Jul 19 2007
Iraq Veterans and “(I)Pod People”
Cyrano’s Journal Online, Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop are initiating a weekly email which will include links to the latest high quality content available on our very diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to
“The Decider Guy says he listens to the generals while ignoring any who practice reality instead of fantasy. Meanwhile, lives are lost, bodies are scarred, futures are blighted and American treasure and reputation are wasted.”
By Horace Coleman
7/19/07
The Los Angeles chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) picked Friday the thirteenth as the July date for its first LA area event. It was held in Venice, California at the Venice United Methodist church.
Speakers included Army Sergeant Ronn Cantu, home on leave from his second Iraq deployment, who was a spark plug in the Appeal to Redress petition given to Congress.
Iraq veteran Jabar Magruder, president of LA’s IVAW chapter and a California National Guard member, delivered that petition in Washington. Magruder gave a presentation that outline IVAW’s goals and methodology. Cantu and Magruder have been on CBS’ Sixty Minutes program.
Tim Goodrich, an Air Force veteran who served in the Middle East during the pre war bombing of Iraq, was the evening’s master of ceremonies. After being discharged, he was part of a civilian fact finding delegation to Baghdad. Goodrich is a founder of IVAW and a member of its national board.
Other members of the Los Angeles chapter also spoke. Several common points emerged. Patriotism. Disillusionment as no weapons of mass destruction were found. Routine military practices during what often amounted to “police work” that lead to the inevitable (desensitization, fear and callousness of war that made all Iraqi lives cheap). More than once the general indifference of the “(I)Pod people,” hedonistic and uncaring Americans, was mentioned.
A smaller segment of the society than during the draft-fueled Vietnam War now does military service or fights in Iraq or Afghanistan. A “lets you and them fight to keep me ‘safe,’ revenged and prosperous” mentality is loose in the land. Even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Or al Qaeda. Or the Taliban.
U.S. policy put the emphasis on Iraq rather than on Afghanistan, where we had trained the Taliban (to fight the Russians). The Taliban that gave a base of operations to Osama bin Laden and suppressed the opium trade now flourishing in Afghanistan. The Taliban, now regaining power, is using drug money to do what?
The speakers—and the audience—were a typical cross section of Southern California. The desire to earn money for education while making a living came up. So were the high pressure tactics recruiters for the armed services use on naïve young people. The difficulties of readjusting to civilian life after combat were mentioned.
Support the troops (watch them be redeployed on a tour extended from 12 to 15 months—since there aren’t enough of them to “transform the Middle East”)!
Support the troops (see them duel with the VA and the military for disability ratings appropriate to their injuries, adequate medical treatment after initial injury and for PTSD)!
When people say “Support the Troops!” it’s usually more attitude than action. Often the “action” does more to soothe the sayer than to actually aid troops in any significant or meaningful way.
Support the troops (admire the adroitness of discharging people with “pre existing mental conditions” instead of treating them for PTSD)!
Support the troops (watch their families fray—or not; if the military thought they needed a family it would issue them one)!
Expect the ship of state’s course to turn on a dime because the last election sent a slim majority of Demopublicans to the previously Republicrat dominated congress.
“Virtual patriotism” (self absorption, being unknowing or ill informed, poor perception and self aggrandizement) leads to virtual, not actual, freedom. IVAW is striving for the real thing. Another generation of veterans wants wisdom, relevance and sense to guide sacrifice. Hearing “Thank you for your service” does nothing practical.
While “(I)pod people” avoid actuality with celebrity worship, shopping, clubbing and NIMBYism, an imperial presidency–aided and abetted by ideological war wimps and think tanks, corporate pirates, lobbyists, and politicians seeking campaign contributions and earmarks–runs wild. The common good and the real needs of the nation, its people–and the planet–go ignored.
The Decider Guy says he listens to the generals while ignoring any who practice reality instead of fantasy. Meanwhile, lives are lost, bodies are scarred, futures are blighted and American treasure and reputation are wasted. Unless you run, work for or own stock in the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) or a subsidiary.
At a minimum, a citizen’s duties include researching and becoming knowledgeable about issues and candidates and monitoring their effects and progress. Do any thing else and you get demockcracy.
When more attention is paid to choosing an American Idol than a president you get a knockoff, idolatrous president, administration and congress.
When a nation fights unnecessary wars ineptly and makes the people who fight them expendable and disposable, it becomes hard to get people who’ll fight the next (hopefully necessary) war.
The distinguished scholar Chalmers Johnson ends his trilogy of works called The American Empire Project with these words from the volume entitled Nemesis: “. . . My country is launched on a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences.”
