Those Who Yearn to Be Free

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My response to Onyxman's post at Capitol Hill Blue -- Military & Veteran's Issues: Baby Killers of Iraq War (a thread prompted by news coverage of a parade where a soldier sporting a "Support Bush" sign was reportedly greeted with "Booo" and "Baby Killer!")
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ONYXMAN: "There is certainly a mythology about servicemen returning from Vietnam being spit on and called babykiller."=
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I've never personally been called "baby killer" but I was spat on by a high school girl riding a school bus while I walked alongside a road in my Air Force uniform in El Paso, TX in '72.  These incidents probably have been exaggerated beyond their proper proportion but they did happen.
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ONYXMAN: "I'm not saying such things never happened, but I never heard about such things until long after 1974, and of all the friends I have who served in Vietnam none ever experienced this.
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All these years later, it's difficult to remember how extremely unpopular the Vietnam War was by the time it finally ended in '75.  The first movies about that war ("Full Metal Jacket" and "Platoon") didn't DARE be released prior to '85/'86 as there would have been no market for them.  (Compare that to how quickly we saw movies about Desert Storm -- some of them where even of the "comedy" genre.)  The reason you didn't hear anything about it until "long after 1974" is because NOBODY wanted to hear about "it".  Many Nam Combat Vets with the most to tell STILL don't talk about "it" -- but their soaring rates of homelessness, failed marriages, addiction, depression and suicide tell a story that most folks STILL don't want to hear -- and they sure as hell don't want to PAY for it!
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We have no stomach for the REAL cost of war in this country (all our "enemies" know this) and we've never had the stomach for it.  We have had -- and may have again -- forced conscription (the draft) because they can't get enough warm young bodies to feed the meat grinder (military-industrial complex) any other way.  Of course, NOW we have a new prison-industrial complex to more effectively deal with those who won't offer themselves as a living sacrifice to the war machine.
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We worship the few "heroes" that make it home in one piece but even they know the REAL heroes are rotting in the ground (hopefully) somewhere.  And our ever-generous and empathic government grants a 30% disability check to those who have lost "only" one arm or "only" one leg.
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So is someone's anti-war comments at a parade "right" or "wrong"?  I dunno...the political "right" has so distorted the meaning of that word, I'm reluctant to use it for anything anymore.  Others who are far better informed than me from around the world are shaking their heads in dismay at America -- this "deeply troubled nation" I read about in one article.  Once we were known as "land of the free" and "home of the brave".  With the highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world in a time where comments against the administration are considered un-American or un-patriotic, it's sad those phrases have become so laughable.  I'm living in a country which is rapidly losing forever its credibility as a beacon of hope for those who yearn to be free -- here AND abroad.
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sail4free
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