Jim Webb; tradition of military; SOTU response to AWOL President George W. Bush

Jan 2007. A multi-generational military family speaks - Truth to Power. Jim Webb's son - a marine deployed in Iraq now; Jim Webb - a mar Viet Webb's brota marine in Vietnam; Jim Webb's father - an Air Force Captain in WW ll. George W. Bush - awol then and now.

Transcript of Jim Webb response to President Bush SOTU - January 2007

Good evening.

I'm Senator Jim Webb, from Virginia, where this year we will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown - an event that marked the first step in the long journey that has made us the greatest and most prosperous nation on earth.

It would not be possible in this short amount of time to actually rebut the President's message, nor would it be useful. Let me simply say that we in the Democratic Party hope that this administration is serious about improving education and healthcare for all Americans, and addressing such domestic priorities as restoring the vitality of New Orleans.

Further, this is the seventh time the President has mentioned energy independence in his state of the union message, but for the first time this exchange is taking place in a Congress led by the Democratic Party. We are looking for affirmative solutions that will strengthen our nation by freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil, and spurring a wave of entrepreneurial growth in the form of alternate energy programs. We look forward to working with the President and his party to bring about these changes.

There are two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction, and I want to take a few minutes to address them tonight. The first relates to how we see the health of our economy - how we measure it, and how we ensure that its benefits are properly shared among all Americans. The second regards our foreign policy - how we might bring the war in Iraq to a proper conclusion that will also allow us to continue to fight the war against international terrorism, and to address other strategic concerns that our country faces around the world.

When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good American jobs are being sent along with them.

In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy - that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.

And under the leadership of the new Democratic Congress, we are on our way to doing so. The House just passed a minimum wage increase, the first in ten years, and the Senate will soon follow. We've introduced a broad legislative package designed to regain the trust of the American people. We've established a tone of cooperation and consensus that extends beyond party lines. We're working to get the right things done, for the right people and for the right reasons.

With respect to foreign policy, this country has patiently endured a mismanaged war for nearly four years. Many, including myself, warned even before the war began that it was unnecessary, that it would take our energy and attention away from the larger war against terrorism, and that invading and occupying Iraq would leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner of the world.

I want to share with all of you a picture that I have carried with me for more than 50 years. This is my father, when he was a young Air Force captain, flying cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift. He sent us the picture from Germany, as we waited for him, back here at home. When I was a small boy, I used to take the picture to bed with me every night, because for more than three years my father was deployed, unable to live with us full-time, serving overseas or in bases where there was no family housing. I still keep it, to remind me of the sacrifices that my mother and others had to make, over and over again, as my father gladly served our country. I was proud to follow in his footsteps, serving as a Marine in Vietnam. My brother did as well, serving as a Marine helicopter pilot. My son has joined the tradition, now serving as an infantry Marine in Iraq.

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues - those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death - we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way.

We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us - sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed.

The war's costs to our nation have been staggering.
Financially.
The damage to our reputation around the world.
The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism.
And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve.

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.

On both of these vital issues, our economy and our national security, it falls upon those of us in elected office to take action.

Regarding the economic imbalance in our country, I am reminded of the situation President Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early days of the 20th century. America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening revolt.

Roosevelt spoke strongly against these divisions. He told his fellow Republicans that they must set themselves "as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other." And he did something about it.

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the General who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became President, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world.

Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

Thank you for listening. And God bless America.

Read more

T-shirt, SOTU, the other woman escorted out of SOTU

How about the other woman wearing a t-shirt and was escorted out of SOTU last night. With plenty being said and reported about Cindy Sheehan and the t-shirt she wore at SOTU last night when she was escorted out of Chambers and arrested, how about the other woman who wore a t-shirt and was escorted out of Chambers (although not arrested). Who is she?

Beverly Young, wife of Republican Congressman, S.W. Bill Young, who wore a t-shirt at SOTU last night and was escorted out seems to doing for the troops more than many of us are doing or able to do....thank you and way to go Beverly!

"Beverly supported the Iraq war but now has qualms. She has seen too many soldiers and Marines blown up by improvised explosive devices, the bombs used by insurgents.

"I'm all for (the troops) coming home because these IEDs are vicious," she says."

Worldandnation: Capitol Hill wife who just won't sit still: " Seen but not heard? Not Beverly Young. For wounded soldiers, she'll make such a fuss laws are changed.

By BILL ADAIR, Times Washington Bureau Chief
Published December 19, 2005

BETHESDA, Md. - This is not how congressional wives are supposed to act.

They are not supposed to curse at Pentagon officials, write angry letters to President Bush or say that members of Congress take bribes.

But Beverly Young, the wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Indian Shores, doesn't play by those rules. Spend a day with her visiting wounded Marines at the National Naval Medical Center and you'll hear a few expletives. When she sees a photograph of a former hospital official, Beverly says: 'See this b----? If she were here, I'd deck her.'

But mostly what you hear from Beverly is compassion for the Marines who lie in the surgical ward, wincing from their injuries. Many have had arms or legs amputated. She holds their hands and tells each of them, 'We love you, Marine.'

She asks one if he needs chewing tobacco or whiskey. She slips $200 to the fiancee of another.

She spends several days a week at the hospital, often bringing pizzas or DVDs. When the Marines have no family, Beverly spends hours in their rooms like a surrogate mother. One Marine says that when he was overmedicated with painkillers, she saved his life by cursing in his ear like a drill instructor.

