Do not invoke the plight and treatment of some veterans in your effort to shame all post-World War II veterans, today or any day.

I’ve listened to your interpretation and remain unconvinced that you know the absolute truth. Maybe somebody would march off behind you, based on what you’ve said, but not me. The fact that we’re both on FDL suggests that we might even agree on a few things if you climbed down off your soap box and quit making dictatorial, judgemental prounouncements about your interpretation of other peoples’ comments.

Citizen Scarecrow and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Thanx for the post Brother Scarecrow, this is a day to remember to remeber…I mean that those of us who have experienced the last terrible American adventure in empire in Vietnam must ,at least today, try to remember those things that we have spent so much time and emotional energy tryin’ to forget. We need to remember for those who didn’t make it back and for those hundreds of thousands whose bodies came back but whose lives were destroyed and left as some brutal penance for the carnage we imposed on the people of that small country. We must remember and at least for this day try and make some sense of our experience, to create a meaning out of the history of which we were players, to give our children and the Vietnamese children who live now in the shadow of that terrible moment some meaning that does not allow them to fall victim to the hubris of failing memory, that failing of memory that allows them to think that there is ever victory in any war.

I am remembering my Grampa Ole and my father and their lives lived in quiet labor to forget what they knew was unforgettable. I am remembering their desperate admonitions agaist my giving myself over to what at the time seemed my generation’s destiny. My leaving for Vietnam opened the old wounds that their Purple Hearts were supposed to cauterize forever. I am remembering them. I am remembering Tommie Pleasant who was the first to show me the only victory in war was ultimately down the path to death. I am remembering the marines and the 1st Cav troopers who came bleeding and screaming into my pre-op ward, who only wanned to know if their buddies had made it. I am remembering Raven and all the other reluctant heroes of our forum here. And I am remembering you Scarecrow…let’s find a bit of meaning out of all this that we can pass on to our children. And maybe we will have to take that meaning in the next few months and use it to advance a politics of hope to get those brave kids out of the desert and back to our loving arms.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, WAR ALWAYS COMES HOME WITH THE LIVING!!