posted on April 7, 2003 03:42:31 PM newAWESOME, colin!!! Thank you for sharing this!!!
"Be kind. Remember everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Harry Thompson
"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 I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it." - A Few Good Men
posted on April 7, 2003 04:58:58 PM new
I read Peggy's column most every week. Smart, articulate, compassionate woman. When I read this column this morning, a little sense of sadness came over me upon reading she wouldn't be writing for the WSJ for a while. I'll miss reading her 'take' on the issues.
And yes, I agree with her assessment of President Bush.....it's nice to have a leader with a 'Backbone'. Make those hard calls, deal with all the dissent and still go forward with what you think needs to do be done.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
[ edited by Linda_K on Apr 7, 2003 05:00 PM ]
posted on April 7, 2003 05:04:03 PM new
And to add to it:
WONDER LAND
The Anti-Woodstock Young Americans hit the beach.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER Friday, April 4, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Here's a two-word phrase you don't see or hear much anymore: young adults. It sank beneath the waves of a more recent, more powerful force: the "youth culture."
The youth culture in America is a lifestyle, emphasizing the one thing that youth tend to be very good at: thinking about themselves. Pridefully inner-directed, it opens itself to the outer world primarily in two ways: style and "attitude." Membership in the youth culture is defined by mass marketers as a "demographic," which begins about the age of 12 and runs without interruption to the age of 35. A "young adult" is an anachronism.
Some say the youth culture began at Woodstock, the celebration of song, self and mud in 1969. Perhaps the beginning of the end of that era is taking place right now in a similarly grimy but singularly other-directed gathering of young-adult Americans in the Iraqi desert. This war is the anti-Woodstock.
At Woodstock, the idea was born to love the one you're with, meaning whoever was handy. In Iraq this week, one of the embedded reporters, CNN's Martin Savidge, came across the new meaning of love the one you're with.
Mr. Savidge offered four young Marines a chance to call home on his satellite video phone. Instead, one of the Marines ran off to get his sergeant, who hadn't talked to his pregnant wife in three months. Mr. Savidge offered the phone to the other three. They said they'd use the phone time to call the parents of Lance Cpl. Brian Buesing, who died last week near Nasiriya. "Where do they get young men like this?" Mr. Savidge asked.
There is an answer to that question. It was provided in this newspaper nearly eight years ago by our then-Pentagon reporter Tom Ricks. Mr. Ricks did what became a famous piece on the training of Marines on Parris Island for the new, all-professional U.S. military. "Parris Island routinely transforms the Beavises and Butt-Heads of America into United States Marines. After 11 weeks here, recruits emerge self-disciplined, with a serious bearing. They are drug-free, physically fit and courteous to their elders. They have overcome deep differences of class and race and learned to live and work as a team."
The core of Mr. Ricks' piece, however, was not this training, but the resulting alienation these young Marines often felt from their peers back in "the world." For example, Mr. Ricks noted: "Once notoriously foul-mouthed, Parris Island's drill instructors today are forbidden to use obscenities. At the same time, their recruits arrive steeped in casual vulgarity from pop music, cable TV and everyday conversation." That of course remains our culture; in the military, it's left behind.
I am not suggesting that all young people need a tour through Parris Island. Despite the persuasive arguments for the benefits of universal service, the Pentagon will never go back, preferring young men and women who've at least shown a commitment to the military's culture of selflessness. But for two weeks now we have watched, in random interviews, remarkably well-spoken, courteous and other-directed 26-year-old American adults. These young soldiers seem without modernist guile; they show no need, or inclination, to create an ironic, snickering distance between themselves and everything around them. What I am suggesting is that maybe it's time for the "youth culture" back home to think about growing up.
Even antiwar protests now get reduced to a kind of goofy joke, as with the recent "Puke-In for Peace" in San Francisco, featuring forced vomiting by some protesters. Or wearing a big smile and a baseball cap to accept an Oscar and insult the President of the United States. This is infantilism. This isn't protest by people concerned about what is going on over there; it's about drawing attention to them, to "me."
