The most patriotic way to honor future veterans of foreign wars is not to create any unnecessarily.
10 Retweet 0 Share 6 Google +1 0 StumbleUpon 0 Printer Friendly Send via email
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off | Print
Veterans Day
Posted on 11/11/2009 by Juan Cole
Veterans Day
Posted on 11/11/2009 by Juan Cole
The most patriotic way to honor future veterans of foreign wars is not to create any unnecessarily.
10 Retweet 0 Share 1 Google +1 0 StumbleUpon 0 Printer Friendly Send via email
Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments | Print
§ 16 Responses to “Veterans Day”
§ Leave a Reply
Juan Cole
Welcome to Informed Comment, where I do my best to provide an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics.
Informed Comment is made possible by your support. If you value the information and essays, I make available and write here, please take a moment to contribute what you can.
Keep up with Informed Comment at:
Google+
.
also a pretty good way to honor vets of wars past.
.
Amen, brother.
Hey Juan, I posted your quote on another site and someone there seems to thinnk you should attrb to someone?
Is that your quote or anothers?
Great, except for the last word.
Agreed. It would also go a long way towards honoring past vets too!
In the future we won't be honoring veterans as much as pushing them around in wheelchairs and providing them with high doses of SSRI's and other 'chill out' medications. How many of you folks out there have visited the damaged vets in a VA hospital lately? I rest my case.
Good point! Seems hard for our leaders to understand though, for some reason. Along the same lines, did you see this? link to bellesandbulls.com
But it is our Patriotic Duty to bomb the living sh*t out of countries whose rulers disagree with ours!
Preferably with nukes.
/sarcasm
cicely
Support the troops, bring them home out of harm's way, and support those who have injuries or PTSD or depression!
and may i quote you?
Heroes are created by cowards and romantics in order to lift the spirit from depressive realities.
War has given us too many excuses to despair and abandon ideals.
I prefer to honor the living instead.
Amen. May the God of Peace bring the dream to reality.
I think Americans should follow like other nations and pay a bit more respect. I like the idea that Canadians have by wearing the poppy from Nov 1st through November 11th or at least on Nov 11th.
Selling the poppies for whatever a person wants to donate also helps raise funds for Vets and their families…. EXCELLENT IDEA!!
Since 2007, more than 70,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury — more than 20,000 of them this year. “The notion of ‘a wheeled armored constabulary force’ as a prescription for a close combat situation is nonsense.” ref: Afghan insurgents make wreckage of U.S. armored vehicles. Soldiers spoke out of what they said was a heightened concern about their vehicles' vulnerability to ambushes, especially on mountain roads where there's no room for the vehicles to turn around. The hideously expensive ($1+ million USD per vehicle), grossly overweight (7 to 24 tons, depending on the model), modern American armored truck: prone to rolling over because of its high center of gravity; unable to operate off-road, yet susceptible to electrocution of its occupants as a result of hitting power lines; incapable of either fording muddy streams, or traversing most bridges; impossible to air-lift by C-130 aircraft, requiring C-17's (at $750,000. per lift) or specialized sealift and overland carriers; consuming obscene quantities of fuel, even while not moving ~ to sustain all its electronic and life support systems in the middle of a hostile desert…
…unsure of where it's going, yet unable to turn around; by design destined to be used over and over again until expended; unlikely, ever to come home again, whole. I can think of no better metaphor for "our strategy" during this War, than the illusion that a Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected vehicle suitable for the purpose of military occupation, exists.
This post is an original Cole aphorism. I take it as a compliment that some were wondering to whom it should be attributed.
@ MonsieurGonzo
Your comment is very informative, and probably correct.
But these guys are wandering across country' delivering democracy' aren't they?
Who would want to destroy someone delivering democracy?
Maybe they really don't like us because we're 'Free'.
The post assumes we must have wars. Why must we make that assumption? I would like to see a commitment to peace replace our present commitment to endless wars. Such a shift in thinking would honor present soldiers, past living soldiers, and future soldiers.
I agree with the poster who said our focus should be on honoring the living. The hero worship of fallen soldiers we presently engage in primarily operates to encourage more wars, it does not direct us towards peace.