Ron Kovic of Born on the 4th of July fame....great article!

[springhill]

Breaking the Silence of the Night
A Soldier Speaks Out
Breaking the Silence of the Night

By Ron Kovic Wednesday 11 October 2006

A time comes when silence is betrayal. - Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967 It all begins somewhere, the questioning, the doubting, the feeling that something's not right; like that day the captain set fire to the Vietnamese woman's hooch, or the night we shot those women and children by mistake. It's all got to start somewhere. For them it might have been the innocent civilians killed that day at the checkpoint just north of Baghdad or the dead children lying in the road in Kirkuk, or that night in Nasiriyah when they kicked in the front door of that house, screaming and cursing at the children as they threw their father to the floor, tying his hands behind his back and putting a hood over his head, but you remain silent, you say nothing. You've been taught to follow orders, to obey and not question, to go along with the program and do exactly what you're told. You learned that in boot camp.

You learned that the very first day at Parris Island when the drill instructors started screaming at you. It is "Yes sir" and "No sir," and nothing in between. There is the physical and verbal abuse, the vicious threats and constant harassment to keep you off balance. It is a powerful conditioning process, a process that began long ago, long before we signed those papers at the recruit stations in our hometowns, a process deeply ingrained in the American culture and psyche, and it has shaped and influenced us from our earliest childhood.

Born on my country's birthday in 1946, I had grown up in the shadow of the Cold War after the great victory of World War Two. Both my mother and father had served in the Navy during that war. It was where they met and were married, and we their children were to be called the "Baby Boom." It was a beautiful time, a time of innocence, a time of patriotism, a time of loyalty, conformity and obedience. The threat of Communism was everywhere. We did not question. We did not doubt. We believed and we trusted our leaders. America was always right. How could we ever be wrong? We were the most powerful nation on earth and we had never lost a war, but all that was to change, all that was to be shattered in Vietnam.

I can still remember marching on Memorial Day, our parents on the sidewalks waving their American flags proudly. There were the war movies and the Sergeant Rock comic books, the toy guns that we got for Christmas, and the little plastic green soldiers that I played with in my backyard, fighting the Japs and the Germans, attacking the imaginary bunkers with our bazookas and flamethrowers, dreaming that someday like our fathers before us we would become men.

http://www.writersontheloose.com/writers/tvillard/index.cfm?story=28475

[sandnsea]

1. Outstanding HUGE K&R

"For the past three and a half years I have watched in horror the mirror image of another Vietnam unfolding in Iraq. As of this writing over 2,700 Americans have died and nearly 20,000 have been wounded while tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed. Refusing to learn from the lessons of Vietnam, our government continues to pursue a policy of deception, distortion, manipulation and denial, doing everything it can to hide from the American people its true intentions in Iraq. Sadly, the "War on Terror" has become a war of terror. Never before has this government through its outrageous provocations and violent aggressions placed the citizens of this country in such grave danger. Never have the people of this country been so threatened, never before has life and liberty been in such great peril; not in the two hundred and thirty years since our revolution have we as a people and a nation been at such a crucial turning point. These are dangerous times. A century of arrogance, brutality and aggression has come back to haunt us all. September 11th has happened. The mask has been ripped away. The lie has been exposed and this criminal government now stands naked before the world! These are provocative words, and the truth may be deeply unsettling but when will we speak the truth? When will we end this silence? How much longer will we wait before we are ready to finally admit that the murderer lives in our own house, that this government that we entrusted long ago with the sacred task of protecting life and liberty now, by it's every reckless, unjust and immoral action threatens the lives and liberty of us all?"

[Raine]

2. I met Ron Kovic years ago

at a demonstration during the 'dirty dozen' years of Raygun/Poppy Bush...he's really a nice guy and so intelligent. Cheers to him! :thumbsup:

[AzDar]

3. Very powerful. K&R..... n/t

[malaise]

4. Wow - just wow

Somewhere along the way we had taken the wrong turn, somewhere through it all America had veered tragically off course, leaving behind our sacred ideals and betraying the very roots of our revolutionary past. Instead of the great champion of liberty we had emerged the imposter, a fraud, a dangerous, corrupt frightening monstrosity of what we had first set out to be. America had lived a terrible lie. We had been on the wrong side of history. The great defender of liberty had become the tyrant, the arrogant bully, the cruel exploiter of "the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breath free." Wearing the deceitful mask of the great liberator and promising freedom and democracy, we had robbed and raped, blackmailed and perverted our way around the world, supporting the most despicable tyrants and despots as we expanded our bloody empire, causing the death and suffering of countless human beings. I now understood what Martin Luther King had meant when he had called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world...."

Never have the people of this country been so threatened, never before has life and liberty been in such great peril; not in the two hundred and thirty years since our revolution have we as a people and a nation been at such a crucial turning point. These are dangerous times. A century of arrogance, brutality and aggression has come back to haunt us all. September 11th has happened. The mask has been ripped away. The lie has been exposed and this criminal government now stands naked before the world! These are provocative words, and the truth may be deeply unsettling but when will we speak the truth? When will we end this silence? How much longer will we wait before we are ready to finally admit that the murderer lives in our own house, that this government that we entrusted long ago with the sacred task of protecting life and liberty now, by it's every reckless, unjust and immoral action threatens the lives and liberty of us all?
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Brilliant and oh so true.
K & R

[liberal N proud]

5. K&R

[yellerpup]

6. K&R

Breathtaking. :kick: