http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/

Whatever our views about this war, we deeply respect your willingness to share your perspective about this complex issue.

Life is messy business. We do well to encourage each other while trying to construct a better sense of who we are as a nation.

I happen to know one other person that has similar feelings about the last 5 years as I do. I don’t expect him to quit either. He’s good people and I respect him a great deal…and as a matter of fact, it surprised me when I learned his thoughts as he struck me as someone who would think otherwise. I have no doubt there are many others but the military being what it is – the rules of the road for those wearing a uniform being what they are – they are not obvious (one must be careful about badmouthing the Commander in Chief, for instance).

I am not serving to match your perceptions or desires. As I have not been involved in Iraq at all this time, directly or indirectly (my just being in uniform doesn’t in any way, shape, or form further the Iraq occupation or aid in any plans to attack Iran) I am willing to stay in and hope that there will be a different government here after November. If things get insane before then, I trust myself to do the right thing, retirement or not. You will just have to deal with that but that’s your problem, not mine.

http://www.geocities.com/ifthe…..l_Day.html

THE CARTOON CONTROVERSY | JAMES CARROLL

Misunderstanding Muslims

By James Carroll | February 13, 2006

WHEN THE KORAN was said to have been denigrated by American guards at Guantanamo last year, Muslims reacted with rage, but most observers in the West misunderstood why.

It was easy for Christians and Jews — the other ”people of the Book” — to think that such an insult to the Koran was like an insult to the Bible. That would be sacrilege enough, but it was worse than that.

Drawing analogies between religions can mislead, but the Koran stands in Islamic belief more as Jesus does in Christian faith than as the Bible. As this Christian understands it, the Koran embodies the incarnational principle, with the chanting of the holy words that came from God to Mohammed as the way God’s presence is experienced again.

Non-Muslims tend to think that the Prophet is to Islam something like what Jesus is to Christianity (which is why non-Muslims have mistakenly called the religion ”Mohammedanism”), but it is the Koran that holds such a central place. Hence, Islamic visual celebration is calligraphy, not images. Therefore when the Koran is disrespected, the insult Muslims feel is nothing less than insult to God.

Insult, of course, is the issue that has been put so explosively before the world recently. The Danish cartoons were a flame applied to a primed fuse, and the extraordinary reactions to the images from across the whole House of Islam point beyond the immediate provocation to a far broader sense of insult that Muslims have been made to feel.

One need not excuse the indiscriminate violence of mobs in the streets, nor dismiss the good question of why such rage is not directed against the blasphemy of suicide-murders carried out in the name of Allah to take a lesson from what has happened. The Islamic world seems astoundingly united in sending a stern message to ”the West,” and instead of focusing again on ”what went wrong” with Islam Europeans and Americans would do well to take that message in.

Thinking of deep history, for example, we might recall that the very structures of politics, culture, and thought that define western civilization were expressly erected in opposition to Islam more than 1,000 years ago.

What we call ”the West” was born in the clash of civilizations that climaxed in the Crusades, with Muslims assigned the role of the external ”negative other” against which Christendom defined itself positively (The internal ”negative other” were the Jews). Among Europeans, and then Americans, that intellectual polarity was sublimated over the centuries, but its insult remained current among Muslims, and was powerfully resuscitated by the assault of colonialism.

The economics of oil, including the creation of an oppressive local class of Western-sponsored oligarchs, locked the grievous insult in place. As if to be sure it was more sharply felt than ever, Europe imported ”guest workers” from the Islamic world, openly consigning them to an underclass that is as religiously defined as it is permanent.

And then the United States launched its wars. One of the major disconnects in the present conflict is the way in which European and American analysis obsesses with the apparently anarchic outbursts of violence in the ”Arab street” without taking in how brutally violent the post-9/11 ”coalition” assault has been, not only physically but psychologically.

Mobs throw stones through the windows of European consulate offices, and the legion of CNN watchers recoils with horror. Meanwhile, unmanned drones fly across stretches of desert to drop loads of fire on the heads of subsistence farmers in their villages; children die, but CNN is not there.

Billions of dollars are being poured each month into the project of imposing an American solution on an Arab problem, and increasingly the solution looks, from the other side, like annihilation. Muslims, that is, understand the new reality far better than non-Muslims do — the state of open cultural warfare that ”the West” imagines is a narrowly targeted war against ”terrorism.” Muslims, as Muslims, experience themselves as on the receiving end of a savage — but, alas, not unprecedented — assault.

Are they wrong? In the argument over ”Enlightenment” values, sparked by the cartoons, some champions of free expression have fallen into the deadly old mistake that led, in the 20th century, to a grotesque betrayal of those very values — the over-under ranking of human beings, with the lives of some being counted as cheap.

Why are we killing them? As with multiple problems today, this one comes back to the misbegotten American war. It threatens to ignite the century, and must be stopped.

For starters, I’m an OLD female, OK? I’ve been one of those who has been waiting at home for loved ones come home from too many wars. I was a military wife for 30 years. There are those in the military who a very good people and there are those who should never be given power of any kind, let alone a gun. Just like in any occupation.

I’ve had to deal with the rage, the pain, the guilt, the fear and anguish of those who come home. How many of you have had to be careful just how you wake someone up so they don’t break your neck out of reactions left over from being in combat? How many of you have had to comfort someone who has a terror reaction to a thunderstorm because in sounds like artillary?

I have all the love in the world for my fellow humans, even those misguided enough to believe in war. I’ve been through too many wars and the aftermath to watch any more with any kind of sanguinity.

D. Mason, I know where you’re coming from. I, too, have paid a heavy price for my convictions and can sympathize but I can also see the other side of the story. There are those who think they can still make a difference from the ‘inside’. I don’t think that can happen now.

Don’t get me wrong. I can’t honestly say I’m a ‘peacenik’ kind of person because I will fight to the death for me and mine IF the fight is brought to me, in my space.

I also think that the war should be portrayed as it truly is – UGLY. Sanitized war news doesn’t impact those here sitting in their living rooms with nothing to lose. Hiding the sight of the dead coming home is wrong. Not showing EXACTLY what happens when explosives hit the human body gives an out for those who are not involved.

I am not political nor am I ‘religious’. I am a human being who doesn’t believe in destroying other human beings for power and profit. So D.Mason, I didn’t work for those who had government contracts either and I’m paying for it now. I can honestly say I feel your pain. I can understand where everyone else is coming from as well. This is a holistic problem, not a political or religious one. It’s a problem for humanity and I, for one, don’t know how to solve it.

Thank you for letting me share.

A salute to you, Sir, for your service and sacrifice. It’s interesting to hear your observations on the state of mind of young service members. My take is that the U.S. armed forces are not going to be able to support these criminal s masquerading as their leadership for another two years without some vital pieces of the machine coming off.

D. Mason,

I’d offer one more observation for what its worth – the inner bonds of loyalty that service members develop to each other and their unit is a powerful force. Serving officers and SNCOs who currently have inner misgivings about the wisdom or even sanity of what their civilian leadership are currently inflicting on their units, commands and service organizations continue to serve as best they can because of those inner bonds of loyalty. In a perverse way, I am sure that is what basically happened in Haditha in Nov, ‘04, when that squad from Kilo Co, 3/1 completely lost their moral groundings as Americans and Marines and killed non-combatant civilians. This crime was covered up for months because of this loyalty to each other that any service member develops, especially in an intense combat situation like these young grunts are repeatedly experiencing in Iraq now. It’s not right, but I am sure that is a core factor in what happened.

A final comment for now, to try and make my point. Perhaps you recall a young Army captain named Fishback, who spoke out publicly against the continued and unlawful abuse of prisoners (detainees) that he witnessed. Rumsfeld was indirectly quoted as telling his uniformed service chiefs to silence him now – destroy him if you have to, or words to that effect. Capt Fishback is a sterling example of American courage, and I hope that he has not been destroyed by these immoral bastards who are calling the shots. But I hope you can glimpse the unimaginable jaws of hell that this brave young captain most certainly looked into when he went public with his conscience while still wearing the uniform.

For the general audience – does anyone have a thread or update on this brave captain? I certainly hope that the evil doers have not harmed him.

I agree with alot of what is said here, but if I happen to not agree and say something about it I am labeled a troll and told to fall in line. Please tell me what is kind about that.

I’ve never taken out my disgust on ANY Vet or serving personnel between then – the summer of 1967 – and now.

I’ve never taken my disghust out on them, but I won’t shovel praise on them either. The soldiers in Iraq are not fighting for freedom or liberty or America or me or you. They are fighting for money, and if they realise it they have an obligation, in my eyes, to stop. If they don’t stop fighting to enrich our politicians then they are part of the problem. We can disagree about that, but please don’t pretend like I’ve been spitting on soldiers, I just don’t appreciate their part in destroying America.