flights turn out to be a particularly popular way to honor veterans. Local papers in Richfield, Utah, Des Moines, Iowa, Elgin, Illinois, Austin, Texas, Miami, Florida, and so on place by place across significant swaths of the country have run stories about dying hometown “heroes” who have participated in these flights, a kind of nothing-but-the-best-in-corporate-sponsorship for the last of the “Greatest Generation.”
“Welcome home” ceremonies, with flags, marching bands, heartfelt embraces, much weeping, and the usual babies and small children missed during tours of duty in our war zones are also easy to find. In the first couple of screens Google offered in response to the phrase “welcome home ceremony,” I found the usual thank-you celebrations for veterans returning from Afghanistan in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, and Saint Albans, Vermont, among other places. “We don’t do enough for our veterans, for what they do for us, we hear the news, but to be up there in a field, and be shot at, and sometimes coming home disabled, we don’t realize how lucky we are sometimes to have the people who have served their country,” one of the Saint Albans attendees was typically quoted as saying.
“Do enough…?” In America, isn’t thank you plenty?
Oddly, it’s harder to find thank-you ceremonies for living vets involved in America’s numerous smaller interventions in places like the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Kosovo, Somalia, Libya, and various CIA-organized coups and proxy wars around the world, but I won’t be surprised if they, too, exist. I was wondering, though: What about all those foreign soldiers we’ve trained to fight our wars for us in places like South Vietnam,Iraq, and Afghanistan? Shouldn’t they be thanked as well? And how about members of the Afghan Mujahedeen that we armed and funded in the 1980s while they gave the Soviet Union its own “Vietnam” (and who are now fighting for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or other extreme Islamist outfits)? Or what about the Indonesian troops we armed under the presidency of Gerald Ford, who committed possibly genocidal acts in East Timor in 1975? Or has our capacity for thanks been used up in the service of American vets?
Since 9/11, those thank yous have been aimed at veterans with the regularity of the machine gun fire that may still haunt their dreams. Veterans have also been offered special consideration when it comes to applications for mostly menial jobs so that they can “utilize the skills” they learned in the military. While they continue to march in those welcome home parades and have concerts organized in their honor, the thank yous are in no short supply. The only question that never seems to come up is: What exactly are they being thanked for?
Heroes Who Afford Us Freedom
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has said of the upcoming Concert for Valor:
“The post-9/11 years have brought us the longest period of sustained warfare in our nation’s history. The less than one percent of Americans who volunteered to serve during this time have afforded the rest of us remarkable freedoms — but that freedom comes with a responsibility to understand their sacrifice, to honor them, and to appreciate the skills and experience they offer when they return home.”
It was crafty of Schultz to redirect that famed 1% label from the ultra rich, represented by CEOs like him, onto our “heroes.” At the concert, I hope Schultz has a chance to get more specific about those “remarkable freedoms.” Will he mention that the U.S. has the highest per capita prison population on the planet? Does he include among those remarkable freedoms the guarantee that dogs, Tasers, tear gas, and riot police will be sent after you if you stay out past dark protesting the killing of an unarmed Black teenager by a representative of this country’s increasingly militarized police? Will the freedom to be too big to fail and so to have the right to melt down the economy and walk away without going to prison — as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, did – be mentioned? Do these remarkable freedoms include having every American phone call and email recorded and stored away by the NSA?
And what about that term “hero”? Many veterans reject it, and not just out of Gary Cooperesque modesty either. Most veterans who have seen combat, watched babies get torn apart, or their comrades die in their arms, or the most powerful army on Earth spend trillions of dollars fighting some of the poorest people in the world for 13 years feel anything but heroic. But that certainly doesn’t stop the use of the term. So why do we use it? As journalist Cara Hoffman points out at Salon:
“‘[H]ero’ refers to a character, a protagonist, something in fiction, not to a person, and using this word can hurt the very people it’s meant to laud. While meant to create a sense of honor, it can also buy silence, prevent discourse, and benefit those in power more than those navigating the new terrain of home after combat. If you are a hero, part of your character is stoic sacrifice, silence. This makes it difficult for others to see you as flawed, human, vulnerable, or exploited.”
We use the term hero in part because it makes us feel good and in part because it shuts soldiers up (which, believe me, makes the rest of us feel better). Labeled as a hero, it’s also hard to think twice about putting your weapons down. Thank yous to heroes discourage dissent, which is one reason military bureaucrats feed off the term.
There are American soldiers stationed around the globe who think about filing conscientious objector status (as I once did), and I sometimes hear from some of them. They often grasp the way in which the militarized acts of imperial America are helping to create the very enemies they are then being told to kill. They understand that the trillions of dollars being wasted on war will never be spent on education, health care, or the development of clean energy here at home. They know that they are fighting for American control over the flow of fossil fuels on this planet, the burning of which is warming our world and threatening human existence.
Then you have Bruce Springsteen and Metallica telling them “thank you” for wearing that uniform, that they are heroes, that whatever it is they’re doing in distant lands while we go about our lives here isn’t an issue. There is even the possibility that, one day, you, the veteran, might be ushered onto that stage during a concert or onto the field during a ballgame for a very public thank you. The conflicted soldier thinks twice.
Valor
I’m back at that indie bookstore sitting at the same chrome-colored table trying to hash all this out, including my own experiences in the Army Rangers, and end on a positive note. The latest issue of Rolling Stone appears to have sold out. Out the window, the sun is peeking through a thick web of clouds. They sell wine here, too. The sooner I finish this, the sooner I can start drinking.
There is no question that we should honor people who fight for justice and liberty. Many veterans enlisted in the military thinking that they were indeed serving a noble cause, and it’s no lie to say that they fought with valor for their brothers and sisters to their left and right. Unfortunately, good intentions at this stage are no substitute for good politics. The war on terror is going into its 14th year. If you really want to talk about “awareness raising,” it’s years past the time when anyone here should be able to pretend that our 18-year-olds are going off to kill and die for good reason. How about a couple of concerts to make that point?
Until then, I’m going to drink wine and try to enjoy the music over the sound of the espresso machine.
Rory Fanning walked across the United States for the Pat Tillman Foundation in 2008-2009, following two deployments to Afghanistan with the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion. Fanning became a conscientious objector after his second tour. He is the author of the new book Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America (Haymarket, 2014).
While I know you are sick of empty “Thank Yous,” Mr. Fanning, here’s a genuine one. Thank You. Not for your service as an Army Ranger, but for the incredible service you have done to your country by writing this letter.
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Thank you for keeping the poppies safe so the black budget projects remain funded.
They are laying it on pretty thick for the last 13 years.
They learned something from nam vets not thanked and protested.
Red flag
No shortage of false flags here. No sir.
CONCORD, CALIF. — An off-duty state highway patrol sergeant found two bank deposit bags stuffed with more than $120,000 in cash on a busy suburban roadway, and immediately handed over the loot, officials said Monday.
https://news.google.com/news?ncl=dhZ1JRCZcw8kpzMhCVRUBwMw9cKLM&q=$120,000&lr=English&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uVVQVIbHDdCQigLSkYHgBw&ved=0CC0QqgIwAA
The veritable plethora of wondrous effusive welcome and gratitude supposedly aimed at our troops, honoring them for their "service" is meant for no other purpose than to ensure that we, the plebes, understand that government is saving us form the Barbarians at the Gate, the Hoards, and only They Have the Power to Do So, wrapped and bedecked in a fervent surge of teary eyed patriotism that is yanked from us, when we thank a veteran.
(flyovers, marching bands, taps, parades, small crippled children waving flags)
It is meant to make us support the military state.
Veterans be damned (truthfully, says the state). For the benefits afforded them, the front line soldiers, not the armchair generals, for their risks taken, suck
Hell, combat veterans are now accorded the lofty status of potential homegrown terrorists.
Mettalica is a bunch of wet pussies.
Here, let me save the day with a little Stiif Little Fingers talk about "joining up".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsnX6vSqLV0
Good article. I am dumbfounded when businesses give government employees such as soldiers a discount.
"Tin Soldiers"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8z_sAJGJ_c
He joined up to get a job
And show he wasn't scared
Swapped Boy Scout hat for army cap
At the age of 17, he was forced to choose
Now at the age of 21, he's in Catch 22
He joined up for just three years
It seemed a small amount
But, they didn't tell him that the first two didn't count
At the age of 17, how was he to know?
That at the age of 21, he'd still have one to go?
Tin soldier
He signed away his name
Tin soldier
No chance for cash or fame
Tin soldier
Now, he knows the truth
Tin soldier
He signed away his youth
He joined up 'cos dad knew best to do right by his son
Now, he hates and counts the dates
That mark time on square one
At the age of 17, he did as he was told
Now at the age of 21, tin still won't turn to gold
Tin soldier
He signed away his name
Tin soldier
No chance for cash or fame
Tin soldier
Now, he knows the truth
Tin soldier
He signed away his youth
If at the age of 17, you fall in line too soon
At the age of 21, you'll still march to their tune
Tin soldiers
You sign away your name
No chance for cash or fame
You never see the truth
You sign away your youth
You go and join the queue
Do what they want you to
They take away your name
They treat you all the same
Sign away you life
amen..
I could have been involved in music writing and playing instruments... hm... this one sounds a little like Ramones.
But see:
- CSNY, Songwriters: GRIFFIN, PATRICIA, PLANT, ROBERT, Ohio, Tin Soldiers and Nixons Coming...
- Joan Baez, Dennis Lambert, Brian Potter, One Tin Soldier Rides Away...
- ABBA, Anderson, Stig, Andersson, Benny Goran Bror, Ulvaeus, Bjoern K, Fernando, now we're old and grey Fernando
And since many years I haven't seen a rifle in your hand
Can you hear the drums Fernando?
Well... if you went to business school you know it builds patronage & loyalty.
And certainly in the Mid-west, South & West there are conservative populations that base their community around conservative values which include the values for war, soldiers, defending the nation, defending the homeland, serving in times of crisis and national emergency...
You know all that... so not sure I can add to this.
- Veterans and those that get excited about veteran issues are a market group, a consumer group... a target for banks & businesses
- But yeah, a target for democrats and liberals and databases that can sell the idea of a threat coming from Veterans
Further, government employees comprise many of the few people left with any money to spend... the remainder are simply indirect recipients of government largesse (do business with the government employees or work with assets that retain an inflated nominal value)...
when stationed in berlin 85-87...we never had any problems with the russians...
at labelles though, that was different...sure looked like an inside job to us...
and i knew sgt goins...he didnt deserve that..
well, such is the life we chose..as stupid kids...
Did they finally say it was USSR?
OR:
- RAF
- Bader-Meinhoff
- or one of the many German Student Activist Groups that became militant or criminal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_student_movement
See also
Red Army Faction
Elmar Altvater
Anarchism
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Ernest Mandel
Peter-Ernst Eiffe
Peter Schneider
Kommune 1
Marxist Group (Germany)
Protests of 1968
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Cells_%28German_group%29
The New Left was a political movement in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly in the United Kingdom and the United States, In the United States, the movement was associated with the Hippie movement and anti-war college-campus protest movements including the Free Speech Movement. While formed in opposition to the "Old Left" Democratic Party, groups composing the New Left gradually became central players in the Democratic coalition.[2]
From Wikipedia:
The European New Left appeared first in West Germany, which became a prototype for European student radicals.[53] German students protesting against the Vietnam war often wore discarded US military uniforms, and they made influential contacts with dissident GIs—draftees who did not like the war either.[54]
In Europe Provo was a Dutch counterculture movement in the mid-1960s that focused on provoking violent responses from authorities using non-violent bait.One manifestation of this was the French general strike that took place in Paris in May 1968, which nearly toppled the French government. In France the Situationist International reached the apex of its creative output and influence in 1967 and 1968, with the former marking the publication of the two most significant texts of the situationist movement, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem. The expressed writing and political theory of the two aforementioned texts, along with other situationist publications, proved greatly influential in shaping the ideas behind the May 1968 insurrections in France; quotes, phrases, and slogans from situationist texts and publications were ubiquitous on posters and graffiti throughout France during the uprisings.[55] Another was the German student movement of the 1960s. Kommune 1 or K1 was the first politically motivated commune in Germany. It was created on January 12, 1967, in West Berlin and finally dissolved in November 1969. During its entire existence, Kommune 1 was infamous for its bizarre staged events that fluctuated between satire and provocation. These events served as inspiration for the "Sponti" movement and other leftist groups. In the late summer of 1968, the commune moved into a deserted factory on Stephanstraße in order to reorient. This second phase of Kommune 1 was characterized by sex, music, and drugs. All of a sudden, the commune was receiving visitors from all over the world, among them Jimi Hendrix, who turned up one morning in the bedroom of Kommune 1.[56] The underground was a countercultural movement in the United Kingdom linked to the underground culture in the United States and associated with the hippie phenomenon. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London. It generated its own magazines and newspapers, bands, clubs and alternative lifestyle, associated with cannabis and LSD use and a strong socio-political revolutionary agenda to create an alternative society. The counterculture movement took hold in Western Europe, with London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and West Berlin rivaling San Francisco and New York as counterculture centers.
The Prague Spring was legitimized by the Czechoslovak government as a socialist reform movement. The 1968 events in the Czechoslovakia were driven forward by industrial workers, and were explicitly theorized by active Czechoslovak unionists as a revolution for workers' control.[citation needed]
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Sounds like a CIA Operation... maybe. Where the hell was the organization for drug production coming from anyway????
Inside job?
False Flag, Buckoo. Operation Gladio under NATO and CIA and whatever German Code Name they had for NATO.