In Greek mythology, Nemesis was the goddess of justice or vengeance. The first book in Johnson’s trilogy is titled Blowback. The second is called The Sorrows of Empire.
When considering national military, diplomatic or economic action, it’s prudent to ask these questions:
• What is known about the situation?
• What outcome and goals are desired?
• What’s the best way to achieve them?
• What acts are needed to achieve them?
• What resources are needed and available?
• What’s the effect on the nation of using them this way?
• Are there alternatives to the type of action proposed that can yield the same results?
• What are the possible costs and effects of a course of action?
• Are the potential gains worth the potential efforts?
• Whether you win, lose, or stalemate what might you win, lose, prevent, delay or avoid? And, for how long?
Or, as some old Roman supposedly asked, who does it help? Who does it hurt? Who pays for it?
Horace Coleman, Southern California contact, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO OUR READERS.
For over two years now, Thomas Paine’s Corner has been a powerful and unwavering voice for a courageous and badly needed agenda for change. We have consistently delivered hard-hitting and insightful commentary, polemics, and analysis in our persistent efforts to persuade, educate, and inspire, and serve as a discriminating but generous platform for voices from many points of view with one thing in common: their spiritual honesty and quality of thinking.
•
Aside from the caliber of its content, Thomas Paine’s Corner’s strength is that there are no advertisers or corporations to exercise de facto censorship or orchestrate our agenda. We aim to keep it that way and we need your help!
•
As a semi-autonomous section of the multi-faceted, thoroughly comprehensive, and highly prestigious Cyrano’s Journal Online, we share Cyrano’s passion for winning the battle of communications against systemic lies, an act which is essential to attaining social and environmental justice. To help us achieve that goal, Cyrano’s Journal, besides its regular editorial pages, intends to begin producing editorial videos to expose the lack of proper context, ahistoricalism, excessive over-emphasis on inane events, and outright lies the corporate media, and in particular television, present to you and your family as a steady diet of pernicious intellectual junk food. This will be an expensive under-taking and there will be no grants forthcoming from the likes of the American Enterprise Institute, the Coors or Heritage Foundation. You can be sure of that!
•
As Greek mythology has it, the powerful are frequently defeated by their own hubris, and that’s precisely what we are witnessing today. Our rotten-to-the-core, usurping plutocracy has become so overtly and arrogantly corrupt that our patience has now reached its generous limit, and the membrane of America’s collective consciousness is about to burst. This will result in a significant restructuring of our socioeconomic and political environments, we hope (and must make sure) for the better. Considering what is at stake in the world today, Cyrano’s Journal and Thomas Paine’s Corner want to accelerate the arrival of that new day, and its promise of a new, truly well organized, kind, and honest civilization.
•
Assisting us in our cause is as simple as clicking on the PayPal button below and exercising the power of your wallet. No matter how large or how small, we thank you in advance for your donation! If you are serious about our struggle for a new society, please don’t put it off. Let us hear from you today.
•Jason Miller
Associate Editor, Cyrano’s Journal Online, and Editorial Director, Thomas Paine’s Corner.
Patrice Greanville, Editor in Chief, Cyrano’s Journal Online
If the people of Israel knew they were being irradiated by the downwind effect from Iraq…we wonder if world policy would suddenly shift towards PEACE.
[…] Read more Iraq War […]
[…] From Thomas Paine’s Corner […]
I am annoyed by the notion that, by not participating in this war, I am some kind of iPod person - somehow to blame for the hardships experienced by military person’s in Iraq.
Those who chose to follow George Bush without asking questions, did so at their own peril; if they lost their souls in the process, there is no one else to blame but themselves. These same people scorned the conscientious objectors - those who thought it through, those who refused to participate, those who embraced peace and stayed home with the iPod people.
The real problem here is that we live in the most comprehensive propaganda state in the world. Americans are raised on tales of young George Washington telling no lies, and we really believe we have a right to invade other countries, even with flimsy evidence. We believe fighting in a war is a glorious thing - even an unjust war. Those who join the military are simply pawns of the propaganda state, fighting and dying for an elite that use them and discard them when the work is done.
Still, choices were made by each man and woman who volunteered for Iraq. I’m sorry about the hardships facing Iraq War vets. But let’s not blame others. We each make our own choices. No one can force us to do anything without our individual consent.
iPod Person
Well, hey iPod Person, I sympathize with your logic up to a point. But surely you can’t believe that every military person in Iraq today volunteered for this war. Sure there are those who did join the military specifically for that reason–but most for Afghanistan. But the bulk of the troops there simply joined for a job and benefits; especially those in the National Guard units cannot be blamed for their plight.
