Ron Kovic: Raise Your Voices, Protest, Stop These Wars

[marmar]

from truthdig:




Posted on Dec 31, 2010
By Ron Kovic


As a former United States Marine Corps infantry sergeant who was shot and paralyzed from the mid-chest down on Jan. 20, 1968, during my second tour of duty in Vietnam, and as someone who has lived with the wounds of that war for over 40 years, I am writing this letter to ask you to join me as we begin a critical new phase in the growing anti-war movement.

Many of you have already served multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. You have been coming home now for almost 10 years. Many have begun to question, to doubt these wars and our leaders. More than 2 million of you have served honorably in both theaters of conflict. Though many years separate us, we are brothers and sisters.

Though we have fought in conflicts generations apart, we have all been to the same place. We know what war is. We understand it, and for many of us, our lives will never be the same again. In many ways, we represent a very powerful force in our country—a moral, spiritual, and political high ground that is unassailable, a potential to transform our nation that is undeniable. No one knows peace or the preciousness of life better than the soldiers who have fought in war, or been affected by it directly; the mother of a son who has died; a wife who will never see her husband again; a child who will never have a father; a father who will never see his son again.

For it is we who live with the physical and emotional scars of war, and we who live with these wounds every day and feel their weight and pain every morning. It is we who have walked and wheeled through the streets of our country and watched children stare at us and wonder why. And it is we who cry out now for the future, for a world without war. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/raise_your_voices_protest_stop_these_wars_20101231/

[briteleaf]

1. Priorities and War

I would suggest that while America continues it's longest war in history that the lives of our soldiers are no longer important to Americans. Yeah, all the hands go up when you ask if we support our troops but the sad fact is that we don't have hundreds of citizens standing in the cold to protest our country's misuse of it's military. Maybe it's because soldiers are mostly low income Americans we don't mind sacrificing? America's military is larger than all the military of the rest of the world combined. Why? Because war is big business and makes a lot of money. Tax dollars Americans pay from their decreasing incomes. Big business runs this country and we have become a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy). Our wars are massive holes in the bucket of our economy where trillions of dollars have poured out onto the ground along with the blood of our soldiers. Please find a way to convince me that we wouldn't be better off spending all those tax dollars on improving our horrible schools, failing infrastructures and out-of-control healthcare costs. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were both horrible mistakes. Why is it so hard to admit that, pull out and scale back our military? International politics are important but not more important than the lives and economic welfare of our citizens.

[azul]

2. Ron Kovic makes me cry

"Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done.
How is it you come to be this way?"
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away.

"Don't you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud.
You wasn't there standing in my shoes."

"Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I'm a-tryin' to kill somebody or die tryin'.
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine."

Oh! Lord! Just like mine!

"And I couldn't help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink,
That I was just a puppet in a play.
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke,
And a cannon ball blew my eyes away."

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein' the metal brace that helped him stand.
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand.
-Bob Dylan

[Doctor_J]

3. Well written, but foolhardy

I am a huge fan of Sgt. Kovic, but we citizens have no more power to stop the war than we do of making the sun come up in the west tomorrow. This government no longer serves us. 3 million or more tried to stop it before it began, to absolutely zero effect.

If we want to regain our voice, we will have to start by doing something drastic about this country's media. Nothing will change until that happens.

[saras]

4. Who is fighting the war?

Who exactly is fighting the war if not 'us citizens'? The ones who join the military, the ones who work for the private agencies involved, the ones who manufacture the weapons, the ones who fill out the paperwork, the ones who fill the needs of the warmakers at home and abroad.

If you meant to say 'us war protesters', that's another matter entirely.