Young America's Journey to the Center of Me started about 20 years ago. I learned this when a newly graduated Wall Street Journal reporter back then recounted to me how when she arrived as a freshman at Princeton University, from Beverly Hills High in California, her Eastern classmates thought she was virtually a shaman because of her ability to talk, for hours, about herself. "But I'd been doing that for years in high school," she said. Twenty years later, perhaps the most totemic program on TV is "Sex and the City," often funny but always about narcissistic self-absorption.
But for all the seeming knowingness and sophistication, this is a culture that at its heart is puerile. It's the world of Peter Pan, a kind of Neverland where one never ever has to grow up. It's just about this time every year that MTV cranks out "Spring Break" from Florida's beach, beer and boob utopias. Yes, it was ever thus and probably harmless, but this is the aspect of younger life in America that now seems to carry the most peer weight. And so some escape into the armed forces, and end up fighting for the U.S. in Iraq.
This is a culture, for instance, that just now is determined to turn Jessica Lynch into a celebrity. Last week she was a 19-year-old from West Virginia who'd volunteered for the Army and was doing her job on a maintenance crew. But you know for a fact that Larry King, Katie Couric and many others are moving heaven and earth to get her on TV to talk about, what else, herself.
But the long-running infatuation with celebrity, now manifesting itself in the everyman celebritydom of reality-TV shows, is the inverse of the military's values on display this week--a world in which it's considered attractive to subordinate one's inner needs long enough for some common good to prevail.
We're not talking about mindless military robots, either. The Rangers who rescued Jessica may subordinate self to a cause or plan, but success also depends crucially on initiative, improvisation and individual courage. Together, these are the attributes of young adulthood. For a few weeks anyway, it's nice to see them being celebrated in prime time.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
posted on April 7, 2003 05:24:45 PM new
GREAT article, bear!
"Be kind. Remember everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Harry Thompson
"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 I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it." - A Few Good Men
posted on April 7, 2003 05:40:45 PM new
Especially touching to me, bear, was the paragraph in your article when Mr. Savidge offered those four Marines use of his phone. Their actions speak loudly for what wonderful young men they have grown up to be. Thanks for sharing that one.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 8, 2003 05:25:09 AM new
I saw this picture this morning, and it reminded me of your post, bear...
"Be kind. Remember everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Harry Thompson
"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 I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it." - A Few Good Men
posted on April 8, 2003 05:47:23 AM new
"Especially touching to me, bear, was the paragraph in your article when Mr. Savidge offered those four Marines use of his phone. Their actions speak loudly for what wonderful young men they have grown up to be."
You'd think after the endless procession of George Carlin essays, Grisly Torture Morgues, Chemical Exposures, reports of Scuds that were never fired, and all the other breathlessly posted fakeries, people would wise up. But some people swallow it all.
posted on April 8, 2003 06:24:55 AM new
donny, do you ever have anything nice to say? Do you ever find the -good- in something?
"Be kind. Remember everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Harry Thompson
"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 I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it." - A Few Good Men
posted on April 8, 2003 06:34:02 AM new
Thanks for link donny, only way your ever going to be believed...
But you should of posted this:
The piece is turning up in inboxes everywhere because it captures the essence of what we most want to believe about the young Americans now serving in Iraq, that they are heroically selfless. And on this we cannot help but agree.
posted on April 8, 2003 06:48:17 AM new
12,
When your only view of War and Honor is through a video Game or left leaning media, you may have a twisted sense of reality.
posted on April 8, 2003 07:17:55 AM new
"But you should of posted this:
"The piece is turning up in inboxes everywhere because it captures the essence of what we most want to believe about the young Americans now serving in Iraq, that they are heroically selfless. And on this we cannot help but agree." "
That shouldn't have to be posted, it's obvious.
