something i just posted on fb

Osama bin Laden got almost exactly what he wanted. we have become, as a nation, the evil americans he said we were, in response to 9-11, in search of a little safety.

we have lost our way.

(not from fb) i am so sorry to see this day. when i was younger, i believed in our infallibility, that the US was a great shining force for freedom and democracy. that we could do no wrong in the world, we were the good guys.

but i dont think thats the case anymore. i have seen firsthand what our excursions have done abroad. i helped perpetrate them.

i have so much to atone for. and on some days i am so sad, to think that this is the legacy i leave my son and his sister.

Desolous... I have to say that I agree with you. I was there as well. There are things that I have done that I feel I can never atone for. I will try however. America has lost it's way. We may have never been been perfect but at least we were the closest thing to good guys the world had. (Not saying that every other country was bad) but I felt we filled the Superman role in the Justice League. But now I can't feel that way.... and quite possibly ever again. When I reflect on the things we did over there... we were evil.

I have no clue as to what you guys went through, I am aware of the numbers, a U.S. veteran commits suicide about every hour. More vets die from their own hands than from combat, and that's a shame. You guys weren't evil, you were solders, and you did as ordered. America has not lost it's way, the government has. As long as we the people continue to to vote for the same people, things will never change. I see quite a few vets getting involved in the "Occupy" movement, it seems to be a healthy outlet. Vets need to be more outspoken about what exactly is going on while their deployed, the media will never give us the truth, they don't see and experience what the solders do firsthand.. Its about time we started hearing the truth, the vets in my mind are the only ones who can sway the minds of people to demand the nescesary changes...

Can't blame the government and remove blame from Americans. They are the ones that keep voting them in. Just following orders is not an excuse for some of the things we did. Besides I've told people stories. They don't believe them. It's not possible in their minds. I do appreciate that you are sensitive to our experiences over there. Like I said, most people choose to ignore the facts and follow what the news says.... which is pretty much nothing. Americans are desensitized to violence and can no longer process the horrors of war. Again thank you Zenchi.

Desolous wrote: when i was younger, i believed in our infallibility, that the US was a great shining force for freedom and democracy. that we could do no wrong in the world, we were the good guys.

I grew up in the Reagan Years, and this was the way we were taught to believe. Up until the 1990 gulf War, this was not challenged INTERNALLY; only other countries bickered about the Good Ol' "U. S. of A." (cue image of little children, who are too young to understand the word "indivisible," waving a bunch of flags, with some Sousa-inspired patriotic song playing in the background) While we've always been the world's police department, we could be accused of "being helpful" in most cases, even obliquely, most of the time. The Persian gulf was the first time that people started to argue: "WTF are you even DOING here?!" As soon as the answer was suspected to be "oil," all credibility went into the gurgler. We've been fighting an uphill battle since. In a day where China is becoming the loudest country screaming at North Korea, we have to ask: who are we?

Join Veterans for Peace.

*Shrugs* Whatever. Look, the guy isn't in the thick of the problem, that's the way I see it. And neither was I. I can't say that the men which took down Osama Bin Laden did so in an illegal fashion or if they were truly faced with a situation where the only option was Bin Laden's death. I do not know if someone rushed to try and save the man's life after he was delivered a fatal blow, so that we could take him into custody as a prisoner. All we have to go off of is witness testimony which could easily be fabricated to either elevate someone's ego or used to help someone cope with the what happened.

While this guy has every right to his opinion, the fact of the matter is- he isn't a psychologist or investigator working on the case. So he doesn't have the insight to back up his opinion, and to me that makes it null and void.

As to America's infallibility- I've never made that assumption. No country, no person, nothing is without it's faults. We have to accept that where ever we are, we are going to disagree with things that are done by our government or the people around us. But we have to respect that this is how that society operates. If you live there, you can only affect so much change- not even the president of the US can change everything within the US. Not even the emperor of Japan has enough time to completely change everything he would want changed in Japan- and he's the only person that has the legal ability to do so there. You do what you can.

If you don't like how things are going, and you want to see change, lobby to become a politician. There is nothing saying you cannot try.

why become a politician when you could just buy one? this is why i registered as a lobbyist. we all know politicians are beholden to the almighty dollar, moreso now than ever if the last, most expensive in history election is any indication.

and you may have missed where 'the guy' in question is archbishop desmond tutu, 1984 nobel peace prize winner and all around cool guy. i think he has the moral authority to comment on our transgressions.

I absolutely hate lobby. It is a legalized form of corruption, and therefore the worst form of corruption.


A problem we have in the modern world is we seem to have no accountability. You alethea once told me that the creation of Israel (the worst thing we could do to world peace honestly) was not our doing and therefore not our problem to fix. I think it is, and I think we should at least take the blame and apologize for it.

the military in the US is such a massive marketing/nationalist thing it seems it causes all the local douchebags to cream themselves whenever they hear about it... (shouting "oh yeah" at the same time in a big douchy voice). Not using the army to "free people" and "kill the bad guys" has become "unamerican" and therefore political suicide.

This basically leaves you in the "vet" position where the stuff you talk about is so different from the fancy pamphlet, people just assume you have contracted some kind of mental disease that impairs your judgement or something. And they just dissmiss it and go back to the TV set.