Goodbye to Cindy Sheehan
 

This is from her personal blog. Although I am not a big fan of hers, I do agree strongly with some of the points she makes about the "right" and the "left".

[url]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/28/12530/1525[/url]

Good riddance!
I think she dishonored the memory of her son dying by saying that he died for nothing. He, and the other soldiers that died (one of which I knew, and this was the first Memorial Day after his death...he was from my small city...RIP Luke Holler), died to help protect our way of life.

As a few twists on the word "right", my personal beefs are:

1. I see more and more people in society concerned with "being right" rather than "doing right".
- If I make a decision based on everything I know and believe to be "right" but am later shown to have erred due to a bad assumption I will acknowledge it and, if it not too late, and, if it is for the better, I will change the decision. I know a lot of people with the attitude that "Once I make a decision I don't go back!"; as if to suggest it is a sign of weakness.

2. There is more and more focus on "rights" and less and less attention to "responsibilities".
- Our workplace allows up to 12 paid sick days per year. I am amazed how many people feel it is their "right" to use all 12 every year whether they are sick or not. But what about their responsibility to their employer and their co-workers?

3. There is a growing mindset that my "rights" come first and the collective "rights" of society are secondary.
- I don't see all "rights" as being equal; for example a parents "right" to smoke (an unhealthy choice) is superceded by the children's "right" to clean air (a healthy environment). In my mind it is a no-brainer ... so why there are still so many parents that insist on their "right" to smoke in the same house or car that their children occupy baffles me.

[QUOTE=Mini-Geek;107255]Good riddance!
I think she dishonored the memory of her son dying by saying that he died for nothing. He, and the other soldiers that died (one of which I knew, and this was the first Memorial Day after his death...he was from my small city...RIP Luke Holler), died to help protect our way of life.[/QUOTE]

I think there are many people who disagree with you. From her perspective, her son was sent to Iraq for one purpose (to stop terrorism and to prevent WMD from getting into the hands of terrorists). She later believed that he was sent more for political/personal/financial reasons than to stop Al Qaida. In her mind, if he died for the latter then his death was meaningless.

Whether or not she "dishonored" her son depends upon what he was thinking in the days before he died. Before he died, did her son think that the U.S. was correct in invading Iraq or not? I don't know the answer for that. Do you? She might just be an extesion of his thoughts in those last days or she could just be a grieving mother wanting to blame someone tangible for it. GW is a much easier media target than someone in Asia.

A son of honour!
 

[QUOTE=rogue;107264]I think there are many people who disagree with you. From her perspective, her son was sent to Iraq for one purpose (to stop terrorism and to prevent WMD from getting into the hands of terrorists). She later believed that he was sent more for political/personal/financial reasons than to stop Al Qaida. In her mind, if he died for the latter then his death was meaningless.
.[/QUOTE]

:sad:

I agree with you rogue. IT is a very very sad story.

Perhaps we should read it again.

"Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity."

At the way things are developing these days I'm afraid her forecast ('ten or twenty years from then') will come true.

Kenny Rogers expressed it beautifully in his song 'Ruby, dont take your love to town' as early as in the 1960's

He Sings ' It wasn't me who started that crazy Asian war' as he is confined to a wheel chair and cant take her out.

I wonder when the U.S. and its principal ally Britain will realise that they are truly licked in Iraq and to move all their forces out as soon as possible.

In stead they are now tackling Iran and even North Korea.

Forget the aircraft carriers and war planes etc. etc.

They are tackling the Spirit of Man which will never die no matter how heavily armed one might be!

The Goliath of the West can be defeated by a boy David some day and this is literally happening in that God forsaken mid East.

For those Americans reading this, your vote is crucial in the upcoming '08 elections. Please vote for a troop pull out and the person who endorses this policy.

Mally :coffee:

[QUOTE=Mini-Geek;107255]Good riddance!
I think she dishonored the memory of her son dying by saying that he died for nothing. He, and the other soldiers that died (one of which I knew, and this was the first Memorial Day after his death...he was from my small city...RIP Luke Holler), died to help protect our way of life.[/QUOTE]

Horseshit. He died because an overzealous, incompetent, and stupid
president started a war under FALSE PRETENSES for his own idealogical
reasons. This president should be impeached and then tried for TREASON
and MURDER.

Modern psychology has many benefits, I've noted elsewhere, but there's a down side (as there is to any science AFAIK), too. It has enabled political thinktanks to refine methods of attracting certain groups of people to political parties and to refine methods of stirring-up their emotions.

Of course, there have been stirred-up emotions and partisan appeals in politics forever. What I (and many others) see is a distinct decline in political civility between the 1950s-1960s and the 1990s-2000s. It's not that the viciousness of recent political attacks is unprecedented; it's that the rate and consistent level of hot-button emotional appeals has risen, to the detriment of calm discussion and compromise.

[quote=R.D. Silverman;107299]Horseshit. He died because an overzealous, incompetent, and stupid
president started a war under FALSE PRETENSES for his own idealogical
reasons. This president should be impeached and then tried for TREASON
and MURDER.[/quote]

Hear! Hear! Unfortunately, he did die for nothing. Well, not for nothing, for the greed and hubris of some men. Bob, the problem with impeachment is who will impeach him? It's not like the democrats have their hands clean.


Mini_geek is one of those for whom this poem is meant:
..........
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Pro patria mori!
 

[QUOTE=garo;107698]

Mini_geek is one of those for whom this poem is meant:
..........
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.[/QUOTE]

:smile:

Garo that quote enticed me to find out the meaning and it was a revelation!

This is what I got on Google.

" DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country. "

I dont believe that that's the best thing one can do.

Christ said "No greater love is there than giving up your life for a friend"

So friend first, country second.

Mally :coffee:

Most likely he died, either directly or indirectly, protecting his buddies. When you are a soldier, at the bottom of the food chain, all that matters is your squad. You don't think of politics, why you are there, or who is right and who is wrong. You worry about getting yourself and your buddies back home in one piece.

Trust us on this. Life really can be that simple.

[QUOTE=mfgoode;107700]" DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War.[/QUOTE]

Specifically, at the end of an eponymous [url=http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html]poem[/url] by Wilfred Owen, one of our[sup]*[/sup] favorite poets of the Great War. (Siegfried Sassoon and Isaac Rosenberg being two other excellent ones.)

The blurb you mention about being "often quoted at the start of the First World War" is incorrect, as the peom was written towards the very end of the war, when any illusions about the war being righteous, noble or glorious (all the usual horseshit, as Bob might say) had long-since been blown to smithereens by stark, ugly reality. In Owen's poem the phrase is turned on its head from the way Horace intended it.

===================
[sup]*[/sup]We have alas been infected by Xyzzy's third-person virus. Our doctor assures us that in most cases it proves to be little more than a pssing nuisance, albeit one possibly annoying to our friends, family and coworkers.