From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 08:54:16 MDT
In a message dated 9/5/2002 8:48:31 AM Central Standard Time,
Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de writes: I'm very sorry about that (really).
Amara,
I deeply respect military service. I don't glorify it in anyway.
However I do see the kid that serves his/her country as truly performing an
act of love. I also know that many cannot identify with his/her feelings.
After reading Kipling, etc., and observing I don't expect the majority to
people want the military unless there is a clear & present danger to their
lives. Then as Kipling observed the civilians go overboard.
I have also learned that having served over four years that if a
civilian and I ever compared notes (negatively) about the military I would be
far more harsh in my judgments than the civilian. But, I rarely try to
explain the military to a civilian -- I have learned they don't wish to
listen. But let me try very briefly to deal with the downside. You have
heard the upside -- I don't hate the military, I share many of the vet's
feelings on that subject. Nevertheless there is a time and a place to tell
the downside.
Put simply the military and the civilian leaders that direct the
military are in the business of taking young people and using them up. The
military not a career. It is not in the business of providing career paths.
It is not in the business of providing justice of any kind to its members.
It is about taking young people and using them up.
Servicemen and women get killed, crippled or wounded. In less
dramatic seasons they get posted places that are usually far from home and
left there when they are too young to know how to handle that. They drink
too much and do other self destructive things out of boredom and lack of
resources.
It would be easy to disdain those that adopt attitudes to avoid
service -- I don't shoot at fish in a barrel.
But in the end I have come to an age to be retired. Looking back it
seems I have done a little better in civilian life perhaps than those that
never served. So, I can't cry, "Look what they did to me?" Had I stayed
longer, I seemed to have a good career developing. Well, there was one
little thing. I was pre-Viet Nam. Had I not already been "used up" they
would have retread me to either fly multi engine "spy" planes up and down the
Russian & Chinese coast lines or I would have been put into helicopters to
stare at Viet Cong machine gunners through a thin sheet of Plexiglas.
Back to that part about my constitutional rights being violated. I
had enlisted. I was there to serve my country. When I learned of the treaty
giving away my rights it was a scary thought. That government had no
reputation for fairness in its criminal justice system. But as I said the
military is in the business of taking young people and using them up. In the
end that is my feeling about that situation. What was done was for the
defense and survival of the U. S.
We used to have a saying in the military, "We are awake that you may
sleep."
Sleep tight. <G>
Ron h.
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