posted on July 18, 2003 07:30:32 AM new
Real vets are aganist war, why because they know what blood and guts are, they have seen what war does, and they know war does no good, and wouldn't wish war upon any one, plus they know war is for the rich and not for the average citizen who is just cannon folder for the rich coperate powers whose only concern is themselves and immediate family, and you sure don't see the war mongors kids fighting. Also war wreaks the ecomony,cause only a small few prosper, compared to peace where a lot more prosper.
BUSH IS A COWARD
By Jack Balkwill
Online Journal Contributing Writer
"I rode a tank in the generals' rank
when the blitzkrieg raged
and the bodies stank"
—Mick Jagger, "Sympathy for the Devil"
July 15, 2003—Bush is a coward. I am the one who took his place in Vietnam, so I should know.
Corporate media have convinced the masses of a fictitious warrior Bush, who is a hero. This has been effective, as a neighbor recently told me, "If Gore had been elected, he wouldn't have had the guts to attack Iraq." My heart sank when I heard that, as I cannot fathom how it "takes guts" to order bombs to be dropped on children. Only cowards can do such things. Cowards who desert from war themselves while insisting that the working class bleed and die for the excesses of their national security state.
I have marched for peace many times with friends who are war veterans, and others who are long veterans of the peace movement. I opposed all of the Bush wars—the invasion of Panama, Afghanistan, the various Iraqi Wars. I opposed Daddy Bush's arming Saddam and protecting him politically for so long. Daddy Bush was the pilot who bailed out on his crew, leaving them to crash and die in WW2. Cowardice runs deep in the Bush family.
During the Vietnam War, when Bush deserted from the Texas National Guard, the National Security State found itself to be one short on cannon fodder, so they sent me. A member of the peasant class, I was expendable. Bush loved the war up to the point of actually risking his own "investment class" ass, to employ a favorite term of his father. He supported the war mind you—has always enjoyed killing, setting the all-time execution record for governors, though brother Jeb has competed well in Florida.
I was at Fort Meade, Maryland, for three months prior to being sent to Vietnam. My military bosses assured me they had friends in the Pentagon who could keep me from going to war. A lieutenant was dispatched to the Pentagon with a full-time job of wandering the halls in pursuit of this. The friends proved to be less powerful than believed, and I became an advisor to combat units for US Army Vietnam and Military Assistance Command, traveling all over the country to daily witness the hatred, greed and delusion of war, the lowest activity of my species.
I was an ignorant kid who knew nothing about what was happening. Nothing in my life had prepared me for understanding. My working class father voted Republican, because Eisenhower was a Republican and like him, a World War Two vet. I didn't even know there was a peace movement, as I was sent before it surged in 1966. The Stars and Stripes newspaper in Vietnam was so full of propaganda that by comparison the Wall Street Journal is objective on national security matters. I didn't know that the South Vietnamese government was a corrupt cesspool hated by its people and forced down their throats by old fashioned imperialism. Most of us went in order to avoid prison (we also had the choice of suicide, taken by more than 60,000 vets of that war since).
My heroes are those who oppose war, which is the only sane approach to it. Those who stand up to the warmongers have suffered greatly, often beaten and jailed, and sometimes murdered for that position. Martin Luther King, Jr., appeared to know where it would get him when he said, "I may not get there with you . . ." He had called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" not long before the bullet tore into his flesh. But the cowardly Bush can't get enough of war.
I have been under fire for days at a time, with such fear beyond fear that it really requires a new word. Those who order wars never see the bleeding or hear the screams. I have seen rivers of blood and have given thanks for the insane roar of battle when it hid the screams of my comrades, to keep me from going entirely mad. But Bush can order a war casually, just before his golf game.
In a nightmare I faced Bush and said "You cowardly son of a #*!@, I took your place in Vietnam." I could see in his glazed, alcoholic eyes the denial which kept him from understanding. His handlers convinced him that if he put on a flight suit and flew to an aircraft carrier, he must be a hero (even if it cost $800,000 as it underscored the hypocrisy of his "fiscal conservative" claim, habitually unnoticed by corporate media as the national debt soars).
