Who’s whining? I did my time, griped as much as anyone would who was tired, hot, cold, bug-bitten etc. The only things I complain about are people who send guys to die when they didn’t have the guts to go themselves. Did you not read what I said before? I was lucky and got out before the second war. My unit didn’t get activated till then. I can tell you what it was like during the first; EVERYONE was scared, no one wanted to go, but everyone was ready. Some guys volunteered and were taken; most of us weren’t. I disagreed at the time with the idea of killing anyone who I didn’t believe we were at war with, so I offered our medic leader to come over with them if they needed me. I was a Forward Observer. I would’ve been in front of the front lines regardless and never even considered not going or any nonsense like that. You don’t go out of bravery or call to duty but out of loyalty to your friends. And I didn’t short my enlistment or anything else. When my time was done (6 years), I had two jobs, the service and full time school so something had to give. I considered re-enlisting several times, especially after 9/11, but only as a medic. I wouldn’t be able to serve at the front though, as my hearing is well below the cutoff of what’s allowable now.
Now, you tell me how you know for whom I speak. Why won’t you tell me what you did in the service? I’m assuming you know scores of people who went, since you say I don’t speak for most soldiers. I don’t claim to though, but you do. I speak for some of them...lots of them. In fact, you claim to speak for the bad guys in Kosovo, Saddam, and everyone else who’s out to get us since you know their intentions from thousands of miles away. You speak for them to the point of being willing to sacrifice lots of (other peoples) lives because you know their intent.
And you know about big defense too, I guess. I worked for big defense, at a company making boat loads of money for a guy named John Murtha. Yeah, the Marine hater. He and his ilk make billions off the blood of soldiers from his own home town. That’s who big defense is. Do you have any idea how many defense companies there are in Murtha’s district? You think it’s all a bunch of Republicans at all the defense companies. Did it ever occur to you that the dems never seem to bring the troops home from anywhere, all the while talking about peace initiatives that they know will never work. Doesn’t that tell you something?
No, I’m not for big defense in the sense that you are - power to the DOD (Pelosi, Murtha, Boxer, Durbin, Byrd, et al). I believe in STRONG defense. Strong ICBM force (bigger than we have now), enough tactical nukes for a conflict in every nation, a strong anti-missile shield, and no gun laws. It’s a pretty simple philosophy. No American blood OR treasure for ANY foreign nation. Friendship and commerce with all nations. But scratch the United States and your armies vanish within minutes.
You call me a pacifist, but I enlisted and did my time as did practically every male in my huge extended Family and a hell of a lot of my friends. Please, PLEASE tell me what your roll was in our “military tradition”. We’d all like to know.
Remember that this thread has absolutely NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with my service, your service or any one else's. You are persisting in trying to divert the discussion to something less damaging to paleoPaulie than his own insolent mouth and those of his supporters who may agree with his attack on Sarah Palin's Republican supporters as "country club Republicans," when the paleopipsqueak is himself a member of a country club as she specifically and her supporters generally are not.
Now, follow the simplicity of the fact that, like you, paleoPaulie is desperate to change the terms of an argument he can NEVER win within the GOP since Sarah is as wildly popular among Republicans as Al Qaeda's mouthpiece is not. He has made a complete fool of himself on foreign and military policy and "constitutional" delusions and distortions. And that does not even deal with his track record as a two-faced (three-faced, many-faced?) fraud and phony on such issues as pro-life, family, pork-packing earmarks, voting for and against many issues for maximum political benefit. He almost makes the likes of Murtha or Blagojevich or "Cold Cash" Jefferson look honest and upright by comparison (an impossible task for almost anyone other than the paleosurrenderman).
By attacking Palin's supporters, paleoPaulie brings his own character into question. He is a public figure as you and I are not.
My service record, your service record or the man in the moon's service record have nothing whatever to do with this thread. Wanna discuss the respective qualities of various types of cheeses? I don't and that would also be irrelevant to this thread. If you got a Congressional Medal of Honor, your heroism would have no special impact whatever on whether or not Sarah Palin's supporters are "country club" Republicans. Paulie's problem is that the little treasonweasel will be closer to eighty than to seventy by 2012 and even he knows that time has run out. Sarah, by comparison, is young, far brighter than he, conventionally patriotic, conservative and Republican in the best and non-moonbat sense and, at all times a supporter of our troops AND their mission, has a son on active duty in the war zone rather than sitting around concocting faux "constitutionalist" excuses for shirking the effort of preserving not only the US but Western Civilization against the Islamofascist enemy.
Reading what you say and agreeing with what you say are clean different things.
I had not realized that your service was in the First Gulf War. That was the one where under Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf's leadership, our forces militarily crushed the forces of Saddam and lost about 100 dead (many of whom were killed by friendly fire). The basic military maneuver of the Iraqi Army was stripping their uniforms off down to their skivvies and coming up with hands raised in surrender.
Did you enter the military on the mistaken assumption that it was nothing more than a means of financing your education, a sort of uniformed scholarship plan without risk??? Did you miss the part where the existence of the military has something to do with visiting strange and exotic lands and people and killing them as necessary or desirable? So what if you "disagreed with the idea of killing anyone whom (you) didn't believe we were at war with?" No one died and left you to make such decisions after you enlisted. For the duration of your enlistment, you had written a blank check to the Pentagon. If the Pentagon extended terms of service beyond that to which the service member has agreed, such extensions should be illegal but that, and not your personal opinions, is the sole exception.