Beyond that however is the question of simple human compassion. The ‘Why should I care’ attitude reveals a small selfish attitude, that the article addresses. This is obviously the cause of your discomfort. Just keep in mind that, “The chickens are coming home to roost” with a police state here in the ‘Homeland’, and you have no-one to blame for this but yourself…just as much as those in the offshore situation. Some of those greiving family members and wounded veterans just might end up being valuable allies at some point in your life. A person may prove themself foolish by joining the military, but this does not strip them of their humanity. ‘No man is an island’. It might be better to consider that ‘humanness’ is measured by compassion, not cleverness, or self rightious, self serving fairytales. Now I am probably as angry at the idiots that bought into the propaganda as you are–but I have pity on the poor chump who finally grows up in the middle of a firefight and gets a limb blown off in the lesson. it’s a hard way to learn–even though most don’t. Most of my buddies joined the Marines and volunteered for Nam. They still wear fatigues to this day…they never really got home. I knew these guys my whole life. Yea, they were stupid–it was their fault, and I warned them that it wasn’t going to be a John Wayne movie. But blame them for buying into the cultural propaganda they had been fed their whole lives is hard for me to do, even though I saw through it myself. I don’t feel special–I feel lucky to have been born with the propensity to think for myself. Perhaps it is that I’m an artist, maybe genetic, maybe dumb luck, maybe I’m blessed, maybe I met Obie Wan Canobie in desguise–who knows? But I am personally thankful, and tend toward compassion for my fellow beings because of it.
Last thing–your last sentence there–that one throws me for a loop! You live in utopia?
Tonite is the first that I became aware of this forum.
The article “Iraq Veterans “(IP)Pod People” by Horace Coleman is extremely good in that it “appears” to embrace what troopers of my day endured, and how we were treated after the fact. I will be perusing this venture in days to come to see if it is typical of all the platitudes and bullshit that have been rendered by politicians and bureaucrats at so-called ceremonies honoring those who served. In short empty rhetoric. Most if not all crusades effortrs concerning veterans today are “generational” in their goal. Me.
I am a 1964, i.e., 1964, U.S. Army length of service miloitary retiree who served this deceitful, thankless and unforgiving nation during and over three major engagements “in combat” and a dozen minor conflagrations on the “low draft-era” pay and non-existent allowances only to be BETRAYED by the nation I served along with 432,000 cohots by the changing of a “decades old law” regarding how retired pay would be paid in the future. We were assured “there will never be a noticeable difference in pay” yet we have endured and witinessed our successor ‘ingrate’ retirees drawing from 1/3 - 1/2 more per month than we do throughout the 25 military pay grades. And the drew the “high” All Volunteer Military pay and exhorbant allowances. Bonuses unbelievable!
Did our successor troopers care about our pay and the changing of the law? Hell no. They all enlisted or took a commission for, “pay, travel, adventure, schooling, citizenship and high retirement,” after what the nation did to us. Less than 20,000 of us still survive. We had a case to go all the way to the Supreme Court in which the Court said, “Congress can do what they want to do with the military,” and that was in 1965 to be specific. We folowed this with a political action in 1968 and the winner, tricy dick, told us in 1970, “I am studying the issue.” This after he told us in a campaign Telegram, “You were done wrong and if elected I’ll make this my first order of business to correct.”
Did society care? Hell no. They have placed us in a situation much worse than the so-called “Bonus March” of the early 1930s.
Horace. Medicare did not even exist when I retired. I did not have to stay in the service and made plans twice to depart. Each time I was told, by no less than and colonel, “Sgt Gray. You are serving a “gracious and generous nation. We cannot operate a military without men like you.” Puffed up I’d foolishly reenlist.
Today I pay all of my health care costs. In the ’70s I was informed from the Pentagon that on attaining age 65 when no longer subject to recall to active duty - no, no, no, no, no it was age 62 when I retired but they still hung this extra shit on us - and wanting health care, “Go to Social Security and apply for Medicare part B” along with the draft-dodger, highly paid civilian and now the “ingrate” highly paid successor military retiree. Didn’t I tell you that Medicare did not even exist when I retired? So,
today I pay all of the health care costs for my wife of over 59 years who served with “General George S. Patton’s Third Army Field Hospital as a captain nurse in France, Germany, Austria, and for myself.
We have each made over 200 such Medicare part B payments plus the monthly BC/BS supplement. Oh! Add some pharmaceuticals to that!
What an honor?
So what else is new?
I had intended to include my e-mail which is;