I was there 86 to 89 - C/5-502d. I got there right after Labelles, a couple of the guys in my platoon got purple hearts for being there. Small world.
However, I never heard the "inside job" angle.
I don't get the point of this diatribe. At least saying "Thank You" beats getting spit on or called "baby killers", which is how returning troops were greeted after Vietnam.
Personally, if we own ANYONE a debt of gratitude, its our veterans, especially those who were injured. It really burns me when we shortchange veteran care, but we throw $$ at people in the FSA who VOTE for a living. Or any swinging dick, illegal alien who strolls accross the border and is automatically entitiled to any number off bennies, including free health care. And, increasingly, a drivers license (which they use to vote fraudently). These people are rewarded hansomely for bad behavior and have never contributed jack shit to this country.
So yeah, we should be doing MOAR for vets and LESS for the vast and growing FSA But that will never happen short of a revolution, which is why vets may be labeled as potential terrorists.
rbg for that THANK YOU, those doors to truth get opened in the vets mind, one cannot look at the horror and stay sane..so we play the you would never understand card, when the you is me. I cannot understand i will not think about it, there is pain there.
Why do we owe any paid employee a debt of gratitude? I would think that as a general strategy, we would want to disincentivize people from volunteering for immoral causes... I'll posit that anyone who can personally come to the decision to willfully suspend disbelief ought not to be revered... especially when that disbelief involves unnecessary military service. So the government steals money from us to train people who have poor decision making skills to kill people and be perfectly obedient about it? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me...
As far as keeping up with our promises, we should do so for any veteran... however, the problem is the same with any civil servant, if the promise is larger than can be repaid, the moral thing to do is default rather than devalue the currency and place an additional burden on innocent future generations. If the veterans then have a problem with the people who actually made the promises, then the veterans should direct their rage appropriately.
If you think a soldier is nothing more than just another 'paid employee', then it is crystal clear what our problem is. It's Wallstreetitis...the illness that results from the belief that everything in life should be treated like business. That everything (except one's own profits) is a "cost" that can and should be cut to preserve those profits.
I can't wait for one of you jokers to try and push for the right to sell human organs for profit...I have NO DOUBT I'll hear this proposal before I die.
All the money in the world won't fill the hole left by abandoning your morals.
If you think a soldier is nothing more than just another 'paid employee', then it is crystal clear what our problem is. It's Wallstreetitis...the illness that results from the belief that everything in life should be treated like business.
Well, it depends... if one is drafted, then obviously one would not simply be a paid employee, but a slave... if one volunteers for service, upon promises of pay, and accepts the pay in return for the service, how is this any different than any other employee (other than the fact the trained soldier is likely far more dangerous to society)? You call this wallstreetitis, but vaguaries and ad hominems don't make arguments... Further, if you think that war isn't treated as a business, then I've got a bridge to sell you... Even if a soldier pursues the job in a purely naive and innocent way (in service of his country), he is still an unwitting participant in an otherwise criminal enterprise (but for the use of force - might makes right after all). The road to hell...
That everything (except one's own profits) is a "cost" that can and should be cut to preserve those profits.
Well, in the case of soldiers, money is stolen from me to pay for... a desperate attempt to keep the petrodollar alive as well as a myriad of other benefits to unidentified third parties. If you could actually articulate some reason how I personally benefit from this arrangement, then I'm all ears, but damn me for questioning it.
I can't wait for one of you jokers to try and push for the right to sell human organs for profit...I have NO DOUBT I'll hear this proposal before I die.
Why shouldn't I have the right to sell my organs? If I want to give blood or go jizz in a cup so someone can have daddy issues when they never figure out my identity, then shouldn't I have the right? Isn't freedom about the right to make exactly these kinds of decisions? Or is this not the type of freedom that soldiers allegedly fight to preserve?
All the money in the world won't fill the hole left by abandoning your morals.
No doubt.
Recently heard a new angle about a candidate for Senate I believe...
- Privatization
- Privatized Military, contractors that will do anything and their expensive services are not counted as government employees or official airmen, sailors, soldiers
- Privatized Veteran Medical Care, just this year the authorization went out after soldiers started dying and charges were thrown out about different hospitals
- Maybe Privatized Veteran Medical Care we being set up through senior government executives
Total—Department of Veterans Affairs Outlays 2013 = $143.6 Billion
Total—Department of Veterans Affairs Outlays 2000 = $50.1 Billion
Total—Department of Veterans Affairs Outlays 1998 = $45.6 Billion
2013 VA Medical Care = $44.7 Billion
1999 VA Medical Care = $17.8 Billion
What burns me is when I see Billions of $$ spent on taking care of illegals and others who have done nothing (or worse) for this country, and then, turning around and shafting the Vets. The politicians seem to have no trouble finding $$ for people who vote for a living or those who they expect will be in a dominant demographic. Vets will never be a big enough voting bloc to matter to 'em. However, enough people in this country still honor the Veteran's service enough even if they aren't one. G-d bless them, I say. If it weren't for them, I'd expect the Vets to get completely shafted.
The enduring meme of nam vets being spit on and called baby killers is a real goldmine for Support The Troops propaganda.
I don't doubt that there were some incidents of such, but common sense tells you that they were rare. The flower children and hippies literally spitting on war hardened vets sea to shining sea? Suuuuuure, that sounds like them. And no doubt none of them got the living shit kicked out of them or were arrested for assault by our wonderfully patriotic police forces. On it's face it's ridiculous. But, myth or not, a whole lotta "Stand up for our boyz" suckers have drunk the koolaid.
True, a fair number of people thought of them as baby killers--nearly 80% of the casualties of modern war are civilians, with another 80% of those women and children after all, and it sure as hell wasn't our civilians being killed--but, once again, to pretend that our poor baby-killing boys were subjected to widespread verbal, face-to-face ridicule is itself ridiculous. If the vets hadn't kicked asses themselves, the moronic, blindly "patriotic" crowds would have taken the offenders down and pummeled them senseless.
Powerful myths. They sure mobilize our deepest passions and take our minds from the realities that matter, such as the fact that none of those soldiers should have been over there killing--what was the ratio of deaths, vietnamese to american, about 100:1--and that it had absolutely nothing to do with "defending our freedom."
American troops have been nothing but henchmen for the Empire since at least WWII. We killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis in our war of aggression--itself a war crime under international law. Baby killers indeed. There's nothing to respect about it.
Everybody needs a job. I can sympathize with that. But that just ain't good enough to cut them loose from facing the reality of what they do and have done. Either you're a killer or you're not.
Being either brainwashed or stupid enough to perpetrate it under the banner of deranged patriotism does not produce legitimate heroes, imo.