Where is it that you go "out of loyalty to your friends?" Into the military? To Iraq? That sounds a lot more like Barney the Purple Dinosaur, Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood than it sounds like military service.
When you say that "EVERYONE was scared" you purport to speak for everyone. This is not nuclear physics or wild speculation. Those are YOUR words and not my editorial.
I think we all know enough of the track records of the likes of communist Slobodan Milosevic and of Islamofascist Saddam Hussein (along with the rapist-murderers Uday and Kucay) to know their respective intents and the world is far better off without the four of them. The only thing I object to as to that group is that Milosevic was put on trial by some pretentious bunch of internationalist globaloney artists in the Hague rather than executed upon capture. Slobbo saved us further globaloneyist pretenses by dying in mid-process. Serbia was a no count satrapy under Slobbo and I was not enthusiastic for that particular war. OTOH, it was not up to the military rank and file to go or not go. That was a decision for legitimately constituted authority.
I will not tell you what I did in the service: a) because it is absolutely none of your business unless I wish to make it your business and you wish to hear; and b) because it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with paleoPaulie insulting Sarah's supporters as "country club" Republicans when, all too typically, Paulie is a country club member and Sarah is not as many of her supporters are not. I will not subsidize the hijacking of this thread by libertarian delusion artists and anti-war snifflers.
Given your attitudes, big defense should have been careful lest you be a security risk. I spent most of my life in Connecticut which, I assure you, has a lot more defense plants than Murtha's little district. Do these names ring a bell? They are Connecticut defense contractors in recent decades or now: Sikorsky, Electric Boat, United Technologies HQ, Avco-Lycoming, Pratt & Whitney, Colt, Winchester, Sturm Ruger, Remington, Hamilton Standard and many, many feeder plants. Also the US Naval Submarine Base at New London, home base of many nuclear missile subs and fast attack subs. One nickname earned by Connecticut in its better era was "Arsenal of the Republic."
The anti-American slime John Murtha serves on the Defense Subcommittee of House Appropriations. If he did not bring some jobs home, he would be history. Nonetheless, that does not excuse his attacks on ultimately acquitted Marines charged with murder for doing their jobs and defending themselves when attacked. Murtha is also a member of the Blame America First, Last and Always crowd differing with the paleosurrenderman primarily in rhetoric.
Pelosi, Boxer, Durbin may as well be mullahs and are no part whatsoever of "big defense." If you are going to try to undermine this nation's efforts, try to be almost vaguely accurate. Byrd is old enough to have arrived in Washington when it was still possible to be a Democrat and a patriot. Former Klan Klegal Byrd is another sniveling "constitutional" delusionist and war resister, however, which hardly qualifies Bobby Pork Barrel as "big defense." He is no better than paleoPaulie on that score.
At least we agree on some things. I favor the same stockpile of nukes and nuke missiles you say you support. A strong missile shield like the Strategic Defense Initiative is also a necessity. Absolutely no gun laws is an absolute necessity as Obama's election vividly demonstrates. If we are going to be reduced as a nation to defending our homes and families from invaders who reach our shores because we do not destroy them in their countries of residence, then we had better be very well armed personally. It will be a distraction seeing our family members shot by invaders but, one way or the other, it will be the end of "American" pacifism and peacecreepism, whether leftist or "paleo."
No American blood or treasure for any foreign nation. Now you are getting down to it. Since the Confederacy was another nation, we should not have had the late unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865. I might actually agree with that since nations cannot declare war against themselves. No Spanish American War? No World War I? Most of all no World War II in Europe because Herr Hitler should have been able to commit genocide against Jews, Poles, Gypsies, etc., safe in the knowledge that the only country that could defeat him would stay out, right??? Too bad for the Jews, Poles and Gypsies, I guess. Boy, am I glad you guys did not prevail on that one and I have no Jewish or Polish or Gypsy ancestors. I suppose you don't mind our defeat of Tojo and Imperial Japan but maybe I should not jump to conclusions. North Korea, backed by Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao invaded and overran Seoul but that was none of our business either, right? My former partner's wife and her very large family lived in Seoul then and I am very glad they were saved by American intervention and I only regret that we did not go on to stretch Kim Il Sung by the neck until dead or slaughter him and his ilk on sight. I also regret that we did not defeat the North Vietnamese by rolling over Hanoi and Haiphong and, as Reagan said during the war, turn North Vietnam into the world's largest paved parking lot with stripes. If we had gone to Baghdad and beyond in Gulf War I, killed the Family Hussein, seized the oil fields until the war was paid for, then the nervous Nellies would have whined about imperialism but the later Iraq War would have been quite unnecessary. What is objectionable is not being compensated for the cost and squandering large sums on nation building. If nation-building was necessary, as in MacArthur's governance of Japan, then we should have put the cost on Iraq's tab to be paid by Iraqi oil.
If you advocate peace at almost any price, you cannot very well avoid the tags of isolationist and pacifist in foreign policy and all that goes with it.
Instead of the Kumbaya (at least in our time) mantra of "Peace and commerce with all nations," how about: Peace on Earth to men of good will. That comes from an even more infallible source than the founders or paleoPaulie. Should we sell nuclear attack subs and nuclear missile subs to the Red Chinese to use against us and Taiwan? Should we sell missile technology to Iran??? or to Libya or to Gaza??? Xyklon B gas to the Nazis??? After all, a profit is a profit, right?