The Real Disrespect for the Troops. Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar activist whose son Casey died in Iraq last year, returned to Crawford, Texas (Dubya's hometown) over the Thanksgiving weekend to lead a new round of protests against the Bush War. Her protest led to counter-protests. As reported on AOL:

About a dozen Bush supporters stood downtown with signs, one reading: "Real America won't wimp out." Throughout the morning, shoppers and a few tourists leaving souvenir stores stopped in the tent to voice their support for the president. * * *

Sheehan's summer protest, particularly its use of crosses with the names of fallen soldiers, sparked the counter-demonstration in downtown Crawford by the father of a fallen Marine who felt his son and other troops were being disrespected by the war opponents.

Oh? Let's talk about disrespect for the troops. Who respects them more, the people who want to save their lives and their sacred honor, or those who are perfectly happy to see them dead in the service of things they don't understand?
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Let me explain to the empty-headed losers of the "support our troops" crowd what the rich who control this country really feel about their brave boys. (Oh, sorry: "men and women". Women must always be mentioned in this Communist age, even tho almost no American women are dying in Iraq — which seems odd, doesn't it, if they are so important to combat operations that we need to put women in harm's way.)
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The advent of the all-volunteer military has given the ruling class the chance to use otherwise useless human waste who would be a drag on society if they were here. The more such dumb beasts of burden the ruling class can kill off in wars abroad, the happier the rich are. Do you think the children of the rich are in harm's way? Get real.
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The people stupid enuf to take a job that could kill them are in many, if not most cases, too stupid to be of any real use to society. Those who take a job that requires them to kill people are violently-disposed antisocial losers who would be fiting each other, driving drunk or stoned on pot, and endangering the lives of decent people all over this country if we didn't quarantine them in the military, on bases surrounded by razor wire. The military is a very large "Dirty Dozen" kept away from decent people and marked out by uniforms so we know to avoid them.
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Remember The Dirty Dozen, a 1967 movie summed up thus at the Internet Movie Database website?

A US Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead them into a mass assassination mission of German officers in World War II.

Do you think the U.S. military wanted the Dirty Dozen to survive?
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That is what the bulk of our troops are to the rich: the Dirty Dozen, a bunch of stupid, useless, ghetto blacks, barrio Hispanics, and white trailer trash who are fit only to serve as cannon fodder and lay down their otherwise worthless lives as far away as we can get them. These are the brainless losers who can't get into college or even a good vocational school; who would be underemployed or completely unemployed if they weren't in the military; who take an extremely dangerous job because they can't get any other job; and who are so easily duped that they think that the military is going to take care of them, educate them, and give them a better life, and it couldn't possibly happen that they get killed before they get out with a useful education (as tho military skills are readily transferable into the nonmilitary economy), because only other people get killed, not them!
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If they were here, they'd be hanging out on street corners getting high, selling drugs, and joining gangs if they're black or Hispanic; or drinking themselves into a stupor in trailer parks or the parking lot of the nearest 7-Eleven or Winn-Dixie, then driving drunk in drag races on the streets, endangering upstanding citizens. A large proportion of them, of any race, would be costing us in unemployment or welfare payouts, prisons, support for illegitimate children and public-health clinics, and all the other costs the underclass imposes upon society.
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So, the rich think, if they're inclined to fite and join gangs anyway, let's recruit them into the biggest, baddest gang in all the land, the United States military. Put a uniform on the punks, grind down their undisciplined asses into obedient automatons, pay them a pittance, and send them off to war. If they survive, oh well, we tried. And maybe the discipline the military imposed on them will carry over for a while — tho we don't really believe that of most of them. If they die, so much the better. We won't have to worry about what kind of trouble and expense they'll put us to once they come back — traumatized by what they've seen and numbed to human suffering. Considering that some percentage of returnees will be permanently disabled and cost us a fortune in repair and ongoing medical treatment, and another percentage will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological damage that could actually make them dangerous to themselves and their neighbors, it would be better if those specimens didn't return at all. Do you really want a sniper living nextdoor? The rich sure don't, and the returned walking wounded won't be living in their neighborhoods. They might, however, be living in yours.
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That is what the rich who control this society really feel about your brave boys and girls "defending their country" — as tho Iraq was ever a danger to this country! The rich are happy that the parents of the troops are stupid too, so will buy any lie and see the removal of their kids from society and sacrifice of their lives on the altar of militarism as noble and truly appreciated. They'll actually believe that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Republican leadership all share their pain, when the reality is that the more dead dopes from the lowest classes the Republicans can get rid of in Iraq, Afghanistan, and anyplace else far away that they can send them to, the happier they are.
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Wake up.
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The people who really respect your kids are the people who want them out of harm's way. Who want to offer them a free education, healthcare, and employment they don't have to risk their lives to get.
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So who's disrespecting the troops? The people who would like to see a world at peace where kids get to grow up and grow old without killing or being killed? Or those who see the world as a dangerous place that the least of us should die to keep at bay? Your call.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,108.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:47 PM