This is what the SOLDIERS have to say to you. (Hat Tip to QandO)
Listen to them and understand what YOU are doing to them with your words and actions.
I do not believe that everyone that is against the war is unpatritotic, but I ask you, did you come by your opinion from watching the news? Have you BEEN to Iraq? These men and women are fighting and dying for this mission...... Maybe, perhaps, you would consider LISTENING TO THEM.
This is not politics to our brave men and women in Iraq. This is about protecting and helping the Iraqi's... To our soldiers, this about THESE children. The Iraqi's is what we call them... have we forgotten that they are PEOPLE?
Have we forgotten what happened in the Cambodia Killing Fields after our fine country abandoned the Vietnamese in 1975?
Cambodia Killing Fields...... will we, yet again, abandon the Iraqi's to the same fate? Have the anti-war of our country learned ANYTHING from the consequences of our abandoning innocent men,women and children to monsters, because we couldn't handle a hard fight?
History is right at our fingertips now...we can now find with a touch of a keyboard proof of the ramifications of leaving a job half done.
The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge communist regime which ruled the country, as Democratic Kampuchea, from 1975 to 1979. Estimates of the number of dead range from 1.5 to 3 million out of a population of around 7 million. The Khmer Rouge judicial process, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar, the government of Cambodia under the regime. More than two warnings resulted in being sent for "re-education", which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity, or having had contact with some foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, or international relief or government agency, or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean." This meant being taken away to places such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture, and/or execution.
The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the convicted were often executed using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. The soldiers who committed the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families.
The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed nearly anyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals who were the class targets of the Khmer Rouge. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chams (who were and are Muslims), Cambodian Christians, and the Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution.
The best-known of these sites is Choeung Ek. Today, Choeung Ek is the site of a Buddhist memorial to the terror, and Tuol Sleng has a museum commemorating the genocide. A 1984 motion picture, The Killing Fields, depicts the events that led to and occurred during this time. The film tells the story of Cambodian journalist Dith Pran, played by Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor, and his journey to escape the death camps.
History lesson over.
A few words from both sides of the issue in regards to the Vietnam war.
The first is from an anti-war protester, David Horowitz, called My Vietnam Lessons:
When I see protesters in the flush of youthful idealism holding signs that proclaim “No Vietnams in Central America,” a feeling of ineffable sadness overtakes me. For 20 years ago I was one of them. In 1962, as a graduate student at Berkeley, I wrote the first book of New Left protest, Student, and helped to organize the first “anti-war” demonstration opposing what we denounced as U.S. intervention in Vietnam.
In the mid-Sixties, I went to England and helped to organize the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, which supported what we called the Vietnamese struggle for independence from the United States, as well as the International War Crimes Tribunal, which brought American war atrocities under intense and damning scrutiny but ignored atrocities committed by the Communist forces in Vietnam. While in England, I also wrote The Free World Colossus, a New Left history of the Cold War, which was used as a radical text in colleges and in the growing movement against the Vietnam War. At the end of the Sixties, I returned to America as an editor of Ramparts, the most widely read New Left magazine. Our most famous cover appeared during Richard Nixon’s campaign in 1972 for a second term. It featured a photograph of the My Lai massacre with a sign superimposed and planted among the corpses saying, “Re-Elect the President.”
Let me make this perfectly clear: Those of us who inspired and then led the anti-war movement did not want merely to stop the killing as so many veterans of those domestic battles now claim. We wanted the Communists to win. It is true that some of us may have said we only wanted the United States to get out of Vietnam, but we understood that this meant the Communists would win. “Bring the troops home” was our slogan; the fall of Saigon was the result.
Read the rest.... He is at least honest in his assessment of himself and his reasons. Bluntly honest.
The next is from a Vietnam War Veteran, Bob Neener, Golf 2/9 & Lima 3/3, 3rd Marine Division Vietnam 1965-1966. (Notice that his opinion is that Hanoi Jane should have been charged with Treason)
Understanding the Vietnam War, why we went there in the first place, and how we ultimately screwed up and lost, has helped to put all of these emotions in their proper prospective.
Many Nam Vets, justifiably, blame their government, the Generals, Congress, McNamara and especially President Johnson for the demise in Vietnam.
After all, it wasn’t our fault. We were trained to win and we went to Vietnam to win. Losing never entered our minds. Why then did we lose?
The simple answer to this question would be, we didn’t lose, we gave up. I’ve seen bumper stickers that read, ”We were winning when I left” A truer statement would be ”We were winning when we all finally left”
Let’s face it; the Vietnam War was a bad war! That’s what all the Journalists called it, “A Bad war” I contend that there is no such thing as a “Good War” But then the Journalists basically wrote the script for the Vietnam war didn’t they, Vietnam was the first “made for television” War.
I was in Vietnam just short of (4) weeks when on August 2nd 1965 Dan Rather (a CBS field reporter at the time) came into the field and did a piece for the CBS nightly news.
Although Mr. Rather was only party to the aftermath, and reported only hearsay, (he showed up several hours after the incident, and only after the area had been secured) he was the expert as far as the average American television viewer was concerned. However, Dan Rather did not report all of the facts, and what was reported, made the Marines of G Company 2nd Battalion 9th Marines look like barbarians.
(Dan Rather’s segment was aired on the CBS nightly news and again in a CBS series titled “Vietnam The 10,000 Day War” and allegedly exposes US wrongdoing in the Village of Cam Ne) See my story (Assault on Cam Ne) in the War Stories section for the truth.
Unfortunately, the Press interfered greatly with the process of winning, by brining the War into every living room in America, and using the War for television ratings. War is tough enough on those of us who fight it, it has different and sometimes more overbearing effects on those who observe it.
(Americans quickly became disgusted with the scoreboard, the daily body counts)
It was the American public, tired and disgusted with what they were seeing on television, that through protest, finally put a stop to the war. And yes, some of our politicians were way out of control......
Sounding intimately familiar at this point? It should. Instead of learning the lessons that history should have taught us, we are, indeed, repeating them.
From the media becoming the "experts" to the American public, to the politicians playing games because of the "next" election, to the American people losing the desire to win and not giving a damn what happens to the Iraqi people if we were to abnadon them once again.
It is a different century, yet it is the same fight.
The next time you use the expression "The Iraqi's" Please keep in mind that they are human beings... women, men and children.
THESE are the people our soldiers give their lives to help.
What are YOU doing to help these people? All our soldiers ask you to do, is SUPPORT them in their mission.
Yet another must read piece from Debbie over at Right Truth.
One last read from Richard Lugar in a Wapo piece.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson's Website, third world county, Faultline USA, The Random Yak, stikNstein... has no mercy, Adam's Blog, basil's blog, Pirate's Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, Common Folk Using Common Sense, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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