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In reply to the discussion: Fuck. [View all]countryjake
(8,554 posts)Listening to the lead-up in his speech, his description of how he had gotten to know Sgt. Remsberg, honestly put me in tears, long before that ovation for the wounded soldier, and all that I would have liked anyone in that hall to do would've been to tell Cory, "We're so sorry", rather than clap for two minutes.
It angered me that the rah-rah Army/America shit was the final introduction to that poor kid, but then, that's about all I've ever seen any of our presidents do when it comes to the military, so I'd guess it's to be expected. After all, that is their other title...commander-in-chief. However, I couldn't help but be reminded of the VVAW's Winter Soldier investigations and that simple statement that John Kerry made later to the Foreign Relations Committee of our Senate. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
All of these years, and all of the thousands and thousands of war-time deaths, later, due to the deliberate profligate promotion of the Military Industrial Complex, and we still must listen to leaders giving us inane platitudes, inadequate excuses, and blatantly wrong-headed rationalizations for why the maiming and killing goes on.
In our name.
I might have been bawling because that moment in that speech came right on the heels of the loss of one of the greatest voices of all time for the anti-war movement in our nation. I don't know, where have all those voices gone?