Fighting For A Democratic Pretense
Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised – except for all the others.
- Winston Churchill
Gerard Baker, Times of London columnist and is US Editor, reminds us that
A central tenet of neoconservatism has always been that promoting democracy around the world is not only morally right, but also in the long-term interest of peace and stability.
In America these days democracy is living down to [Churchill’s] reputation … where vital national interests – and the security of much of the world – are being determined almost entirely by immediate, panicky political considerations.
The panic grows by the minute, but not in those intended to do so. Those who are easily panicked, such as Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss (who defeated highly-decorated Democratic Vietnam Veteran Max Cleland by running swift-boat television ads implying that Cleland was allied with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein), vociferously seek to discover a means by which the American people can be swayed to oppose the efforts of real military veterans (for instance, Vietnam Combat Veterans Democrat Jim Webb and Republican Chuck Hagel - co-sponsors of a bill to extend theater tour breaks for combat veterans).
Did Chambliss himself serve? You have to ask?
Chambliss - who avoided military service through a law school student deferment and a medical deferment for a bad knee - attempted to equate Bush’s Oil War with the Good War:
“Keep in mind that during World War II and other wars of this country,
service members participating in those wars
deployed for 3 and 4 years with little or no break.”
Another such mealy-mouthed psychophant is Lindsey Graham, who attempted to out-shout Jim Webb on Mete The Cess this morning. Despite Lindsey’s constant interrupting, Webb finally ignored that lying weasel and reminded the American viewer that
“We’re now in a situation where the soldiers and the Marines are having less than a one to one ratio [time at home versus time at war], and somebody needs to speak up for them instead of simply defending … this President … it is the responsibility of our national leaders so make sure that [the soldiers] are used properly.”
Video Downloads of Webb:
Connecticut Man 1 at Drinking Liberally in New Milford is extremely upset at these “brave patriot” Republicans who won’t themselves see what their leader’s evil war is all about:
YOU all say YOU support the troops. Don’t ever fucking tell me YOU support the troops if YOU aren’t there in Iraq along side them in this endless war that YOU support… [and] that goes for all of you war cheerleaders, Republican and Democratic party alike, that continue to fund this endless disaster. The same thing goes for all of you keyboard and armchair warriors that cheer on the occupation of Iraq but are too hypocritical to spill your own blood in Iraq’s desert sands.
But when one is faced with an evil cabal, one reverts to adhering to that quaint Christian adage, “God helps those who help themselves.” One such is Spc. Vassell of the 2nd Platoon, Apache Company Strykers. Vassell issues a challenge to all those brave Republican chickenhawks who want to keep him in Iraq indefinitely:
“I challenge anybody in Congress to do my rotation.
“We’re supposed to be on the way home right now. We were supposed to be flying home in six days. Six days. But because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a two-year old who don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t experience it.
“I, I challenge the President or whoever has us here for fifteen months to ride along, alongside me. I’ll do another fifteen months if he comes out here and rides along with me every day for fifteen months. I’ll do fifteen more months. They don’t even have to pay me extra. I just want him to come out here and ride with me another fifteen months.”
[The Guardian has a new video linked on their front page, that covers events on and after May 19, 2007. It’s a Flash 8 and takes a minute or two to load.]
It isn’t just civilians who oppose the continuation of the war. The New York Times reports that many military personnel and their families are joining the opposition:
[T]he Army said it had missed its recruiting targets in May and June. Pentagon officials say resistance from families is a major recruiting obstacle.
Membership is also increasing among antiwar groups that represent the active military and veterans. Military Families Speak Out, one such group, which was started in the fall of 2002, now has about 3,500 member families. About 500 of them have joined since January.
Beth Pyritz, an Army wife in Virginia, has joined an antiwar group. “I backed this war from the beginning, but I don’t think I can look my kids in the eyes anymore, if my husband comes home in a wooden box, and tell them he died for a good reason.”
Paul Jones, 51, a social worker who for three years has been counseling members of the National Guard and Army Reserve, said he had seen a growing number of troops who were angry and on edge, which is fueling dissent within military families. “The soldiers have come home from a war zone with a whole different perception of how things are,” said Mr. Jones.
Penny Preszler, 46, a furniture refurbisher in Phoenix, said she had stopped wearing red on Fridays as she had done for the past year to honor the war effort. “It was when my son started saying he wished he could be injured so he could come home,” Ms. Preszler said. “Mom, we killed women on the street today. We killed kids on bikes. We had no choice,” she recounted his saying.
The same week, she said, her son told her he thought he had seen the worst when he had to pick up the body parts of his dead buddy, but then he saw an Iraqi boy picking up what was left of his dead father.
Michelle Robidoux, an organizer with the War Resisters Support Campaign in Toronto, which advises Americans who have deserted or crossed the border to avoid military service, said in recent months the group has received calls that included two Army sergeants and a Navy chief petty officer.
[F]rustrations have led some soldiers to take drastic steps. In the 2006 fiscal year, the Army reported that 3,196 soldiers had deserted, compared with 2,543 in fiscal year 2005 and 2,357 soldiers in fiscal year 2004. In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 871 soldiers deserted.
Cpl. April Ponce De Leon describes herself and her husband as “gung-ho marines,” and in two weeks she deploys to Iraq, where her husband has been fighting since March. But she says she stopped believing in the war last month after a telephone conversation with him. “He started telling me that he doesn’t want me to go and do the things he has been doing,” said Corporal Ponce De Leon, 22, speaking by telephone as she boxed up her belongings in their apartment near Camp Lejeune, N.C.
“He said that ‘we have all decided that it’s time for us to go home.’ I said, ‘You mean go home and rest?’
“And he said, ‘I mean go home and not go back.’
“This is from someone who has been training for the past nine years to go to combat and who has spent his whole life wanting to be a marine,” she continued.
“It is the responsibility of our national leaders so make sure that [the soldiers] are used properly” - not properly abused. It is the responsibility of We, the People of the United States to see to it that our national leaders do what the Constitution says they should.