It's all relative. You say "American troops have been nothing but henchmen for the Empire since at least WWII", but at least its our Empire. Our System sucks in many ways, but it's still better than almost all of the alternatives, including Communist Russia/China or some fucking "Caliphate". If anyone imagines otherwise, they are misguided. Trust me, if a lot of countries had our capabilities, they wouldn't bat an eye in inflicting far worse carnage on us than we did to them--and with even thinner, if any, provocation.
The only place on the planet you can look and conclude First Worlders are living better than us is maybe the Nordic countries or Switzerland. And that is because they have more/less homogenous societies and don't share many of our problems. Even relatively placid Canada might not be that way without the US Leviaton to the South. If we still had a 1950s type population in this country, conditions would be much, much better.
As for the baby killer thing, I was too young for Vietnam. But, as late as 1983, I had people yelling similar things at me (as the drove by in their cars) when I was walking around town in uniform.
"As for the baby killer thing, I was too young for Vietnam. But, as late as 1983, I had people yelling similar things at me (as the drove by in their cars) when I was walking around town in uniform."-rbg81
I call bullshit on that. I was a Jarhead from '77-84", stationed coast to coast and overseas and not once was ever accosted or had anything negative thrown my way.
The military is full of FSA types. I served with to many dumb asses that stayed in for the paycheck only because it was the only way to stay employed. USMC. Unlimited Shit and Mass Confusion. Murica.
Call BS on it all you want, it happened--and more than once. Granted they weren't calling me "baby killer", but it was still disrespectful stuff. And these people didn't know me--they just saw me wearing a uniform.
If I had to put my finger on when I think attitudes really changed, it was the mid-eighties....maybe 1985. After the first Gulf War, respect for the military went through the roof.
Got out of the reserves for good in 2005.
You must have been Army. Hell, I used to call y'all names too.
Marines. The navy needs somebody to ass fuck while at sea.
Great post. +1000
So, where are we then?
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
I never realized how many similarities exist. READ.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
-For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
-For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
-For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
-For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
-For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
-For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
-For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
-For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
-For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Deleted double post
Your contribution of insular sloth as reflected by your baseless speculation is worthy of the great big fly swatter bearing down on you as you read this.
Personal responsibility is a btich, ain't it.
I was desperate enough in my younger years, just after viet nam, to try to enlist. Not just once, but twice. My girlfriend was pregnant and i was an ignorant working class kid.
The first time was a fail because my blood pressure went into the stratosphere during the mass physical. twisted freaks grabbing my nuts was a new deal for me, even though i was a celebrated high school jock. call me lucky on that one.
The second was when, after marrying the girlfriend, I was face to face with the recruitment sarg in a fully decked out military suite in a high rise office buidling in the major city where they had bussed me, provided first class accomodations. and planned to sign me for "intelligence." that's their term for that unit, not mine.
When I asked for a signed guarantee that I wouldn't be separated from my new wife and child--the marketing ploy the military was promoting at that time--the sarg . . . a very impressively buff black man with truly massive charisma . . . leaned just a few millimeters back and observed that "i'm wondering if you're the kind of man we're looking for in this man's army." It was a soul-stirring challenge between men.
A few moments of silence followed. I was just a small town working class white kid in a fix at the time, after all.
But I had to respond "I'm afraid you're right."
End of conversation. I'm guessing he thought I would recant that night under the weight of how I had failed myself, my family, and masculinity itself.
I was fresh off the turnip truck and in a world of trouble. In peace time. Back when the VA Bill still actually meant something.
Don't tell me how complicated this shit gets. Your true values get tested without a doubt.
As for being there as a witness to the times--the cultural set that i reference in my first post--i was 20 years old then. It was the early '70's. I know what happened in the '60's.
Blow by sick blow.
Number 1 song in 1966:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tymc2XeModw
Why do you think so many vets are committing suicide?
The best way to honor them is to really change this shit.
Foreign and domestic policy revamp, ZH'r style.
Congress has blown off their responsibilities vis a vis "Declaring War" -- just another in a long list of reasons for imposing term limits!
Ridiculous. I do not owe a "debt of gratitude" to anyone who facilitated, participated in, and cheered the racket described by General Butler in '35. And not one damn person owes this former Marine a "debt of gratitude" either. I'd rather you learned something, that you awakened to your complicity in the murders and crimes of your "elected" leadershp. I'd rather you treated your fellow humans kindly and with initial respect, rather than demonizing them based upon the color of their skin or their language. I'd rather you wouldn't remain blissfully ignorant that many of the people who have fled here are fleeing the U.S.-wrought destruction of their home economies and environments, that you would have that epiphany, the realization, that the Nikes on your feet were subsidized by war, murder, assassination, rape and plunder, the inundation of old indigenous villages for electric power plants built by GE and Bechtel for no other reason than it profits those companies and indebts the indigenous "leadership" to the IMF.
You want my thanks? Than DO something besides wave the fucking flag and scream about how you're being hurt by barefoot children fleeing YOUR destruction. Pathetic.
Well stated! Kinda reminds me of this:
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Here's the point : of course, bypassing Congress.
” it’s years past the time when anyone here should be able to pretend that our 18-year-olds are going off to kill and die for good reason
You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
From "Tommy" by Rudyard Kipling
I've been saying this for years now. The whole mindless and non-stop thanking of cops, firefighters, and medical staff as first responders after 9/11, and the same thing as well for all military all the time is nothing but a massive brainwashing psy-op, and I will never condone or take part in it.
Now all those people may not see it that way and neither do most of the public. But that's what makes the brainwashing technique so effective throughout society and across multiple generations.
This criminal, evil government and their lapdog media know it too. Ever since 9/11 they've been pushing this crap because higher up the chain the ultimate goal is to brainwash the masses to do whatever we're told by cops, doctors, and soldiers once the tyranny really starts to roll out.
And haven't we all seen enough examples of government and police tyranny over the last several years?
They want us domesticated, docile, subservient, and thankful for our oppression and ignorance.
That's just how I see it and I will not allow anyone to pull that shit on me.....ever....and neither should any of you.
The brainwashing works both ways as well because the first responders and military then start to think they can do whatever they want and they also start to follow any government orders even if they violate our civil rights, because they all think we should just do as we're told no matter what because they now have a huge superiority complex to rule over the sheeple while acting like they're protecting us for our own good.
It's a total mind fuck all the way around, and the government knows it very well what they're doing to all of us. And it keeps them in power and makes them even more powerful over the masses.
I'm not saying we should be rude to any of them....we just don't need to thank everyone 24/7 365 anywhere we see them as if they're all super heroes. And they shouldn't expect it either.
And we certainly shouldn't let it get in our heads that they rule over us and neither should they.
This is an extremely dangerous time. Most of the populous is very much brainwashed one way or another by all other kinds of government psy-op mind fuck divide and conquor bullshit.
We need to snap people out of it and focus all our energy against the government scum sociopath traitors who are tearing America apart by using us against ourselves.
