War supporters feel adrift as tide turns

[stevedeshazer]

Iraq anniversary - Some families of the dead, vets and others feel isolated as anti-war rallies are planned in Portland and the U.S.

From Saturday's 'Oregonian': http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1174101932120460.xml&coll=7

<snip>

As thousands of anti-war protestors take to the streets Sunday in Portland, Elfriede Plumondore will do her best to tune them out.

"I pretty much try to ignore them," said the Gresham mother of a young U.S. Army soldier killed in Iraq two years ago. "I'd probably get into a verbal spat with them. I don't think they're all that intelligent, to be perfectly honest."

Plumondore admits feeling more and more isolated in her views as public opinion shifts strongly against the Iraq war. She's not alone.

<snip>

Although a smattering of counterdemonstrations are planned, the focus over the next several days will be strongly anti-war. Supporters say their views are becoming overshadowed and shouted down. And they say simultaneous efforts by protestors to "honor the troops" ring hollow.

"I don't believe you can support the troops if you do not support their mission," says the author of a Central Oregon-based pro-war blog, GazingAtTheFlag.blogspot.com. She says she doesn't want to give her name because she fears being harassed for her views. "Freedom of speech only goes so far," she says.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Yep 180 of where we were not too long ago

My recommendation is folks, if you find a prowar supporter, don't shout them down. Politely let them speak

When we reached 2000K I went to the vigil and we read the names... the lone prowar protestor showed up, sign and all. We all stood to the side and let him march from one side to the other with his sign. We all stood in silence, and he (and the press was shocked). So he asked why? And somebody, I don't recall who, told him... we are not going to silence you.

[stevedeshazer]

4. I agree

This woman lost her child.

There's nothing worse than that.

[Jack Rabbit]

17. Very good story

The only ones who should have anything to fear from us are the war criminals, the ones who planned the war and orchestrated the lies that justified it.

We resolve to make America a real democracy in which each citizen must be encouraged to speak his mind without fear of reprisal, no matter how unpopular, wrongheaded or even absurd his ideas are.

[NMMNG]

2. Pffft

"I don't believe you can support the troops if you do not support their mission," says the author of a Central Oregon-based pro-war blog,


And how can you support the troops if you don't give them (or support giving them) adequate supplies, somatic and mental health care, other needed assistance, and the right to speak out against the war if they choose? Supporting the troops is more than being rah-rah for the war they're fighting.

[stevedeshazer]

6. All good points.

And, who the hell is pro - war ?

[NMMNG]

13. Sadly it seems more than a handful of neocons are

:-(

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. And some veterasns of the mission

and military families who have lost their blood and skin on those sands.

And you know what? I get it.

If you spent a year or two in that hell hole you'd want it to mean something so for some of those vets, they are going to defend the mission until they are buried, and the same goes for the families.

As a family member who had skin in the game and fortunately my chief came home, I get it.

That is why when somebody tells us, well I served... we don't argue, we at times just listen, but we don't argue.

[Zhade]

34. The tragedy is that it DOES mean nothing.

Their lives, their courage was wasted, and is still being wasted.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. I know that, you know that

but see them counter demonstrators who are Vietnam War Vets, some of them still feel that was a worthy missiona and goddamit they could have won it.

And that is exactly where those kids are

[Monkeyman]

7. Thank You for saying the truth

[NMMNG]

14. You're welcome

I'm sick and tired of the RW and their talk of "morality" and "values" which is nothing more than a facade for hatred, domination and sucking the lifeblood out of the nation--and the world.

[bluerum]

11. We also need to stop using the euphemistic "support the mission" jargon.

The fact is that "the mission" is securing access to oil for domestic consumption, and keeping it out of the hands of the people whose land it is on.

[NMMNG]

12. Exactly

Eg: "Kick their ass and take their gas" as that hag Ann Coulter would say.

[mhatrw]

32. Mission Impossible and Immoral n/t

[tanyev]

3. I have a great deal of sympathy for families of the dead and wounded.

Many of them have to hang on to the belief that this war is accomplishing something or else it means that the sacrifice of their loved one was a complete waste. It has to be heartbreaking.

What is despicable is how many of the fierce, fighting, 82nd Chairborne still rabidly support this war and yet have no intention of signing up to help wage it.

[LynnTheDem]

5. The MAJORITY of Americans OPPOSED bush's war on the people of Iraq.

The MAJORITY of Americans STILL OPPOSE bush's war on the people of Iraq.

What kind of a "mother" doesn't care about her own child having been killed for a politician's pack of lies? How "intelligent" can she possibly be, if she still doesn't realize the FACTS and REALITY that the MAJORITY of Americans (and the entire world) knew and realized from the very start??!

If she'd had the intelligence to fight with the MAJORITY to save her child from needlessly dying for a frat-boy politician's bullshit, her child may have still been alive today.

[MADem]

10. One who is in brutal denial, who is using that warped mindset as a coping strategy. NT

[Zhade]

35. I'm guessing they were in denial BEFORE their loved ones died.

After all, conservatives live in denial every day - they deny the brutal heartlessness of their own dishonesty-based worldview.

[arewenotdemo]

42. I couldn't agree more

Supporting the mission = complicity in war crimes, AFAIC.

[EstimatedProphet]

8. Oh, my heart bleeds for them

It wasn't that long ago, (MINUTES, really) that we were called traitors for being against the war and we were shouted down, sometimes violently, by these people. They voided their right to complain about not being paid attention to with their actions.

[MADem]

9. Wow, that's some SERIOUS denial. Of course, she lost a son in the meatgrinder.

It's hard to admit he died for a lie. That his good and important life was YES, WASTED. Wasted by a drunk, coke-brained fratboy in the White House. Tossed aside like an old snotrag.

She needs to talk to some of the families that lost loved ones in Vietnam. They're all around the country, they just don't bring it up every day...she's in for decades of 'coping' and it won't get all better--it's just a matter of degree.

The stupidest thing that poor woman could have said? "I don't think they're all that intelligent, to be perfectly honest."

Ah, Dear Pot, may I introduce you to Kettle?

Some of these poor folk are just CLUELESS:

Brady went to the Capitol earlier this month to speak at a public hearing on the Oregon Legislature's proposed resolution urging speedier troop withdrawal. He was surprised to find himself the only one in the room speaking against the resolution. .... "I think the country has gotten kind of soft," he says, noting that many more Americans died during World War II than have died so far in Iraq.

Plumondore says she believes most war protesters have a narrow view of what has been going on in Iraq. News reports focus almost exclusively on the violence, without noting progress, such as new schools, thousands of newly trained Iraqi police officers, the reopening of the Iraqi stock exchange and Iraqi children receiving polio vaccines.

"We want the nation (of Iraq) to stand on its own two feet, to be a contribution to the world," Plumondore says. "That's the legacy we need to leave to the soldiers we lost. Otherwise, it was all for nothing, and we shouldn't have gone in the first place."

Notice how if they don't bring up the "lower than WW2" bodycount (what--we should wait till we hit those numbers???), they always bring up those schools, the ones that are bombed out right after we build them, the ones that parents are afraid to send their kids to for fear they'll be killed? And they mention the police, trained this week, deserting to the insurgency or murdered en masse the next!

They just don't want to believe that this was all a hideous mistake. Because that means their kids' lives were, let me say it again, WASTED.

It's easier to get mad at the people who are protesting the WASTE, than get mad at the bastards actually doing the WASTING.

It's pathetic, really.

[stevedeshazer]

15. I have to be just a bit more charitable to this mother

You make some great points here -- her son's life was wasted. And yes, she should have known better than to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

I agree also that comparing the Iraq takeover with World War II is ridiculous.

But as a parent, to have to come to terms that your own government MURDERED your child is one bitter pill to swallow. This poor woman is choking on it right now.

What I'm hearing is denial.

[SammyWinstonJack]

19. And she chose too be insulting, why? She could have said that she didn't agree

with the anti-war protesters and left it at that, but she chose too hurl insults instead. Her call on that one.

[stevedeshazer]

21. Hurt people lash out

I imagine there are a lot more just like her.

[MADem]

28. I am not blaming her. It's PATHETIC. In the real meaning of the word, not the

pop meaning. I completely understand why she's doing what she's doing.

I meant it when I said she'd benefit from speaking to Vietnam era folks who experienced the same loss. It would speed up the 'mourning curve' for her, and maybe spare her years of fighting the truth. That way, she can start the real process, instead of insisting that there was purpose to her kid's sad death.

[stevedeshazer]

29. We are in agreement.

I get what you mean.

[Zhade]

36. And she wasn't in denial for supporting the war before her kid died?

NT!

[stevedeshazer]

43. I didn't say that.

Sheesh.

[Zhade]

45. Yeah, I know. Sorry, I'm just so damn pissed.

I apologize if it seemed I was attacking you. Not my intent!

[stevedeshazer]

47. I know what you mean

No offense taken.