On 9/11, when the nation needed leadership, Bush hid at an Air Force Base. The most protected person on the planet went into hiding, not because he was in danger, but because he is a coward. I cannot imagine another president who would have hid like that. Even the spineless Nixon would have seen it is the job of a president to go to the White House and assure the masses that everything is under control.
The Democrats seem unable to locate an issue with which to oppose Bush, most having voted for everything he's requested to date. May I suggest the truth? The single image Bush has promoted is flag-waving hero of the Republic. The evidence proves he is a coward.
Jack Balkwill is a Vietnam veteran who has won national writing awards for poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Mr. Balkwill owns the web site Liberty Underground of Virginia (LUV). Mr. Balkwill encourages your comments and can be reached at [email protected]
posted on July 18, 2003 07:54:58 AM new No matter how well prepared for war we may be, no matter how certain we are that within 24 hours we could destroy Kuibyshev and Moscow and Lenningrad and Baku and all the other places that would allow the Soviets to carry on war, I want you [a group of military officers] to carry this question home with you: Gain such a victory, and what do you do with it? Here would be a great area from the Elbe to Vladivostok and down through Southeast Asia torn up and destroyed without government, without its communications, just an area of starvation and disaster. I ask you what would the civilized world do about it? I repeat, there is no victory in any war except through our imagination, through our dedication, and through our work to avoid it."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity
posted on July 18, 2003 11:48:06 AM new
I had a friend over the other day. We were talking about the crap going down in Iraq.
He suggested we bring over some Korean Marines. Said they knew how to find whatever was hidden in a village in Nam.
They would take the leader of the village and ask if there were any weapons in the village. He's say No. they would find some so they would break his arms.
They would take the next in line and ask the same question. He'd say no, they would find weapons and they would break his or her legs. The next in line was asked the same question but told they would be killed if any more weapons were found. May have took a while but things got cleared up. The village and/or what was being looked for was found or cleaned up.
We both think it may work well in Iraq.
Amen,
Hard times call for a hard line,
Reverend Colin
And if they were telling the truth the whole time? Do they just get a simple apology and the marines move on to torture the next village while the villagers writhe in agony? Will a simple "oops" make it all better?
I'm glad you and your "friends" don't control the country......What a bunch of madmen you must be!
posted on July 18, 2003 05:51:22 PM new
Surely colon, you’re smart enough to figure out that threatening to rip up one of their children right in front of them would be far more effective in eliciting information.
Did you and your buddy talk about the crap going down in America.
This sort of attitude is why blokes like your t-shirt & leather wearing ‘buddies’ end up with all the trollops. Nice girls don’t want you. Enjoy your bikie moles.
posted on July 18, 2003 05:59:18 PM new
Whatever they had in their village in their country was none of our business which is why they kicked our fat arrogant American asses out of their country.
To suggest these techniques work is not correct, they don't. They tend to change the way you are perceived into that of an enemy and only strengthen your opponents resolve.
posted on July 18, 2003 06:19:14 PM new
The ROK soldgers were some of the toughest & most fearsome fighters of the entire war. If they had replaced the S Viet army, there would have been no N Viet Nam.
For those who fight to protect it, freedom has a flavor that the protected will never know.
posted on July 19, 2003 03:27:22 AM new
It seems the people from Lalaville don't get the point. It's a war not a game. People die.
If nothing was found..no one was hurt. Nothing was said about children but one of the leftist had to throw that in for color. Seems they always have to use falsehoods and misdirection to get their point across.
Most, if not all the Vets I know understand why we went into Iraq. Most are not war mongers but understand if we want peace we have to fight for it.
And Assey, I'd rather have those bikie moles then the whimpering young boys you must be involved with. Wish you were closer, I'd have my wife B*tchslap ya.
Amen,
"A coward dies a thousand deaths."
Reverend Colin
posted on July 19, 2003 09:24:47 AM new
Soldiers go because theirs is not to question why.
colin “Nothing was said about children but one of the leftist had to throw that in for color.”
Sure thing col’ I’ll agree with you there, you didn’t mention children.
But on the contrary, you are one engaging in “misdirection”
colin “If nothing was found..no one was hurt.”
