Memorial Day is the hard one, holiday-wise. Knew too many listed on “The Wall”. My son has the same problem after Iraq and elsewhere in his 13 years Navy, never spent a day on a boat.
How times change. When military heroes (who were mostly drafted into service) returned from Viet Nam the public called them baby killers and spit at them. Now everybody is put on a pedestal. I guess I am too old to figure it out.
When I came back from ’Nam, the stewardess moved us to first class and gave us free drinks. On the street the worst treatement was from southerners in Alabama and Georgia who resented us because they knew without the military bases, their economies would collapse, and their jobs would be gone.
At an “anti-war” rally, when I told the crowd the facts about ’Nam, and some of the difficulties with an immediate pullout, and then that we DiD need to end that idiot war, they listened to realities, had lots of follow-up questions. And yes, I was anti-war, still am, but not a pacifist. Our REAL problem is chickenhawks who get us into wars they have no intent of fighting themselves, or sending THEIR sons and daughters off to fight. Oddly, they all seem to be the same right-wing rednecks that want the profits from wars, just not the danger.
I was in a leadership position in the anti-war movement for a while back in the day, and the groups I worked with certainly never blamed GIs for the war. A fair number of soldiers, after all, did not support the war. We knew a lot of soldiers who supported the anti-war movement. One big reason we opposed the war was because young men were getting killed for no good reason. They were victims of the war machine, too. We blamed Johnson and Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara and then Nixon and his crew, not the soldiers.
Dtroutma almost 8 years ago
Memorial Day is the hard one, holiday-wise. Knew too many listed on “The Wall”. My son has the same problem after Iraq and elsewhere in his 13 years Navy, never spent a day on a boat.
Theodore E. Lind Premium Member almost 8 years ago
How times change. When military heroes (who were mostly drafted into service) returned from Viet Nam the public called them baby killers and spit at them. Now everybody is put on a pedestal. I guess I am too old to figure it out.
Dtroutma almost 8 years ago
When I came back from ’Nam, the stewardess moved us to first class and gave us free drinks. On the street the worst treatement was from southerners in Alabama and Georgia who resented us because they knew without the military bases, their economies would collapse, and their jobs would be gone.
At an “anti-war” rally, when I told the crowd the facts about ’Nam, and some of the difficulties with an immediate pullout, and then that we DiD need to end that idiot war, they listened to realities, had lots of follow-up questions. And yes, I was anti-war, still am, but not a pacifist. Our REAL problem is chickenhawks who get us into wars they have no intent of fighting themselves, or sending THEIR sons and daughters off to fight. Oddly, they all seem to be the same right-wing rednecks that want the profits from wars, just not the danger.
lonecat almost 8 years ago
I was in a leadership position in the anti-war movement for a while back in the day, and the groups I worked with certainly never blamed GIs for the war. A fair number of soldiers, after all, did not support the war. We knew a lot of soldiers who supported the anti-war movement. One big reason we opposed the war was because young men were getting killed for no good reason. They were victims of the war machine, too. We blamed Johnson and Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara and then Nixon and his crew, not the soldiers.