Please read this column in today's N.Y. Times,
In Iraq, 527 men and women from Alabama have been wounded.
In Iraq, 71 men and women from Alabama have died.
In Afghanistan, 802 American men and women have died.
I haven't found a state breakdown, but it is likely that the Alabama numbers in Afghanistan are higher than the state's population would justify.
"Nobody wants to think about young people getting their faces or their limbs blown off."
ReplyDelete"But certain casualties would hit home, especially injured children. Some staff resorted to painkillers and other drugs.”
"...the overwhelming majority of the American people want no part of the nation’s wars. They don’t want to serve, they don’t want to make any sacrifices here on the home front..."
"...advise a local platoon of the Afghan army. The Afghan soldiers rarely wanted to patrol, preferring to watch DVDs and smoke hash.Their favorite movie was ‘Titanic.’
"...the pathetic unwillingness of the American people to share in the sacrifices of these wars..."
"...we should all be pitching in."
Of all nations the world over, the United States of America is blessed. I believe we are blessed exceedingly and abundantly, above and beyond any other nation. We are MORE blessed than any other.
With those blessings come responsibility, however. We are free, yet our freedom is not wanton to the extent that we have the option to care not for our fellow man here at home or our neighbors abroad. Freedom carries responsibilities. Were your neighbor's house on fire, or being broken into, you would act - even if you despised your neighbor.
So it is with the nations of the world, neighbors on this blue marble hurtling through space.
We are all faulty human beings. No, not one of us is perfect. We are given to evil, more so that good. Given our knowledge and understanding of that fundamental, and glaringly obvious fact, we strive to overcome our inherent evil nature, decrying its deceptions, establishing law to reinforce the good, and to punish the evil.
Though Irish philosopher Edmund Burke didn't directly write the quote so often attributed to him, it perhaps expresses it better than any other that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." (Burke did write, however that, “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” The quote may be a paraphrase of his work, for it expresses the same thought, found in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, April 23, 1770.)
And, I find his work's title uniquely apropos and wholly germane to this discussion.
Where does all this lead us?
I think the excerpts of the referenced article identify the key points and problems quite well enough:
- Inaction (laziness) arising from complacency (don't care);
- corollary drug use (marijuana)
- attempts to anesthetize (escape) pain arising from feelings of guilt (perhaps justly so, we do have consciences and should feel bad when we do wrong);
- dislike of the situation and circumstances of war (Iraq-first the wrong nation, later migrating to the right nation-Afghanistan);
- recognition of the necessity of greater American service and sacrifice (not just in uniform, but especially so now).
And overall, the unmentioned but obvious actions being made to correct a situation gone awry from one initiated very wrongly. It may be trite, but it is true: The problems were not of this present administration. They were inherited.
Basically, the writer says we hate it, but we're too damn lazy to change.
Yeah... it's a sorry state of affairs, to be certain.
So are contemptuous feelings from the American Serviceman justified?
You tell me.
When on occasion certain others "get all patriotic and political" with me, to put things in perspective I sometimes simply ask them if they've worn the uniform, if they've made a living sacrifice for others - voluntary or not.
You'd be surprised the effect that has on folks.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=64401
ReplyDelete"WASHINGTON — Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”
Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan."
"The new revelations of the Pentagon’s attempts to shape war coverage come as senior Defense Department officials are acknowledging increasing concern over recent opinion polls showing declining popular American support for the Afghan war."
too bad this wasn't going on during the bush administration.
somebody might have said something.