People want to believe what they want to believe, so they swallow anything that fits with their preconceived notions... People want to feel, and don't want to think. Appeal to some mawkish emotion that fits a preconceived notion, and people eat it up and regurgitate it to the delight of themselves and others.
posted on April 8, 2003 10:13:51 AM newMartin, like many other journalists, has occasionally lent his phone to members of the military so that they could make personal calls from the field, and other news organizations have mentioned these sorts of calls in their reporting. Okay so Martin wasn't the one who wrote of this happening 'under his watch'. That doesn't diminish the fact that these 'goodwill' gestures are a common quality exhibited by our service men/women towards each other and to others. And it also doesn't make everything else written in the article incorrect either.
People want to believe what they want to believe, so they swallow anything that fits with their preconceived notions... People want to feel, and don't want to think. Some people can do both, donny. Some can only do one or the other. Some can never 'feel' they won't allow themselves to 'feel'. They somehow have become 'harden' in their lives and can't or don't want to accept that basically people are good...and that many do find it very easy to put others before themselves. It's not a matter of swallowing anything that fits their preconceived notions. For me it comes from my personal experiences with those who serve our country. I've witnessed things like this many times in my life, and it gives me hope for our future that our young people aren't ALL into this "me" type of thinking.
Read what some of our service men are doing for the Iraqi people right now. Their compassion for the people of Iraq has rarely been duplicated by an 'aggressor' in war times. I'm proud of our service men/women for their bravery and their show of character.
The fact that this one journalist isn't the one that witnessed this behavior, doesn't in even the tiniest
way, keep me from believing many soldiers do put their 'brother' first. Personal experience comes into play here also. What we've witnessed in our lives. It's easy to 'buy' into this behavior when you've witnessed it from those you've know, who have served their country. It gives one a respect that these soldiers have earned. Not anywhere near the same character of those who were protesting by having a 'vomit protest', a protest that shuts down a city, or a protest that blocks the needed supplies going to our troops do. Finding those behaviors acceptable, and defending them, say something to their character too.
morning rant over.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
[ edited by Linda_K on Apr 8, 2003 10:18 AM ]
posted on April 8, 2003 10:43:23 AM new
"Read what some of our service men are doing for the Iraqi people right now."
The service people have gone over there to kill Iraqi people, Linda. This is what war is about.
Over and over you've grasped on to any apocryphal story you could to reinforce your idea that we're good and they're evil. Our guys are selfless heroes, and Saddam's regime forced 17 people into one truck so they could run that checkpoint. We've gone over there to pass out flags and receive flowers, while they're committing war crimes. It must have been something in the water here in the states that turned some of our Air Force cadets into rapists, apparently the water in Iraq made every service person a saint. I don't think there's a hoax or mistaken story you've missed jumping on that would serve to prop up your notions.
"Read what some of our service men are doing for the Iraqi people right now."
posted on April 8, 2003 10:58:32 AM new
Yes, donny unlike you I do support and defend my country and it's actions/practices, even war, over a country like Iraq. I will never apologize for that fact.
If you think both our form of government and the government the Iraqi's live under are the same....then maybe you'd be just as comfortable living there, under Saddam's regime as you enjoy the freedom's you have here. You know they're not the same. You know the freedoms you enjoy here. And many of those freedoms have come because our country HAS gone to war when it's felt it was necessary. Just like this war.
You don't support your government, fine.....but don't find fault with those of us to do feel and have MUCH appreciation for our history compared to the history of Saddam's regime. If you're comparing the two and judging them equal/the same as the US.... you are sadly mistaken.
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate. J. Ruskin
posted on April 8, 2003 01:47:35 PM new
"Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
-- From "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" by George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine, 1998
posted on April 8, 2003 05:31:45 PM new
Gee Wizzzzz,
I'm turning into a real WAR MONGER.
I want us to go directely to Syria.
Do not pass go.
Do collect a bunch of dead terrorist and any of the WOMD that may or may not have been transferred there.
After all, We're on a roll. Lets take care of business.
Amen,
Not happy till all the Terrorist are DEAD,
Reverend Colin
- Harry Thompson
