Military on ET, SOUND OFF
- Thread starter oddiduro
- Start date
I don't have kids. Can I come hug yours? Got any cute dau....... Just kidding.
The argument for a draft is, guys like us get in, and we were not career people. There is a civilian element that, for lack of a better word, "keeps the Military honest, in touch with the world." However, the guys that would serve that interest dont' want any part of the Military, but they want to criticise it. And now, the Military doesn't want any part of draftees. Whatever. This economy will fill the ranks with qualified people very quickly. They'll be turning folks away in six months.
I have to hope, for all the stupid things that were done in Vietnam, it seemed like they just wasted guys, made stupid decisions that squandered lives, I just hope that the guys now that lead who were field grade officers then, and remember, and they do the best thing in an awful less - than - perfect world. It seems like it is a Military more grounded in the value of our soldiers. I don't know that, but I want to believe it. It seems it. We were cannon fodder.
On a similar topic to Don's, around that time I knew this guy - I was bitching because something was wrong w/my car. I was just a kid. He said, "I just got done w/9 years in the Navy. I was on an aircraft carrier. Those things bob up and down like corks. Do you know how many guys fly into the side of that ship at night? We were always losing guys. This is nothing."
Boy, was he right.
As goes America, so goes the rest of the World.
We're all on this sinking ship together, bro.
And I care about the fate of everyone, not just myself.
Sometimes I wish instead of blabbing on and on about the greatest generation - those that served WW2, I wish history would take a long hard look at those that survived the psychedelic wars. These battles were long and hard too and often terror filled.
Year after year drug after drug another mountain to take. It was endless, pointless, but we fought on. I remember the Giant Cocaine War ONE- man that was the worst. Me sending me darling wife-to-be to a place where I knew they had a gun. Patrolling the street at 4:00 in the morning at one point stooping to the level of buying crack. Luckily that didn't taste right but the Fire years of Cocaine War Two, when the cocaine was smoked... you want to talk about putting in 24 hour days? My fake friend the dealer who I would call to talk sports and then say " why don't I just come by " An eight ball later and the birds are chirping and the heat's not working, and it's not a pretty scene.
It was a battlefield. And every day a battle.
A friend stone dead on the floor at the dealers house... a phone message on the machine... me hiding by the stove listening... that will scare you sober and it did and straight into the Ecstasy War. These ecstasy vets are messed up, cut them some slack. Wow the sex they had! But the crash, the comedown was like being in a little hole. In that hole you bury deep your head and hold away the pain.... & the very innate embarrassment of having never been to war & turned unleashed upon the enemy with no rules. How I yearned for that in a way... How can you not love the military! If you value history and enjoy history as I do then you are in the military section of life's bookstore my friend... Some of the China/ Japan stuff is really wack but for all out psychedelic- like fear, Nam and Korea really stand out. Trench warfare is boring. I did retail clothes- vintage and dealt with a lot of uniforms- Nam had the best ones the rip stop pants are hot as hell on girls, really shapes their ass... not sure why our guys would want them; the camo of course was off the hook then and the shirt cuts were very revolutionary... The packs of roaming soldiers with no clear leader... smoking weed and as they defy the jungle and live in a surreal state... that was a good one...We won't have that again. Korea for the sheer terror of it... it doesn't get enough respect...that war, it's vets... It's the overwhelming ant thing, or being attacked by midgets but when those thousands upon thousands of crazy Chinese charged with their fixed bayonets can you imagine how that felt? My dad did, it was so unfortunate that having survived that it rained so damn hard there that one night he took cover under a Semi truck... I don't know the whole story- was their drinking involved.... how do you sleep through a truck starting up in the middle of the night... and running over you.
This whole thread has made me want to go through my closet and dig out his pins but it's difficult; he came back to the states had a few botched operations at the VA Hospital managed to have me and promptly died when I was one. So to be in a line of work that can have you die for such a weird and unimportant reason as getting out of the rain that was weird. Especially since he joined up on his own... rich kids did that back then in Boston environs and they were the better for it.... but what of the children they left behind? When I hear of another roadside bomb going off in IRAQ I want to scream.... WHAT FOR! We are not accomplishing enough in Iraq period. I want a secret base to attack Iran from sorry! I always did. I always assumed that was the whole idea.. I want all that oil at a fixed cheap price until they run out... I thought that was the idea... now to just have nothing no oil no base no victory no nothing what a huge waste.
Team sports football thru high school & watching MMA can only release so much violence. How much is still trapped in me I wonder ready to get out. Even at 43. Enough of these damn kids getting killed for no reason. I hope the next war is for the elders. I hope those of us who have managed to live through the psychedelic wars can be called upon to serve our nation. On our terms of course... for a really good reason and with the best commanders in the field... and after our own kids are in college and have direction...let us put away our BBQ's & Bongs and swarm an enemy... let us poke their eyes out in a life or death struggle. You can't be more real than that.~stoney
Year after year drug after drug another mountain to take. It was endless, pointless, but we fought on. I remember the Giant Cocaine War ONE- man that was the worst. Me sending me darling wife-to-be to a place where I knew they had a gun. Patrolling the street at 4:00 in the morning at one point stooping to the level of buying crack. Luckily that didn't taste right but the Fire years of Cocaine War Two, when the cocaine was smoked... you want to talk about putting in 24 hour days? My fake friend the dealer who I would call to talk sports and then say " why don't I just come by " An eight ball later and the birds are chirping and the heat's not working, and it's not a pretty scene.
