Veteran's Day, November 11 2006

Cities For Peace
Karen Dolan is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. She also co-directs the
Cities for Peace and Cities for Progress projects.

Red state, blue state? That is SO last week.
As Democrats have swept into power, shamelessly ignoring the once-sacred red state–blue state divide, one more aspect of this blurring of the nation's political divide remains underreported. This story more fully illustrates the passionate energy of anti-war sentiment in America and it’s a lesson former red-staters would do well to heed.

If your ommunity didn't have a ballot measure on the above, it's time that you get out and push for one, and you don't need an election day, push your communities elected officials and your state legislatures to do the work you hired them for, Bring Them Home, NOW!
And Take Care Of Them When They Get Here!

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Jan Barry

Veterans Day sales, speeches, salutes. The November 11 holiday carved out
of World War I's Armistice Day has become a hollow cliche, a platform for
politicians to wax patriotic far from any battlefield. Wouldn't it be
grand if politicians spent the day listening to veterans.

"They're no good, these wars," Roy Longmere, an Australian veteran of the
Gallipoli campaign who miraculously lived to be 107, once said in memory
of 60,000 countrymen killed in World War I. "A lot of lives lost, no use
at all. There's got to be another way of fixing up these rows without
killing each other."

"There wouldn't have been a war if it had been left to the public," said
Bertie Felstead, who lived to be 106, the last surviving member of a
British battalion in WWI that struck a spontaneous truce with Germans on
Christmas Day 1915. When fighting resumed, it lasted nearly three more
years and killed millions of people until an armistice was signed.

Fast forward to 2006.

“Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal
invasion becomes,” Kevin Tillman said shortly before Veterans Day of the
death of his brother, Pat Tillman, in April 2004 while they were on a US
Army Ranger mission in Afghanistan that went horribly wrong. The Tillman
brothers previously served together in Iraq after volunteering in the wake
of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and
illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue
and honor of its soldiers on the ground. Somehow those afraid to fight an
illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an
illegal invasion they started,” Kevin Tillman said in a bitter tribute to
his brother’s death widely posted on the Internet.

The Army initially claimed that Pat Tillman, who left a professional
football career to serve in the War on Terrorism, died heroically fighting
the enemy. It was later revealed that he was killed by fellow Rangers in a
murky incident that is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Many veterans I know have bitter memories of war that are seldom
acknowledged in official pronouncements on Veterans Day. They tell anybody
willing to listen. At a forum on art by Vietnam veterans three years ago
at the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial and Vietnam Era Educational
Center, it was hard to tell where the war ended and the art began.

"Our family sustained six continuous years of incredible fear and threats
of death," photographer Tony Velez wrote in a statement about his exhibit
that interspersed snapshots of GI's in Vietnam with head-snapping scenes
of an antiwar march by Vietnam veterans. Velez and a brother served
back-to-back tours in the war, another brother was drafted, a cousin was
killed, another lost an arm, and haunting memories of dead GI's and
Vietnamese came home with him and refused to go away.

"Images of my experience in the war can still provoke a deep rage within
me of the injustices, lies, the horrors and terrors of war, as well as
nightmares, a sense of guilt, loss and sadness," Velez, a professor of
fine arts at Kean University, wrote.

An exhibit assembled by artist Frank Romeo presented a gallery of
veterans' nightmares: skulls in the place of soldiers' faces, a grim
reaper Death posing with an arm around a spit-and-polish general, a
trussed-up enemy prisoner who looked like an African-American.

"My paintings are of the horror show that was Vietnam: butchery carried
out for politicians, bureaucrats, and ambitious generals whose egos would
not let them say "enough"; art for an indifferent public; art to honor
those who lived and died there, and earned only a few hundred dollars a
month. It would take a lifetime to paint it all," said a statement by
Charlie Shobe, whose painting, "Waiting for Henry Kissinger," showed a
grinning dead GI sitting under a tree.

Charles H. Johnson read a poem on an unforgettable experience as an
infantry platoon leader. In the midst of a monsoon, he had to pull guard
duty:

So I trudge through the muck,
each step sucked deeper into the stuff
until (madly trying to free myself)
I trip and fall face first.

Not only must I fight in a cesspool.
Now I have become part of it.
Earth Songs: New and Selected Poems-Jan Barry