Tell that to Iraq.
Save your b.s. for your simple petrol head mates.
Perhaps that’s why there is no point in America signing any agreements to persecute war crims, because no children died at American hands in Iraq or Vietnam.
posted on July 19, 2003 11:09:25 AM new
Austbounty, where are these supposed "War Criminals" going to be prosecuted?
I have already pointed out in another thread, that even the Belgians realize what a weak and ineffective court that was and will no longer be operating except against other Belgians.
Besides who is to decide what a "war criminal" is? Certainly not you...
posted on July 19, 2003 07:13:35 PM new
As it stands, it doesn’t seem to matter whose laws are being violated, US leadership will still do as it pleases. (eg. Guantanamo Bay).
This prison was set up there so the prisoners wouldn’t be subject to US laws.
At this stage US does as it pleases, not because it has ‘right’ on it’s side but because it can.
Be smart enough and forthright enough to admit that ‘some’ US Soldiers & leaders have and will engage in atrocities. To say otherwise would make you a liar or a fool.
Who will decide?…Bush?
He has proven that he is willing to make a call even in the absence of evidence, just as he would in the face of overwhelming opposing evidence.
American leaders refuse to recognise any other laws, they even refuse to obey their own.
So we go along with it for now, because America is holding all the aces, and keeps pulling more out of the sleave.
Opposition is compelled to take ‘all and any action’ because ‘reason’ ‘fairness’ ‘justice’ will not be heeded.
If we don’t bend a little, we may be forced to snap.
posted on July 20, 2003 04:46:27 PM new
"Appalling or atrocious condition, quality, or behavior; monstrousness. An appalling or atrocious act, situation, or object, especially an act of unusual or illegal cruelty inflicted by an armed force on civilians or prisoners."
I wonder whatever happened to that British soldier who had photos of an Iraqi prisoner hanging by his feet and the British soldiers committed sexual acts around him.
posted on July 20, 2003 05:17:31 PM new
Clarksville,
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of these things but it doesn’t sound much worse than what our own troops have done to another ‘comrade’.
I think that the purpose of Geneva Conventions etc’ are to restrain those in higher positions, the leadership.
I think humanity at large would be happy to consider a ‘Dallas Convention’ so the world can know that ‘what’s good for the goose…’.
12…It’s so easy for you to dismiss any opposition to anything American as simply ‘anti-American’ unless brought on by the extreme right.
It seems that you only want a US laise-faire military policy.
The whole world is not about to sit back, to be excluded from a defiant ‘new American century’.
This policy/mindset represents a colonialist threat to the world.
It’s clear; look at Guantanamo Bay, a law unto itself.
I’m not anti-American, you are anti-World.
It matters little what I think, but there is much resentment growing from outside USA and within for what appear, fascist and totalitarian actions by US powers that be.
They are screwing you too!
posted on July 20, 2003 07:06:20 PM new
austbounty
I am sorry that you misunderstood my post. When I was writing it, the British handling of the Iraqi person came to my mine.
I agree with you. American military personnel from The Revolutionary War to current times, have done much worse.
This even includes leaving women in foreign countries pregnant, whick I think is a disgrace to Americans. I also knew one male sargeant who ran a cat house in South Korea with Korean women as the servers.
posted on July 20, 2003 07:22:23 PM new
July 20, 2003
2 U.S. soldiers killed near Mosul, 10,000 Muslims stage anti-American rally
Four killed in the last 48 hours.
July 20, 2003
BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's daily barrage of attacks killed two more U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi employee of a UN-affiliated relief agency Sunday, while thousands of followers of a hardline Shiite Muslim cleric staged an anti-American protest in the holy city of Najaf.
The two U.S. soldiers died when rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire struck their convoy early Sunday near Tal Afar, a town west of the northern city of Mosul, said military spokesman Cpl. Todd Pruden. Another soldier was injured. All the victims were from the 101st Airborne Division.
The deaths brought to 151 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since the March 20 start of war - four more than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Also Sunday, a U.S. soldier was killed and two others injured when their vehicle crashed and flipped over near Baghdad International Airport, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla.
