Freethinkers are dangerous.

Fuck the troops and fuck those that support the troops.

Thanks for the article.

The ending is spot on. Here it is in quotes.

“Marines, why do you do this to your families?

Based on the words of various Marines interviewed or talked about in this series, I say to those who made it through what I wish I could also say to twenty-five young men who didn’t:

If you just wanted to feel the trill of leading men in battle, then shame on you. If you just couldn’t find a job so you enlisted in the Marines, then shame on you. If you just wanted to experience the mental and physical challenge, then shame on you. If you just enlisted because your father was a Marine, then shame on you. If you just wanted to go to war, then shame on you. If you just thought you were defending our freedoms, then shame on you. If you just wanted to die a hero, then shame on you. If you just felt you had to complete the mission, then shame on you. If you just enlisted because you thought your government needed you, then shame on you. If you thought there was just no better job than being a Marine, then shame on you.

I have no doubt that the Marines of the Darkhorse Battalion fought valiantly. I am not questioning their manhood, courage, or determination. But I also have no doubt that each of the deaths of those twenty-five Marines from the Darkhorse Battalion was preventable, unnecessary, and senseless.

Lance Cpl. Josue Barron, who lost an eye, a leg, and some of his close friends, at the end of a discussion about whether everything that happened in Afghanistan was “worth it,” said: “It was worth it. If I say it wasn’t worth it, what about my friends that died? I’m disrespecting them, like they died for nothing.”

Sorry, Josue, as much as you may not want to face it, and no matter how many times you tell yourself that it was “worth it,” your friends died in vain just like those unfortunate U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq. Likewise, the only thing that the Marines in Afghanistan died for was a lie.

The most maddening and depressing thing out of all that I have heard from this series on the Darkhorse Battalion is the closing paragraph from Tom Bowman’s 50-minute report:

Darkhorse Battalion will deploy again sometime next year, but this time they’re going on what’s known as a Marine Expeditionary Unit. They’ll head on ships across the Pacific making port calls and being ready for anything from a humanitarian disaster to a rescue operation. The families are relived, but many of the Marines we spoke with just want to go back to Afghanistan.

Go back to Afghanistan? Marines, why do you do this to your families? I plead with you to heed the words of U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler (1881-1940), a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner who came to the conclusion that:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

Shame on you for putting the Marines above your families. Shame on you for making a god out of the Marines.”

January 9, 2012

Laurence M. Vance

BTW, Taliban in Iraq? You’re cute, but then, you do live in Waco.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

Little to nothing has changed since the Indian Acuera rebuffed de Soto with those words in 1539. European military is still bent on terrorism to intimidate..remember “Shock and Awe”? Now they bomb Libya to get their hands on African oil supplies, while the ignorant grunts who bleed think it is to protect their families.

The accounting continues:

Then apropos of the subject of vassalage and the Governor’s statement that the Spaniards were servants of the Emperor and King of Castile, for whose empire they now were conquering new lands, Acuera retorted: “I should congratulate you warmly [warrior to warrior], but I hold you in even less esteem now that you have confessed that you are servants and that you are working and gaining kingdoms so that another may rule them and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Since in such an undertaking you are suffering hunger, fatigue and other hardships as well as risking your own lives, it would be more to your honor and advantage to acquire things for yourselves and your descendants rather than for someone else. But being so contemptible and as yet unable to rid yourselves of the stigma of servitude, you should never at any time expect friendship from me, for I could not use my friendship so basely.”

Main Entry: goon Pronunciation: \ ˈ gün\ Function: noun Etymology: probably short for English dial. gooney simpleton Date: 1921 a stupid person 1 : a stupid person, a man hired to terrorize 2
a : a man hired to terrorize or eliminate opponents or eliminate opponents b : or eliminate opponents 2b enforcer 2b 2b

Since a soldier essentially is a trained killer/terrorist, that satisfies the meaning of GOON as a statement of basic fact, not using the term as a pejorative.
If the shoe fits… Looks, sounds, and acts like a duck…