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What would this Vet like to see, no lets change that to Demand To See. That with this shift in Washington Power that the Congressional Democratic Party stop Immediatly using the Term 'Terrorists' to describe who we are fighting in Iraq and Afganistan, not all are Criminal Terrorists and that is what 'Terrorism' is a Criminal Offense! Start fighting/investigating/treating these for what they are 'Crimes', much of Europe and other parts of the World are doing just that and not invading countries and labeling all as Terrorists as we are. We invaded both countries and those that are fighting Us either live in those countries or are from that region. They want us Gone!
STOP, Imediately, using Muslim Religious names and terms to describe those who are fighting, for when these terms are used we are not just describing a small radical fringe, and Thanks to us their Ranks are Growing, but All who follow those religious beliefs, around the World! This has nothing to do with Religion nor Religious Beliefs!
Get Rid of this Extremists Ideology that one can Blow Up Others while saying you are bringing them 'Freedom' and 'Democracy', it just plain don't work that way. It does Create more Enemies and Hatreds, especially within the children that survive
Immediatly call for a Worldwide Summit, or series of Summits leading to a single Worldwide Summit, of Moderate Voices of Political Leaders, Religious Leaders, and Citizens known for their Moderate views. Discussions should be on Peace, Treatment of the less powerful by the powerful in political policies, business, human rights, support of those who dictate instead of lead by the powerful, banning the extreme ordinance that cause so much death amoung the innocent, and Especially getting back to the table on Nuclear Weapons, and all that greater minds than my own can bring to the table. Summits with those in the Middle East should be leading towards them taking more of a stance to help stop the violence that We Created. We foot the bill because we destroyed, but they can help quell the negative feelings, especially between the differant religious sects if the differing moderate religious/political leaders are brought into the discussions of this mess instead of pushed away. Also get these so called expert contractors, they're not, out of the region and turn All Rebuilding over to those in the Countries and Region with their citizens doing the work, not outsiders!
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Soldiers are not the only ones who suffer!
You may want to view this, than again maybe not.
Baghdad's Traumatized Patients

Iraqi psychiatric hospital offers extraordinary insights on the ravages of war.

Prepare yourself for this short video, and the kid in it!
If you view keep in mind that what is happening, especially in this new century, are that many, especially the children, are creating Extreme Hatreds that they will release on innocents around them and others as well. How far will these Hatreds carry them, and to what ends for them and us all?
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And this video:
'Iraq: Legacy of Hate' : The Lost Generation

Video Documentary By Channel 4 - UK

'Iraq: The Lost Generation' opens a window onto the hidden world of Iraqi youth, revealing the brutalisation and psychological trauma of living under military occupation. It reveals how the people with whom the future of Iraq rests, are reacting with anger, aggression and, in some cases, violence.

When the US-led invasion of Iraq promised to replace Saddam Hussein's brutal regime with freedom and democracy, nearly half of the country's population was under 21.

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I also want to start seeing Immediatly Investigations into the No-Bid Contracts, the Lost Billions, I want my money Back in the Peoples Treasury, a Complete investigation on the Intelligence and Lies that led us into the creation of an even greater force of Criminal Terrorists.
I want to see Investigations into the Incompetance that not only occurred after Katrina but in so many other areas as well. I want to know just how far backwards we have gone on policies covering the environment, business practises, drug research and release, protective inspections in a number of area's, and this list could keep going and going, for we have lost so much ground in so many area's it's simply mindboggeling.
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I want Investigations into the practises of Torture and Secret Prisons, this Country once Condemned now we are the Worlds Greatest Practitioners of!
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We Failed Our Children, with War
The Vietnam generation forgot lessons learned decades ago and let itself be bamboozled

Before shipping out to river patrol in the Mekong Delta in early 1967, I managed to get home to New York for a few days. As my parents were driving me back to the airport for my trip overseas, we talked about everything but the subject at hand. Then, as the flight was being called, they told me they wanted to say something, to make an apology. They had been good and loving parents, I thought, what on earth did they have to apologize for?

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This Veterans Day Let's Hear from the Troops Themselves

The divisive war in Iraq was what drove this fall's march of troops through dueling political commercials. But history and tradition both suggest more deeply rooted tendencies about how we enlist veterans in public life and how rarely we listen to the actual words of these men and women.

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History Comes Alive for Students Tracing World War II Dead (NY)

The Army-issued memorial flag, tucked away in storage for decades at the Queens College library, was a tantalizing clue. But it needed some decoding.

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On this Veterans Day give 'Honor' and 'Thanks' to those who serve, think about the reasons many do, even if only in a silent moment. Everyone is touched by the experiance of, by family members, friends, of the past generations to the present, and especially the results of the policies that lead us into these Conflicts we send our Military Troops Into!
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I recently put this video together of Actions of 'Honor':

Real 'Honor' for the Fallen - 'Peace In The World'

True 'Honor for the Fallen', of All Nations of All Conflicts, would be 'Peace'

Arlington East on Cape Cod National Seashore


Arlington Midwest - Kent State University


Arlington West Chapter 54 Santa Barbara CA Crosses Project

The Peace Ribbon Project


Walk In Their Shoes


Eyes Wide Open


Visions of Peace Garden at Camp Casey 3


There are other Memorial's to 'Honor' and for 'Peace', many led by Veteran's of previous conflicts in coalition with many others, as well as individual Memorials of 'Honor' and 'Peace', those who sent them into these conflicts Hide the 'Fallen's' Return, leaving an already Apathedic Society even More So!

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Any viewing this add your own thoughts, stories, articles, in comemoration of those who have served or are serving now!