Pausing for Respect and Reflection
For two minutes at 11:11 on 11.11.07
Today, there should be 3,860 crosses but, earlier this year, the City fathers limited Arlington West to 3,000.
It seems like I've been writing in these pages of mine forever, trying to find a way of expressing reverence for their sacrifice and repugnance for the mission to which they have been assigned.
Today, there should be 3,860 crosses but, earlier this year, the City fathers limited Arlington West to 3,000.
It seems like I've been writing in these pages of mine forever, trying to find a way of expressing reverence for their sacrifice and repugnance for the mission to which they have been assigned.
posted by Vigilante at 11/11/2007 04:53:00 PM
14 Moderated Comments:
You can easily be forgiven, the situation is Iraq is so very, very complex that you and I have reached vastly different conclusion as to the best exit strategy.
If this were simple it wouldn't be tearing the country and the Democrat Party apart.
For me it certainly isn't about oil or about politics, let alone global warming.
It is about people, about human rights, about freedom, safety and security..... for everyone.
This isn't a tennis match with a clear winner and a clear loser. Instead we are all on one team. You and I are in this together.
Wake up, Wizard. Stop drinking Kool-Aid. There is no exit strategy. Put down your WSJ and turn off your Faux News.
The real news says that Maliki is deputizing/inducting 18,000 Shiite militiamen into Security Services (to join the other militias currently serving). All this is to countervail The Occupier's (that's you and me) efforts to line up 70,000 Sunni "volunteers" to 'fight al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It doesn't take a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing. Busheney are fixing up Iraq into de factor partition (NW & SE) which will last for decades. Like the division of Korea was a buffer against the Sino-Soviet bloc (unavoidable), a partition of Iraq will serve as a bulwark against Iran (avoidable).
There will be no exit, because there is no intention to exit.
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I still believe there is a solution and I'm still willing to consider a variety of options.
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In Boston, 18 arrested in antiwar protest by veterans?
Members of Veterans for Peace lined up in front of a podium at City Hall Plaza holding antiwar placards, as color guards from Massachusetts military units and JROTC bands from across the state filed into Government Center for a ceremony, sponsored by the American Legion, to honor veterans after the parade. Some protesters wore gags, which they later said symbolized the fact that, while they were permitted to march in the parade, they were prevented from carrying signs opposing the war in Iraq.
Is this possible? How is this possible?
I'm with wizard on this one. There is a solution but until we get some real brains in Washington we aren't going to figure it out anytime soon. In the meantime hundreds if not thousands will continue to die for Bush's lie.....
Real brains in Washington ? Ha.
In our aberrant society, everything in the intellectual, economic, political and moral realms is made subject to the criterion of success.
As a result, science sees its focus changed from research or explanation to utility and adaptation, and there is no longer room for the integrity of thought; the critical method has now become retrogressive.
Adaptation to the demands of a system that evaluates its success in terms of price, of fiscal profit, relegates humanity to the repressive ages preceding the Renaissance.
Justice no longer has the triumph of right as its exclusive objective, but rather the prompt execution of the commands of the State, whose elitist goals are a public swindle and an assassination of sanity.
One of the three known surviving World War I Veterans Frank W. Buckles, 106, lived through the Great War and imprisonment in a Japanese camp in the Philippines during World War II. (He lied about his age in order to enlist when he was 16. Of the war in Iraq, Buckles replied:
"I'm no authority, but I'm not in favor of war unless it's an emergency."
Washington Post
Vigil,
The possible scenario of Bush 'playing' Iraq as a staging base for a cold-war type isolation and seige of Iraq is not the worse possible scenario. A worse scenario, made to seem plausible by Cheney's and Bush's recent comments about resolving everything before they leave office, is that Iraq will be used as a Bay of Tomkin-type excuse/provocation for a hot war with Iraq.
A sign of optimism is that Admiral William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, rejects their playbook:
"None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go,” he said.
Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.”
Hopefully we will not read of the Admiral's retirement or resignation anytime in the next 433 days.
The Messenger should note that the good admiral was not allowed to testify before Congress along with Petraeus. My bet: even though he's Petraeus' boss, he wasn't a reliable enough cheerleader for Bush's war.
The first step is to give that town in Texas their village idiot back. To end the war, we must first eliminate the warmonger.
I'm in shock that some in this country still believe that there is some American military, intelligent, sane, political, et. al. solution to make Iraq successful. What would it have been in Vietnam? Have we learned nothing? What force of nature do you believe our armchair "best intentions" is? We have no control over that region. American citizens have no control over anything that's going on now except the amount of money that's streaming out of Congress and into the pockets of those who are profiting off of this occupation. How long are we Americans going to allow that stream, these politicians and lobbyists to remain in office? It's not keeping our soldiers from harm, it's not helping Iraq, it's just making some men rich. The only "solution" we can make is to get our soldiers out of that mess and to help clean it up in other ways that don't involve Haliburton. Yes, we've bought it.
I really don't care right now why this war was started. This is about our GIs sacrifices, which are many and harsh, and taking time to remember them.
And say "Thank You"
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