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I don't know if this is allowed but this post, imo, by HamstersfromHell is the best response to that poster that was leaving. I just wanted others here to read it in case they missed it before. Mods, please have mercy.:-)
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HamstersFromHell (430 posts) Sat Feb-26-05 03:20 AM
Response to Original message
#133. I find this whole thing to be rather disingenuous.
To come in with flag waving awards and "see what I did" mom and pop and apple pie "patriotism" while espousing to support the troops, then saying "I can't take it, so I'm leaving" kinda reeks. Especially knowing it'd turn into a full blown flame war. Then you stick around to argue with those who don't see it your way.
To me supporting our troops means getting them home from an illegal occupation of a soverign nation NOW.
As someone else pointed out, we (as a country) haven't engaged in a legitimate "war" of self-defense since Pearl Harbor, and if you cared to really examine that, the Japanses were forced to the point of attacking by U.S. foreign policy toward them. All the rest, call them "wars" or "police actions" have been mostly proactive aggressions against other nations.
Those who were drafted never had a real "choice"...fight for the policy of our "leadership", be imprisoned or leave the country.
The rest of our fathers, mothers, sons and daughters volunteered for that job. Either out of a sense of some moral values they held regarding the particular conflict our nation was involved in, or else out of the mere fact that they needed a paycheck too. (Does anyone else remember the MAD magazine take off of a recruiting poster from the '70's "De Poor, De Colored, De Marines"?) I would imagine there are other reasons as well, known and not known to me and/or others in this forum.
It still stands that all those who volunteered did so knowing full well they might be asked to put themselves in harm's way, perhaps some of them praying to themselves all along that they might be able to serve long enough to be able to have the government pay their way through college without ever being called to see a battlefield, much less actually kill another human being. Nonetheless, they are now being called on to kill or be killed in yet another foreign policy blunder of yet another misguided administration.
Most of those National Guardsmen probably figured they were never going to have to see anything worse then helping police some street in our own country when some unforseen natural disaster hit.
Still, they volunteered. "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it."
Believe me, I support the troops. But like so many here, I see this administration's "photo opping" and "sound biting" of this illegal war. Calling a spade a spade (in the opinions we're allegedly allowed to have here) doesn't automatically equal not supporting the troops, just because you happen to see it that way. You have your opinions, other may see it your way, some may differ. If you don't like what you see, use Alert (in case of rules breaking) or Ignore.
But spare me that no matter what you've done to help our troops, that we all owe them any more debt of gratitude than to our own law enforcement officers or our firefighters, who face those very same dangers every day right here in our own country. They volunteered too.
They have one thing our troops don't have. They can decide enough is enough and quit. It seems you've availed yourself of that option as well.
So if you have decided enough is enough, go ahead and quit. But don't tell anyone else how they should support anything. You've lost that high ground, since those dads, moms, sons and daughters you claim to support can't say to themselves the very same thing: "I can't take this anymore, I'm going to quit." If you want to quit, fine, do so, but don't "quit" by claiming you're the sole proprietor of the moral high ground and tossing verbal incindiary grenades down the hill just to see who'll bite.
Stay or leave, you make that call. I'll engage any intelligent discussion. Either way, I wish you well.
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Hey, did I just do a Jeff Gannon?:-)
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