[JeffR]

16. I'm 100% on the side of vets & families of the dead

because I totally oppose this war. Too bad some of them will never realize that...

[mwb970]

20. What exactly does it mean to "support the troops"?

I don't think this phrase, or attitude, has ever been precisely defined. To me, "support the troops" means:

Give the troops (1) a sensible mission and (2) proper equipment, then (3) send them in sufficient numbers to accomplish that mission. If the mission is or becomes non-sensible, or if they are not properly equipped, or if there are too few of them to safely proceed, withdraw them from harm's way or bring them home.

To the pro-war people, "support the troops" seems to mean:

Unquestioningly support all policies of the commander-in-chief, no matter what they are. As in, "I don't believe you can support the troops if you do not support their mission."

The problem is that their definition makes no allowance for the possibility that a commander-in-chief might repeatedly send troops into a meat grinder on some sort of fool's errand based on an uninformed fantasy. In such a case, to unquestioningly support the commander-in-chief would actually be to betray the troops, allowing them to be killed and wounded needlessly.

Why do the pro-war people refuse to believe that this could possibly happen? Should any leader be supported unquestioningly?

[LynnTheDem]

37. "Unquestioningly support all policies of the commander-in-chief" but you forgot the #1 thing...

ONLY if that commander in chief has an (R) behind his name.

"You can support the troops without supporting the president."
-Trent Lott, when the commander in chief did not have an (R) after his name.

In a 108-64 vote Wednesday, House Republicans backed a measure that would cut off funding for the mission.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/bosnia/dec95/nbos110.htm
-when the commander in chief did not have an (R) after his name.

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. Ah yes, those are classics

;-)

[Breeze54]

22. Read more of her diatribe...

Flag Gazer
Central Oregon, US
email - gazingattheflag-at-msn-dot-com

"Supporting Our Troops - My Journey (Part Two)"
http://gazingattheflag.blogspot.com/2006/07/supporting-our-troops-my-journey-part.html

-------------------

And in this one...I suspect he/she's was the one in traffic yelling at the demonstrators!.
http://gazingattheflag.blogspot.com/2007/03/peace-protestors-prove-they-are-not.html
"... Traffic was heavy. At the light, I noticed there to be a few more anti-war protestors
than usual, with a couple on the corner near me. Curious, I rolled down my window (I was not
in a curbside lane) and asked a gentleman if his sign "Pink for Peace" meant he wanted to surrender.
The man, apparently angered by my question, charged into traffic to my vehicle, stuck his head in my
passenger window, began screaming obscenities at me and said George Bush should be shot. A woman over
on the curb kept yelling at him to stop in fear he was going to get them in trouble. As he returned
to the sidewalk, continuing his obscene assault, he finished me off with an unkind finger gesture."


"unkind finger gesture" :eyes:
Some guy flipped her off and now she condemns all anti-war demonstrators!


Flag Gazer said...

Mike~
Well put. The hypocrisy that surrounds them always astounds me - they are always screaming
'civil rights' and 'freedom of speech' while attacking those who disagree with them.

[Blue_Tires]

27. piece of shit coward

if she is brave enough to be quoted for the story, and brave enough to pimp her blog url, then she damn well better be brave enough to put her real name by the comments...

[stevedeshazer]

30. Denial

Your point is well taken.

[Zhade]

41. What a fucking moron. "Surrender". TO WHO, DUMBASS?

NT!

[bridgit]

23. "I don't believe you can support the troops if you do not support their mission,"!?!?!

why the hell not? war profiteers & war-porn freaks :freak: are supporting the mission without supporting the troops :shrug:

[LynnTheDem]

40. And so she supported Clinton (D)'s mission in Bosnia?

No, I don't think so.

Would she have supported Hitler's mission if she had been a German citizen?


Rightwingnuts; making rocks look intelligent.

[Peace Patriot]

24. Poor woman! She doesn't realize how the Bush Junta views her son and all other

US soldiers--as cannon fodder for their corporate resource wars. If she did, she would probably be part of a mob burning the White House to the ground. Credit to Cindy Sheehan, for reaching this realization, and remaining peaceful, and trying to change this circumstance of our government and our military having been hijacked by our corporate rulers and war profiteers.

A reminder: 56% of the American people opposed the war on Iraq, in Feb. '03, before the invasion. That would be a landslide in a presidential election (and probably was). We started out with majority opposition. This war should never have happened. Now it's up to about 75% opposed to the war. What kind of "mission" is it that the majority of the people, in a democracy, do not support? It is a false mission. A mission concocted by the minority. A fascist mission.