These government scum are seriously evil fucking sociopath criminals we're dealing with. Evil to the core and way worse than the damn Nazi's if they ever get the chance.
My car mechanic has more to do with keeping me and my family safe and alive, than any Iraq or Afghan war vet. Volunteer armed forces is a job (a dangerous, low pay one at that), I mostly feel sorry for them and the shit they have to endure for the banksters and military industrial complex. Now the "endless wars", Orwell was just a couple decades early.
How hypocritical is America?
A 6yr old gets suspended from school for eating a poptart in the shape of a gun.
His mom could by him a toy gun from Wal-Mart on the drive home, while the cashier is sweet, taking notice how cute the boy is.
years later he has no desire for college so he enlists and is sent to some turd pile in the middle east. Guns are suddenly ok, as well as real killing. He's become a third world man.
He fires full auto on some dude running to his shitty van. Dude is dead, and his family spills out of the van wailing. It's alright dude, he was probably a terrorist.
14 months go by. He sees life torn apart in areas he's patrolling on a daily basis. For what?
Dude gets discharged. Hes depressed, but keeps convincing himself Iraq's better now.
5 years later, an ISIS team of ragtag yayhoos with a few stolen humvees waltz through town after town as if the US wants them to take Iraq again. All that hard work for nothing. The killing and ptsd likewise, for nothing.
Dude reflects back on his poptart incident one day and shoots himself. The futility. It's just a sick game. All the while, Obama is on a late show flashing a cheesy smile. He was talking about his tan suit.
nightwish, logged in to +1 your comment. I would voted more, but unlike the facist regime we have in Australia, it's one vote one value with ZH as it should be.
"Dude reflects back on his poptart incident one day and shoots himself. The futility. It's just a sick game."
Unfortunately, that's what comes with being a soldier for an imperialist, aggressive, conquering army. No glory to be gained, just headaches and guilt. Some are still trying hard to convince themselves there was a reason why they went to Vietnam, but the tears in their eyes belie their words.
The only happy vets in America are those who fought Nazism.
Well written and thoughtful post, btw.
Wasn't Rome sacked by its own army when it wasn't paid?
That was but one of many reasons. The Roman army had been reduced to a domestic mercenary force, with most Roman citizens unwilling to join. Barbarians from outside Rome had been joining, for the meager pay, and the citizenry thought of them as a paid security force. Kinda like we see it now...you see people saying, "They volunteered! They got paid!", as if this was merely another business transaction. They forget the all-important patriotism thing.
Rome wanted a strictly business relationship with its army. They got their wish. When Rome defaulted by not making payments, the barbarians opted to seize collateral...
Think of all the armies in history, and see which ones you admire most...odds are good that you picked one with characteristics you'd call 'heroic'. Now ask yourself, can you picture the soldiers in that army all deciding to walk off the battlefield because their pay was late?
You can either have a proper military, or you can have a paid mercenary force. But if you choose the latter, know that you have entered a BUSINESS TRANSACTION. Should you fail to keep your side of the deal, there will be penalties.
If you wanted a loyal domestic force, with 'heroic' soldiers willing to die for your freedoms, you should have gone with the proper military. But that would require you to abandon the notion that you are PURCHASING something, and once you pay, you have no further obligations.
Duo and Bemused--very interesting Roman history. Please recommend source?
There IS no one source for information on history. You have to read many, many accounts, both first-hand and written years later by historians. You have to keep in mind that in general, the winners write the history, the losers often exaggerate the cruelty of their conquerors, and that sometimes the guy with the best view is the one who isn't too close.
Nightwish, please comment more often. I've never seen a truth expressed with more clarity.
You have spoken truth.
Next step:
Read daniel chapters 11 & 12;(hint: chapter 11 has been fulfilled)
then read revelation chapters 6-12.
It happens next year, bro.
Right, I'm holding you to this and if your revelations don't come true, you WILL HAVE AN EXCUSE, I guarantee it, otherwise the fantasy comes crashing down. Mind you, language being what it is I suppose "it" could apply to a wide variety of things.
"No one knows the day nor the hour except the Father." - Christ.
seek truth
Wait, what does the end of the daily sacrifice mean? I thought that ended in antiquity? How to you get that day + 1300 days = next year?
The "thank a veteran" meme is usually peddled by right wingers who are chicken shits and chicken hawks.
Their Orwellian doublethink is that they are pro-war and pro-patriotism yet don't want to get dirt under their nails in basic training. So by some poor chap doing their dirty work for them, they vicariously can hold these views in their minds.
@ the9thdoctor
And the "spit on a veteran" meme is usually peddled by neo-stalinist state worshiping progressive criminals who are responsible for the majority of murder by government crimes against humanity.
For your progressive pleasure check Hillary Clinton's illegal war in Libya. Bloody hands bitch Clinton stopped Gadaffi from going after Al Qaeda murderers in Benghazi and also stopped Gaddafi from implementing a gold backed dinar which would have taken power away from central bankers. Clintons war crime in Libya also spawned ISIS.
If you want really bloody war mongers, look to the progressives. A constitutional conservative does not intervene in the affairs of other sovereign nations. Only big government control freak progressive assclowns and like minded bent left criminals do that shit.
Oh, and f**k off you idiot. Vets deserve better than the shit that gets handed to them by progressive criminals.
Grimaldus
Dear Save America,
It sounds like you too much of spinless pussy to do any of the jobs you are bitching about.
Yeah.... I guess I feel like a fucking SMUCK for contributing 23 years of my life to the military and multiple campaigns.....
The only thing worse than the tragedy of a mis-used and abused instrument of scientific violence is to keep going forward course unchanged 'for the memory of my son's sacrifice'.
So, in order to honor the memory of your son tragically sacrificed is to continue the travesty and sacrifice someone else's son?
Please make the madness stop.
But.....the idiot box keeps telling me that these heroes are protecting my freedoms
That's freedumbs..fixed it.
I salute you Rory Fanning!
You woke up.
Here's to the many others who need to break out of their brainwashing!
No thanks to all vets, including myself, for being the execution arm and defense of a corrupt, insane government.
I had your back, broseph.
I slept with my feet on a ballistic missile tube for 5 years. After meeting some actual Russians that I would have helped burn to charred dust, I ask myself why it was we did that. I can't say why exactly but I do know I don't have a life affirming, positive, silver lining from a dark cloud type answer to that question.
We may have punched some of the same holes in the water and I, too, met a few of those guys while in port in the Med. Pretty cool dudes who had it as shitty as we had it.
In the Mahabharata, there are some chapters where Arjuna wishes to lay down his bow and NOT kill his brethren, but Krishna (arguably the Hindu God of love) argues him into fulfilling his Dharma. Dharma is a word that all should become familiar with.
"Thank you for keeping the poppies safe so the black budget projects remain funded."
Thank you for keeping the poppies safe so the black (white) tar (powder) keeps flowing.
Every war a false flag.
