“Sometimes the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”
And if the others learn from your mistakes, then perhaps your life had a purpose. Alas, when it comes to war at least, such learnings never stick. Consider Decoration Day, which was supposed to be a reminder that the Civil War had been a terrible, brutal thing and we never wanted to do this again, but quickly renamed Memorial Day and turned into a celebration of military power. Ditto Armistice Day, which started out commemorating the end of a war but quickly got renamed Veterans’ Day and re-invented as a salute to the military. The fiasco of Vietnam didn’t get its own holiday, and for a time it looked like the stark Vietnam monument in Washington might remind us to not do this again, but along came Hollywood and the whole “Rambo” mentality, to the point where the war’s pretty much been rewritten as something we were winning when those “liberals” (yeah, right, Tricky Dick Nixon was a liberal…) bugged out. And now, we have the very same bozos who turned out to be objectively, measurably, factually wrong about the Iraq invasion in 2003 being treated as “experts” on what we should be doing (more of what created the disaster in the first place, of course).
It’s been said that experience is a bitter teacher, but some will learn from no other. There are times I think even experience isn’t a bitter enough teacher for some folks.
Oh, this is just the sophistry that supports wars. In the first place, if “my country” is doing it, I have to support it or I’m not patriotic. The Bush administration did a good job of linking support for the Iraq war to “supporting the troops” — if you don’t want the war, you’re FOR having American soldiers killed. And as long as there’s good stuff on TV, as long as the war’s cost can be sloughed off on future generations, the war can go on as long as you want. People forget it’s going on.
BE THIS GUY over 10 years ago
Randy should talk to someone who cares.
sbchamp over 10 years ago
War is coolJust ask a 14 year old
puddleglum1066 over 10 years ago
“Sometimes the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”
And if the others learn from your mistakes, then perhaps your life had a purpose. Alas, when it comes to war at least, such learnings never stick. Consider Decoration Day, which was supposed to be a reminder that the Civil War had been a terrible, brutal thing and we never wanted to do this again, but quickly renamed Memorial Day and turned into a celebration of military power. Ditto Armistice Day, which started out commemorating the end of a war but quickly got renamed Veterans’ Day and re-invented as a salute to the military. The fiasco of Vietnam didn’t get its own holiday, and for a time it looked like the stark Vietnam monument in Washington might remind us to not do this again, but along came Hollywood and the whole “Rambo” mentality, to the point where the war’s pretty much been rewritten as something we were winning when those “liberals” (yeah, right, Tricky Dick Nixon was a liberal…) bugged out. And now, we have the very same bozos who turned out to be objectively, measurably, factually wrong about the Iraq invasion in 2003 being treated as “experts” on what we should be doing (more of what created the disaster in the first place, of course).
It’s been said that experience is a bitter teacher, but some will learn from no other. There are times I think even experience isn’t a bitter enough teacher for some folks.
krisjackson01 over 10 years ago
Oh, this is just the sophistry that supports wars. In the first place, if “my country” is doing it, I have to support it or I’m not patriotic. The Bush administration did a good job of linking support for the Iraq war to “supporting the troops” — if you don’t want the war, you’re FOR having American soldiers killed. And as long as there’s good stuff on TV, as long as the war’s cost can be sloughed off on future generations, the war can go on as long as you want. People forget it’s going on.