And knowing that--that 56% opposed it from the beginning--our corporate rulers concocted a means of creating a false endorsement for the war, by fast-tracking a fraudulent voting system all over the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period--electronic voting machines run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. And the Democratic leadership of that era colluded with the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney--to accomplish this hijacking of our election system, along with the hijacking of our government, to enforce the corporate agenda here at home, and to enforce the violent theft of resources abroad. This poor mother is suffering from the corruption of our Democratic leaders, as much as she is suffering from the Bushites' lies and murder of her son. We should think of her as a victim of the "Stockholm syndrome"--the tendency of kidnapping victims to identify with their kidnappers. It is pitiful.

Solution: We must restore majority rule--first of all by restoring transparent elections--vote counting that everyone can see and understand. As Thomas Jefferson believed, if a democracy is in good working order, the best ideas will rise to the top, and the worst will be discarded, and the best people will rise to positions of leadership, and the worst will be exposed and denied the power to harm the nation. We have suffered a fascist coup, in which the worst people have gained power, and the worst ideas are daily promulgated by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. The solution is DEMOCRACY, in which the majority, in our collective wisdom, protects people like this woman and her son from the lies, the greed and the tyranny of fascist rule. We cannot heal her painful delusions. I suspect that, deep down, she feels that this "Crusade" in the Middle East is somehow saving western civilization. This may be why she feels that the rest of us--75% of her fellow and sister Americans--are "not that intelligent." We just don't get it--this "Crusade." We refuse to rally to the lying Pope and his edicts. But whatever her problem is--denial, identifying with her oppressors, or falling prey to demagogues--we must work hard to RESTORE democracy, so that future moms and their sons and daughters--future cannon fodder--cannot be victimized in this way.

It is one thing to be a warrior and to risk your life in defense of the weak, in a collectively decided and necessary war mission. It is quite another to be the bodies that powerful and greedy men throw at THEIR "enemies"--in this case, the innocent people of Iraq, who have every right to defend their country, their self-determination and their way of life against invasion. All you have to do is read about the foreign oil contracts that the puppet government of Iraq is going to sign to know what this is about--giving 70% of the oil profits to giant US and western oil corporations. To be a foot soldier in this effort is to be cannon fodder. It is not righteous. It is not good, in any way. It is to be used, and lied to. It is no more justified than Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul, or Hitler's conquest of Europe It is a resource expedition--theft by mass murder. International law now forbids it. The Bushites have grossly violated international, as well as national, law--with the complicity of many Democratic leaders. If you could have asked a Roman mother, or German mother, was it worth the life of her son?, and she might well have said yes. She can't see out of the vortex of lies and greed in which her son was killed. War propaganda has too often overridden mother love--which some say is the most powerful force in the world--or it causes such confusion that women identify with the forces that are using and slaughtering their children. And this why democracy eventually succeeded, over all other forms of government--because it is the only one in which unjust warfare and imperial propaganda cannot succeed, if the democracy is working right. It protects the vulnerable. It protects the populace from bad ideas. It exposes the venal motives of bad leaders before they can do harm.

If our democracy was in good working order, this woman would never be suffering as she is. That is the failure--and it is a collective one. It is OUR failure.

[AndyTiedye]

25. Is Her Real Name Karl Rove by any chance?

[genie_weenie]

26. It's the big lie.

No one wants to believe their husbands and sons, wives and daughters were used. It's too horrible.

The truth must be what the Administration says, otherwise people's perceptions on morality, reality and the nature of the world would be shattered.

And so when someone speaks in a measured tone, that Liberals are stabbing the troops in the back, that this is a just war, that Al Qaeda and Saddam were connected, that we are bringing decency and democracy to the ME; all evidence to the contrary is ignored and the lies becomes their truth.

[ComerPerro]

31. What a disgustingly biased piece of pseudo-journalistic trash

[Zhade]

33. Yeah, I feel really sorry for idiots and monsters who support an illegal war.

Hey, war supporters? Go sign up, you cowards, so you can die and rid the world of your utter uselessness.

Oh, and FUCK YOU while I'm at it.

[Obamarama]

44. I feel more sorrow than anger for this woman...

I think she's absolutely wrong, but then I stop and think this poor woman lost her son in this war. I suspect she's "believing" what she has to in order not to face the truth that her son's life was wasted and thrown away by Bush, Cheney, Inc.

I'm sure it's a coping mechanism, and although I think her comments are way off base, I for one am willing to give this grieving woman a "pass."

[LSK]

46. maybe she should ask the Dixie Chicks about Freedom of Speech n/t