My only hope is that ISIS/IS(rea)IL false flag next war starts with the beheading Gene Rosen or Robbie Parker in front of their blue screen. These crisis actors need new roles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDq8LG2N9eI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTSpvuXfn2A
my best friend's sister makes $80 /hour on the internet . She has been laid off for 7 months but last month her paycheck was $13987 just working on the internet for a few hours. visit site... www.Yelptrade.com
yeah, man. if we got rid of the MIC our taxes would go down and we would have more money for weed and blow. screw those innocent kids half a world away, I need my high, iPhone and xbox
Surely you're not suggesting that the U.S. adventures of the past 50 years were/are for "those innocent kids"? Surely you don't believe the assholes in congress or the 5 sided fightin' hole give two fucks about any "innocent kids" anyfukcinwhere?
Writer lost me with "the killing of an unarmed Black teenager". That thug had it coming. Just some more spawn from the Free Shit Nation
OK.
Thanks for being a pawn and tool of an oppressive society?
Doesn't have the same appeal.
Thanks for being an expendable dupe that lived.
Thanks for "just following orders" guys. Hooorahhh
.
They will truly thank you once you violently overthrow the existing Government. That's I think what the "thank you" folks are getting at.
good luck with that, sailor...
I am sure there are some men in a room somewhere who thank you for being part of their chess game.
You'll get no thanks from Henry Kissenger:
"Military Men Are Just Dumb, Stupid Animals To Be Used As Pawns In Foreign Policy"They aren't thanking anyone other than their god, Mammon.
I guess I envisioned something like...
(glass of 18 year old scotch in hand) "Thankfully those idiots believe the crap we tell them."
Substitute "goyim" for "military men" and it reads just as well. Plug in "Israeli soldiers" and Kissinger could never say it.
Thanks for allowing Zionists to take over my country. Couldn't have done it without ye!
You could always try rehab.
I wonder if he's going to be in the concert?
Thanks for getting good at droning innocent civilians while "over there" and bringing back those awesome skills only to teach state troopers how to drone innocent civilians "over here". Now go fuck yourselves.
Oh, I almost forgot, you ARE the state troopers over here now, veterans.
As Chief Brody yelled when Quint smashed the radio with a baseball bat, "Great! That's just fucking great!"
BTW, Mofos, I have earned the right to say "Go fuck yourselves". I was a fucking tool of TPTB in my younger days, just like you.
Schultz thanks you for fighting for The Tribe.
My thoughts exactly, Rory.
Freedom costs a buck o'five.
Sounds like John Kerry, the 2nd.
1/3 of the federal prison population is illegal aliens. Let's deport them and not let them back in and redo the per capita numbers.
Given the recidivism rate, and since these people are not citizens of the US, and keeping in mind that they were pushed here by their respective governments in the first place, it'd be more appropriate to kill them as members of an invading army.
I wonder if this dude realizes he's fighting for Israel not America, and worse, fighting guys on payroll from US. When the lightbulb comes on for him, it will be an "oh shit.." experience
TV and talk radio has identified the enemy and viewers are told who the enemy is 356/24/7. TV and video games are prepping the kids how to deal with the enemy. And, with no job or money, they'll join up to liberate us from the 'enemy'. Once, they come home all fuc**d up, JP Morgan, Starbucks, Metallica and Rihanna will give them a big 'thank you'.
80 minutes later, a vet commits suicide.
i hate it when i hear it. i always say if you want to honor me then fight for peace.....
i was drafted......
Rangers lead the way. Motherfuckers
One of my best buds of all time was a green beanie in Nam. Whenever he hears somebody talk about being/having been a ranger, he rolls his eyes, smiles and if they get too puffy about it, gnashes his teeth. For when he want through the "program" all GB's were graduate Rangers.
Nothing other than the smile on my face when he starts going on.
No harm or criticism meant, at all.
Just a silly story
PS MY bud still does some awkwardly dangerous shit for fun. He's kinda nuts, in a very lovable way. And yes, he saw a shit load of combat over there.
He murdered a bunch of people in a country he invaded over there?
It is something that he wakes to every day and must deal with. Legalities, orders, chain of command. I doubt very much that he's ever had a day where that has not deeply disturbed, posessed him for a significany time or depth. It took a greaat dealof his humanity from him.
I missed the part where you said "Nam". Now I feel a little bad about my comment, if he was drafted.
I figured he was one of the current generation psychopaths who volunteered.
Once again, fast with the soup cooler.
A REMF who has spent an entire life sitting in the world, sailing.
FOAD Puke!
Obviously, YOU weren't on the kill list.
Ya Dumb fuck!
Trust me, I'm on the list.
My friend 'Woody' was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. Did two tours, when he returned, he left the USA for good.
Another buddy, also in Vietnam, ended up getting ALS as it was suspected he was exposed to agent orange. He ended up drinking every night when he got back, drinking and fighting. He died 8 years ago.
Then I saw the picture of Boston Police handcuffing Veterans for Peace on Memorial day as they wouldn't move away from the front of a podium some politician was making a speach 'honoring them'.
If you don't think there is a sickness in America, then you must be sick yourself.
There is something wrong with this picture.
A lot of older guys my age in the program picked up their alcohol problems while over in or returning from Nam.
I still personally remember being in the SFO airport back then when a flight of soldiers disembarked form Nam and the place was jammed with protestors yelling, spitting, vilifying these people for their homecoming.
What struck me was that these men were by and large drafted.
So if the protestors wanted to properly vent their anger, they should have been spitting on their (any) senators and representatives voting to maintain the war.
"If you don't think there is a sickness in America, then you must be sick yourself.
There is something wrong with this picture."
Amen brother. The patriots have to take this country back from the treasonous criminals currently running the show.
Plus a trillion, and mine are not printed, schiess greenies.
Choose to Thrive. Be a man, make the hard choices. Life is short, let's make it count for good.
fuck the MIC and the false "hero" worship, they are nothing but war criminals and the faster they die the better the world will be.
You fail to mention that there are "war heroes", all over the earth. Throughout history, that have kept families, tribes, countries, and empires "safe."
You fail to recognize in your comment WHO benefits, Qui Bono.
Therein lies the answer.
Obama Administration Allows Fertility Clinics To Sell US Citizenship
"President Barack Obama’s administration has decided to let the assisted reproductive industry sell U.S. citizenship — and access to the U.S. welfare system — to foreign parents who never even set foot in the United States. "
"The fertility clinics will be able to pocket the profits, and grant access to American education, health, welfare and retirement services to the foreign children and the foreign parents. The giveaway is accomplished by a surprise change in regulations, which redefined the term “mother” to include women who contract to carry other women’s embryos to birth."