It was a battlefield. And every day a battle.
A friend stone dead on the floor at the dealers house... a phone message on the machine... me hiding by the stove listening... that will scare you sober and it did and straight into the Ecstasy War. These ecstasy vets are messed up, cut them some slack. Wow the sex they had! But the crash, the comedown was like being in a little hole. In that hole you bury deep your head and hold away the pain.... & the very innate embarrassment of having never been to war & turned unleashed upon the enemy with no rules. How I yearned for that in a way... How can you not love the military! If you value history and enjoy history as I do then you are in the military section of life's bookstore my friend... Some of the China/ Japan stuff is really wack but for all out psychedelic- like fear, Nam and Korea really stand out. Trench warfare is boring. I did retail clothes- vintage and dealt with a lot of uniforms- Nam had the best ones the rip stop pants are hot as hell on girls, really shapes their ass... not sure why our guys would want them; the camo of course was off the hook then and the shirt cuts were very revolutionary... The packs of roaming soldiers with no clear leader... smoking weed and as they defy the jungle and live in a surreal state... that was a good one...We won't have that again. Korea for the sheer terror of it... it doesn't get enough respect...that war, it's vets... It's the overwhelming ant thing, or being attacked by midgets but when those thousands upon thousands of crazy Chinese charged with their fixed bayonets can you imagine how that felt? My dad did, it was so unfortunate that having survived that it rained so damn hard there that one night he took cover under a Semi truck... I don't know the whole story- was their drinking involved.... how do you sleep through a truck starting up in the middle of the night... and running over you.
This whole thread has made me want to go through my closet and dig out his pins but it's difficult; he came back to the states had a few botched operations at the VA Hospital managed to have me and promptly died when I was one. So to be in a line of work that can have you die for such a weird and unimportant reason as getting out of the rain that was weird. Especially since he joined up on his own... rich kids did that back then in Boston environs and they were the better for it.... but what of the children they left behind? When I hear of another roadside bomb going off in IRAQ I want to scream.... WHAT FOR! We are not accomplishing enough in Iraq period. I want a secret base to attack Iran from sorry! I always did. I always assumed that was the whole idea.. I want all that oil at a fixed cheap price until they run out... I thought that was the idea... now to just have nothing no oil no base no victory no nothing what a huge waste.
Team sports football thru high school & watching MMA can only release so much violence. How much is still trapped in me I wonder ready to get out. Even at 43. Enough of these damn kids getting killed for no reason. I hope the next war is for the elders. I hope those of us who have managed to live through the psychedelic wars can be called upon to serve our nation. On our terms of course... for a really good reason and with the best commanders in the field... and after our own kids are in college and have direction...let us put away our BBQ's & Bongs and swarm an enemy... let us poke their eyes out in a life or death struggle. You can't be more real than that.~stoney
Great post, Don. Thanks. 
Ok but let's leave Panama off the list as invading a country posing no military threat to arrest a U.S. trained drug dealer is not in the same spirit as WW II.
Panama was a freakin joke. there were more press on the beach than snipers. That was not a war, in fact that whole list drifts off a cliff after WW2... where would we be without Iraq wars? That's an interesting question politically of course but the Iraq war has been against ourselves and the shadows it is not classic warfare in any sense and there is no impressive army to overcome. It's a big training exercise in how to run down our troops and equipment while bankrupting the nation and our own morals... it's an exercise in overplay similar to Russia in Afganistan but we are just that good no one can dislodge us from anywhere.
The growth of the CIA is the really interesting point. They now are a covert fighting force of some degree of greatness. In the past it was always Special Forces... the CIA is doing more and more on their own and there are units within units, doors behind doors and that's kind of exciting. The Afganistan way of taking a side infiltrating and fighting with looser rules could be imported to any number of countries and hot spots but it's terrorist hunting as sport and as is the American way eventually leads to nation building and regime change and all the mistakes the British made in the past.
We are an imperial people but we must not become imperious. Communist inroads in Vietnam or Korea would have changed none of our way of life. I'm not sure all those very many deaths amounted to anything special for our country. Has South Korea been that big a prize? To me Taiwan is a more important check on China than Korea. Vietnam was important only in that it taught us to fight armies not farmers and citizens on the ground, when all of a society is against you it's best to leave. A lesson perhaps revisited now in Iraq. ~stoney
Oh please,
Save the brainwashing for the weak-minded.
Vietnam was an infringement on US liberties? Korea was? First Iraqi war was? Bosnia was? Good reasons to send young men to die, ehh?
Before you use World War II to glorify the US military as a noble institution that everyone should bow before, maybe you should educate yourself as to how Hitler was financed. Union Banking Corporation comes to mind, but that's just scratching the service.
Here is a great quote:
"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy"- Henry Kissinger
I find the US military absolutely despicable, looking at it as an institution. As for the young men who join up and go risk their lives, I just feel sorry for them.