Repost from November 11, 2001
Nov. 11th, 2003 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarrick
Lest Ye ForgetThose who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
--George Santayana
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| My father's hatbadge |
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| My father fresh out of basic training. He lied about his age to go fight. He's 15 in this photo. Think about it... what were you doing when you were 15? |
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| My dad with his tank. These are in Italy. He's 16 or 17 in these. |
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| His crewmates from the tank. The text at the top reads "Open Air Phil Scott. Killed Dec 1943". |
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| The text reads "[Troop] 6. Wiped out Aug 19, 1942. Dieppe." |
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-11 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 01:07 am (UTC)I remember when I was a kid, and that isn't so long ago. Every rememberance day we would sit in the gym and hear about war, the horrors of it, people did what they had to do for our freedom. Now it seems that we hear what it's doing for our economy; how it's going to affect filling up our SUV's. It's not about our freedom - hell, I don't know if anyone knows why we have Canadian troops in Afghanistan - fighting for farmers to make heroin to feed our downtown eastside, not that the Taliban was of any use for anything other than worm food - freeing up US troops to go fight in Iraq because of Operation Iraqi Liberation... I get lost trying to wrap my head around it.
It used to be that those that fought and died did so and we can see and quantify what they did - Hitler was really killing millions, there were armies invading countries; there were dictators that posed a real threat, they really did have weapons. The war of today seems like so much spilled blood. It's about PR reps and Headline news. Perhaps at the time they thought the same, is that a part of history that they forgot to mention?
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 01:34 am (UTC)as was Saddam .. and he needed to be stopped.- and this is what the US war machine will tell you
But what I do beleive was the the Iraqi war need not have happened for that objective to be achieved. Shock and Awe was a Bush PR campaign .. and it totally worked on the 'merican
poeple.. they thought they NEEDED to go to war to defend America when all they really needed was one well placed sniper.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 01:38 am (UTC)I have a picture of my grandpa right after he enlisted in his uniform and he looks like such a baby.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 01:40 am (UTC)I think the problem is that if any of OUR generation was called to war.. none of us would go .. becasue I am not certain we would know what we would be giving our lives for.
What exactly would we be defending? Our tax burden? our lying politicians? the houses we can't afford on land we would be unwelcome on?
I had thought of joining the military for
1) money
2) travel
3) health (training)
but when I look at where our troops are put - to ultimately serve our next door neibour, I also look at the freedoms I would give up ... not worth it.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 07:28 am (UTC)My Old Man
Date: 2003-11-12 12:56 pm (UTC)Truthfully, war is so darned technical now that I really can't image a draft occuring anymore. All the smart people are too smart to get involved with the military, and all the dumb people are too dumb to figure out basic tactics and high-tech equipment. Look at our automobile traffic - most people have enough problems driving a car, let alone some fancy-pants tank or aircraft.
* * *
My old man missed seeing action by less than a year. He ended up with 42 Marine Commando pulling garrison duty in Malta in the mid-to-late 1940s and posted on the HMS Ajax. In the 1950s he was on the Royal Barge - one of his responsiblities was evactuating to safety the crown jewels from the Tower of London in the event of a nuclear attack.
Up until he was 60, he was still liable to being called back to service even though he was by now a Canadian citizen. For curiousity sake, when we were in Britain in 1979, he tracked down where he was supposed to report (according to his discharge agreement papers) but the place had been turned into a shopping mall.
He followed the Falklands Liberation War of 1983 to some close extent - interestingly enough his old unit was the very first ashore during the landings.
the only draught i support is beer...
Date: 2003-11-12 03:20 pm (UTC)Re: the only draught i support is beer...
Date: 2003-11-12 04:01 pm (UTC)If I ever got drafted, the first thing I'd do is make it known plain and clear that I'd be happily surrendering at the first opportunity.