Wochit
Obozo is prepping for mass approval of green cards and other relaxations for illegals. He is selling us out for the next electoral push. Once the population demographics have been tweaked to the point where non-democrats have become a sufficient minority in this country, and if dems keep cutting into the war/oil subsidy shtick of the right, the republicans will find it increasingly hard to feel relevant. Plus, mass media will keep up the brainwashing enough to make a difference. I don't see a way to combat this insideous liberal trend. It will have to be a republican candidate with lots of charisma who'll lie through his teeth about continuing friendly immig policies, and then be willing to revert hardline once he gets elected. It don't look good for real Americans.
Those RINOs have sold out. Nothing will change until forced by catastrophic events.
Someone should tell that dimwit that if sperm or eggs have rights, so do fetuses...
“I wouldn’t go to war again as I have 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.” – Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USA – (1881-1940).
From everyone's favorite, Wikipedia - By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I.
Amen.
Eight generations here, going back to the revolutionary war, as a privateer.
Lots of medals and markers from ww1, joysticks from jap kamikazes in ww2 , medals, etc.
And I don't have anything more to say right now.
The thing that always gets me about Butler, what took him so long to figure it out?
Shit, I knew war was a racket before I enlisted.
Butler was a bankster tool for decades, and such a good one they made him a General. WTF?
Shit, I knew war was a racket before I enlisted.
That's what scares the rest of us... and also the same line of thinking that lead to the nuremburg trials.
The human race has been at war for the entire recorded history. Who did you think was fighting those wars? The squirrels and rabbits? War is natural for humans, peace is not. In fact, for the most part, when you study history you study the wars, conflicts, and rebellions. Peace is abnormal.
WAKE UP.
Good on ya Mate! For all you Americans with your Yellow Ribbons displayed... FUCK YOU. For all your "Thank you for your Service" banalities... Shut The Fuck Up!
Oh and to my fellow veterans that are expecting all this... free beers, head of the line privledges, unquestioned loyalty. Fucking Man Up! If you joined for dipshit glory, you will get what you deserve... nothing.
Thank you for testing two atomic bombs on Japan, thank you for saving a lot of Nazi's by bringing them to the U.S., thank you for Angent Orange, thank you for destroying Iraq, Libya and Syria, thank you for training ISIS. Don't hate me for forgetting a few 'thank' you's'.
I Know your comment is sarcasm, but I can not possibly agree, I cant even chuckle, way too much truth in your comment to laugh about.
"Jesus wept" - John 11:35
Thank you for keeping South Korea's border secure, and thank you for keeping Arizona's borders nice and open. /sarc
America's horrendous foreign policy is what woke me up to the whole NWO agenda. Wide open borders with a failed narco state filled with ruthless gangs, yet Korea's border has been secured since the 1950s. It wasn't hard to figure out the MIC is lying to us.
There is no "New" world order agenda. The term itself is a bs distraction, meant to make people grope for phantoms from various backgrounds behind it.
There is, most assuredly, an OLD world order agenda, patiently waiting for many centuries, spawned just before WW1 and now fully in control of world banking, the EU, and our own beloved country. These people are of one race, one theology. Everyone else does their bidding. We might as well be domestic animals.
Well stated!
if you ask Putin, he might (I wrote might, though the below is based on his very speeches) put it differently:
there was an Old World Order. based on the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. etc. It was an Order that was against communism. and that nevertheless was open to new joiners
then Dubya started to talk about a New World Order - a term previously used prevalently by US tin-foil hatters, in the late 20th - which implied complete American Hegemony. in short, Uncle Sam not needing any international support in anything, besides some ad-hoc "Coalitions of the Willing"
now China and Russia ask for a reform of the IMF, for example, otherwise they set up their own. who is against the reform? only one entity: the US Congress
and Putin accuses Uncle Sam to have ripped off all the rules of the Old World Order, and so he feels they don't apply to Russia, neither. and so we have the Annexation of Crimea as a side-effect of this
meanwhile, we are having a war among central banks, and a war among banking systems. Russia's Ruble is feeling it, but also Turkey's Lira, and many others
the megabanks you are mentioning are part of all this, but they are fully on the side of their currently main source of juice: the FED. they don't rule the world, they are trying to do that
meanwhile, there is the MIC. and it costs a lot of juice. which traduces in plenty of fresh USTs. and the Big Thing is who buys and holds them, which is important, as important as... oil
if you havent seen the patt tillman documetary, it's a must. http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the_tillman_story_2010/
his brother's eulogy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgU6SwuZJIY
i hope when i go, that i have someone who understands me like that and has the courage to represent me. they could start by punching anyone who utters the phrase "thoughts and prayers" in the fucking mouth
Rangers killing Rangers and Rangers lying about it. That's the story, right?
Rangers killing Rangers and the regime lying about it.
Yes, I get it, thanks.
Dad had a Silver Star, Purple Heart, a second award (supposedly what you get instead of a second Silver Star ) called an Oak Leaf Cluster and some other stuff we kids found in the attic. Growing up he'd occasionally have other vets over and they talked about the Cubs, Notre Dame and Nixon but never the war . When he was late in life one of the son-in-laws said 'hey, you guys (the family) need to capture some of this.' We didn't but he did (thanks btw).
For dad and his cohort they had done their horrible duty. They had killed and when they got home simply did not want to go on living that experience. I think it was a lack of any collective guilt that led to that easy detachment from the experiences. Hitler was evil, The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, the choices were few. Youth lied to get into the service. There was very little ambiguity.
From there however things got murky. Korea and on there was never the clear real and present threat. I wonder if that led to more second thoughts and lack of commitment
when pulling the trigger time came?
I don't know. I have never regretted getting good grades and having a high draft number. I am not sorry I was never in the service.
If something were to happen and the cause was right and old men were needed I don't think I'd have any issues with doing my part. Killing people is not an experience many of us want to have. I can't imagine how it feels when there is any doubt about the rightneousness of the cause. I know from the Viet Nam era there was a lot of that doubt going around.
Hitler was NOT "evil". That is already the Anglo-Zionist-Communist war propaganda speaking. You need to dig deeper.
"There was very little ambiguity."
As all the facts have come out, it is patently obvious there were no "good" governments in that war; the cartoonish court histories of the victors notwithstanding.
It's not as if Japan just up and decided out of the blue to attack the US. They were provoked by actions that the US government would consider acts of war if another country were to do the same to it, all in a bid by Rosenfelt to drag the reluctant US population into the war. At least the Japanese had the decency to focus their attack against the US on military targets. The hysterical and spastic response of the US government was to set fire to and either partially or fully destroy sixty-seven Japanese cities full of women and children and drop atomic bombs on another two cities full of civilians.
Curtis LeMay admitted that if the US had lost the war "we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." McNamara agreed that they were in fact behaving as war criminals and so do I.
