IN HONOR of VETERAN'S DAY
Who never lost, are unprepared
A coronet to find;
Who never thirsted, flagons
And cooling tamarind.
Who never climbed the weary league --
Can such a foot explore
The purple territories
On Pizarro's shore?
How many legions overcome?
The emperor will say.
How many colors taken
On Revolution Day?
How many bullets bearest?
The royal scar hast thou?
Angels, write "Promoted"
On this soldier's brow!
~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
A Worker Reads History
ReplyDeleteWho built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.
Bertolt Brecht
We who haven't served can never fully comprehend the sacrifices that those in our military make. Their families also make sacrifices.
ReplyDeleteRemembering my cousin, A US Marine who served in Vietnam and died in 2010 from the effects of Agent Orange. RIP, G.T.M. And remembering all who served their country.
ReplyDeleteRead that something like 22 veterans commit suicide per day. These are the veterans returning from the debacles in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan. Hopefully those poor misguided souls like Pat Tillman who thought they were stepping forward to serve their country in time of dire need were just being used by the manipulative liars to advance their evil agenda.
ReplyDeleteRather than performing heroic acts to serve their country in times of dire need they were serving the likes of Henry Kissinger who famously thought:
"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.”
Kissinger who some might consider to be a war criminal, a German Jew that escaped from Germany and likely came on the same boat that brought the whole damned Frankfurt School, lock stock and barrel to the country. Being a Rockefeller man it's not hard to see how he rose to positions of power and influence including Secretary of Stae.
Whenever you want to wax bitter about the dire consequences of leadership based on evil ideologies or power-mad, overly ambitious men motivated by Vanity and Greed, never forget Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Lenin-Trotsky & CO, Woodrow Wilson, Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Dung, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, John Fitzgerald Kennedy & Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the lackeys, toadies, dupes, useful idiots, evil geniuses and brutish beasts who served them.
ReplyDeleteThe men who bravely followed these fiends into battle and lost their lives or their sight, their limbs, their, mobility, their genitals -- or their MINDS -- are another matter. ALL are heroes worthy of respect and high esteem -- even those who fought for our ENEMIES, because ALL were innocent victims of ROTTEN leadership and demented ideologies.
These men -- and their poor widows, orphaned children, heavily burdened, seriously impoverished families -- deserve every bit of honor and respect we could offer.
It was not THEIR fault that they died heroically for NOTHING but VANITY, GREED, CORRUPTION and the MORAL BANKRUPTCY of ROTTEN LEADERSHIP.
Well maybe there's some light at the end of the tunnel, after all. Supposedly more than half of the American people (60%) don't accept the official version of the JFK assassination. Secondly more than half of the returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan don't believe invading those countries was justified.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to know what drives the high rates of suicide in the returning vets from those Middle East wars. Even a war that's completely justified morally is a trip into hell on Earth. But what happens to the psyche of those going into harms way when they discover that the war they are fighting is complete bull shit, created by demonic elites to advance an evil agenda?
Apparently Pat Tillman even had a change of heart when he went and saw first hand what was happening. He supposedly began keeping a diary which he intended to use to expose the corrupt evil he encountered there. That diary went missing when he was murdered.
Now these phony SOB's want to send more innocents into the fire in Syria and Egypt, etc. Wake the hell up world!