As to what the Allied powers did to Germany and others in Europe during and after the war, that is in a whole 'nother league of evil. Rosenfelt and Churchill knew exactly who they were targeting in their terror bombing of German cities: mostly women, children and old men. They also knew the eventual fate of the millions of Soviet POWs and those fleeing Stalin's reign of terror, repatriated at gunpoint back to the Soviet Union after the war at Stalin's request, in one of the most craven and sickeningly obsequious actions of the war. Stalin viewed all POWs as traitors who should have fought to the death - the main reason he refused to agree to the Geneva Conventions.
Then there is the Morgenthau plan (devised by chosenite Henry Morgenthau Jr., Sec. Treasury under Rosenfelt) to pastoralize and ethnically cleanse Germany of two-thirds of its population. Thankfully for the German people, the murder, torture, mistreatment and mass starvation of Germans in Eisenhower's death camps after the war (Eisenhower had a pathological hatred of Germans) eventually resulted in such a public outcry that they were never able to fully implement this plan.
There is also the largest mass rape and looting in history to consider. The worst atrocities along these lines were committed by the second wave of the Red Army along the Eastern front. As one of the frontline Russian shock troops told a German woman: "The Mongols are coming.... Very bad men. You go quick. Go quick." This second wave was composed largely of Mongols, Kulaks, Kazakhs, Kalmuks, and other Asians, as well as convicts and Jewish commissars, and no German female from eight to eighty was spared. Not even grave injury, sickness or death would prevent a woman (or corpse) from being raped. There were all sorts of tortures committed including the cutting off of breasts and the mutilation of genitals.
These sorts of atrocities against and ethnic cleansing of Germans spread to places like Czecho-Slovakia, Poland and Hungary after the war. There was one account of a woman having her fetus cut out of her belly and replaced with a dachshund. That sort of thing.
These are the kinds of people the US government allied itself with in the "good war." Not that the English, American and French troops didn't get in on any of the looting and raping fun. Plenty of them did, to the dismay of many German women. There are also accounts however, for example, of French POWs and the POWs of other nations dying trying to protect German women and children from the tender mercies of the Red Army.
.
This was before they started handing them out like candy. See John "Swift Boat" Kerry.
Ex-Ranger Farmer to Fanning:
At the very least Israel could send thank you notes to the troops, or hell, maybe even nice little gift baskets.
The Zionists will completely use up and destroy the United States for the sake of Israel, if that's what it takes.
Why else do you think our military has been tear-assing around the Middle East for the last 13 years?
Recommend reading:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Host-Parasite-Israels-Consumed/dp/1450590349
"...only two intelligence agencies had the expertise, assets, access and political protection to execute 9/11 in the air and on the ground: our CIA and Israel's Mossad. Only one had the incentive, using the “who benefits” principle: Mossad. And that incentive dovetailed perfectly with the neo-con’s agenda and explicitly expressed need for a catalytic event to mobilize the American public for their wars, using American military power to destroy Israel’s enemies."
-Dr Alan Sabrosky
There is a lot of issues expressed and unresolved in Ranger Fanning's letter. I expect that he will stop expressing them to all but fellow veterans before too long. But he may never resolve them to his own satisfaction.
As for the rest of us, who also see through the hypocrisy and the farce, it is better to keep this viewpoint to ourselves, whenever the "Parade Day Patriots" are using veterans as props to celebrate their own sense of exceptionalism. It does the vets involved no good to be dragged into the controversy.
Robert Scheer, late of the LA Times and now publisher of "Truthdig," wrote a great essay on why it's dangerous and disingenuous to attempt to turn a human being into a "hero."
So glad you wrote this.. Turns out I dont give a shit if one "thanks me for my service". But I have to smile and be bothered and work thourgh an awkard moment...For your sake....My time was spent doing something you have no idea. Dealing with dead and dying, the aftermath, and reality. Just because that makes you sad gives you zero right to talk to me. So everytime in my normal daily life you choose to remind me of a low point for your sake...Fuck off.
Swallow that emotion for my sake and lets play current life. I can see those that appreciate freedom for what it was/remains.
Thank me in private if you have to. Even that sucks. If I determine you are smart enough to understand I will probably just put you in the possible friend box and open the box from my side.
A sucking chest wound is natures way of saying that your ass has been ambushed!!!!!
Lot of old veterans (I'm one) and young veterans question their "service."
I still carry lots of guilt for my small part in the Vietnam War era, but have tried in 45 years to reverse my crimes and misdemeanors like the one(s) I mentioned below.
"Imagine my surprise, however, after completing basic training, to read official orders that I was assigned to Security Police school, right there on Lackland AFB. Most security policemen were eventually sent to Vietnam to secure the perimeters and guard the 'Bufs,' B-52s or "Big Ugly Fuckers" as they were called. So all of my calculation, whether on moral grounds or self-preservation, had been thwarted. Angered at what I saw as a betrayal, I took off from Lackland AFB that very same evening in a stolen car and headed for Canada."
Soldier: Just Say No, I Won't GoDeleted.
War is a racket.
War is a racket, not because I say it or because some pinko communist feminazi says it. War is a racket , because the people who fought say it. Because the highest decorated marine in history said it.
An unpleasant fact is better accepted when the person saying it has credibility.
This has implications for all of us depending our level of expertise.
Actually Butler was turning socialist when he made his revelations public.
However, his summary of his career and revelations of what his career really meant to America, the world and ones running the racket:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and 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 benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might 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.
The video presentation of his speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3_EXqJ8f-0
Complete text of his speech: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
An American citizen, not US subject.
"The 28th. amendment to the Constitution:
Being the seriousness of a declaration of war and the threat presumed to face the country,upon commencement of war, all of those and their children that voted for the declaration must go, ad go first. All banksters and their children must go as well, and first as well. All with contracts to supply the war effort must also send their children and one other relative to substitute for themselves."
Well. Military service isn't for every one. I felt uncomfortable about getting thanked for my time in service, and still do. I didn't join to receive accolades. I joined because that was in my DNA. My family has been in almost every conflict we've had since before this was a country. It was always something I knew I'd do. At the basest level, I suppose it was self-actualization. I was a very good Marine Infantryman. However, after my extension was up. I knew it was time to get out. I'm no hero. I had friends die in foreign lands for absolutely no reason at all. These were good men by any account. All intelligent, compassionate , funny and down to earth. They died for no reason. What a waste.
The US is simply not committed to winning wars, because the American public does not have the stomach to accept the casualties, or to essentially commit genocide on our enemies. That's war. The trifling bullshit we've done as a military force only leads to protracted,generally small.scale conflicts, which the US public will lose interest in because it gets boring, and expensive. If the US truly wants a war with another nation, they be fully commited as a nation. If that is not possible, then there really is no reason to go to war in the first place.
There will be a time for heros again soon I'm afraid. But these heros will arise fighting against their fellow Americans. I can only hope that the Constitution will remain intact at the end of such tribulations. Lord knows that the assholes running this asylum now aren't using it.
Thanks for summing it up. I agree with you.
"a time for heros" our side or theirs?... without "heros" doing their masters bidding we would have a better world.