Laws have been changed thanks to Beverly. She prodded her husband to create a nationwide registry for bone marrow donors. When she discovered the military charged wounded soldiers for hospital meals, she raised such a fuss Congress repealed the law.

Says Marine Brig. Gen. John Kelly: 'She can be a royal pain in the a-- - but only to people who don't care about the troops.'

* * *

On a cold December morning, the Youngs arrive at the Bethesda naval hospital. Three staffers from Bill's congressional office carry boxes of CD players and music CDs for the injured Marines. People injured in battle often can't stop the sounds of war in their heads. Music helps.

As the Youngs stop in each room, Beverly goes bedside and holds a hand or rubs a shoulder. She never lets go.

She and Bill talk with a Marine whose leg was amputated at his knee because of a grenade blast. He is groggy from painkillers.

They are ready to offer him a CD player when his mother says the band Fleetwood Mac has given iPods loaded with rock music to everyone in the ward. But Beverly has noticed a photo of the Marine wearing a cowboy hat. "Do you need any country music?" she asks.

He does. She summons the aide with the CDs. "We need some country."

She flips through the assortment. "Lonestar? Brooks & Dunn? Kenny Chesney?"

"I like Brooks & Dunn," he says. She hands over a CD player, a Brooks & Dunn CD and a couple of others.

They chat about his family and his Western roots. Beverly wonders if a little chewing tobacco would help him recuperate. "Do you need some dip?"

He shakes his head no.

"You need some whiskey?"

"I love whiskey," he says.

They talk about his injuries and his wish to get home for Christmas. She ends the visit by telling him, "We love you, Marine."

* * *

The Youngs' generosity comes in hundreds of gestures, big and small. When wounded soldiers or Marines leave the hospital, Bill and Beverly take them out for a steak dinner. On Christmas, the Youngs deliver turkeys to Marines in Quantico, Va., and then take gifts to the patients in the Army and Navy hospitals. "We just try to make them know they are loved," Beverly says.

The Youngs do not seek publicity for their work. (It took several requests before they would allow the St. Petersburg Times to accompany them for this story.)

But Beverly is not shy about seeking donations. She got her gynecologist to pay for the CD players and music. She got the country band Alabama and many others to donate money to a paralyzed sailor.

She makes her rounds at military and veterans hospitals in Bethesda, Washington and the Tampa Bay area. Bill accompanies her when his schedule permits. They spend hundreds of dollars from their own pockets on pizzas, clothes, movies. Beverly has been known to bring pitchers of margaritas or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.

She insists they call her Beverly. "You call me "ma'am,"' she says, "and I'm going to whup your a--."

* * *

Beverly, 50, grew up in an Italian family in Seminole, the youngest of five. She married a Pinellas sheriff's deputy shortly after high school and they moved to Colorado, where she became a volunteer firefighter and medic.

They divorced and she returned to Pinellas County and went to work as a secretary in Bill's congressional office. Bill divorced his first wife and married Beverly in 1985. They have two sons, Billy, 21, and Patrick, 18, and Robbie, 29, from her first marriage.

Bill is 75, 25 years older, a difference that was difficult at first. "There were people taking bets on whether this marriage would last - and I was one of them," she says. "A couple of times I wanted to run. But we had kids."

Their marriage grew stronger as they put the boys first. She stayed home to take care of them, and Bill skipped nighttime political events so he could be home for dinner.

They have very different personalities. Beverly is fiery and blunt, Bill is gentle and diplomatic. Their marriage is proof that opposites attract. "He once told me that I was everything he was not allowed to be," she says.

Spend a day with them and you get the sense there is a good cop-bad cop strategy at work. He smiles and steps aside while she raises hell. But he supports everything she does.

He says Beverly introduced him to some important health care programs such as bone marrow transplants. He then created a federal bone marrow registry that has saved thousands of lives.

Both of the Youngs are devoted to the military. Beverly always respected men and women in uniform, but she became more passionate five years ago after helping a Marine who was shot in the back during training. Now, when she or Bill meet with the wounded, they always say, "Thank you for your sacrifice."

It is common for Capitol Hill spouses to adopt causes, but what's striking about the wife of Florida's most powerful House member is her style. She is not demure. She once attended a meeting of congressional wives but walked out after 20 minutes. She and Bill avoid the D.C. party circuit.

"She has never been the typical congressional wife," Bill says, with a knowing smile. He says he likes the fact that she is "very honest and open."

Beverly makes wisecracks about going through menopause, but looks five or 10 years younger than she is. She has a stylish haircut and gold hoop earrings, and - even when visiting the Capitol - wears jeans and a Marine Corps T-shirt that says "Nothing But Attitude."

"I could buy a dress for George Bush's Christmas party - or give $200 to (the fiancee of the wounded Marine). I'd rather give it to the girl."

Members of Congress usually live in pricey homes close to the Capitol or in nearby suburbs. But the Youngs live 30 miles away in Woodbridge, Va.

Beverly says it's all they can afford because her husband "doesn't take bribes like all the others."

* * *

Bill, who has clout with the military as chairman of the appropriations defense subcommittee, is a Republican who usually votes with his party. But his record is a little too conservative for Beverly's tastes, especially on abortion and gay rights.

"I think people should be able to be in love with whoever they want," she says. "I don't think men have a right to tell women what to do with their bodies."

Beverly supported the Iraq war but now has qualms. She has seen too many soldiers and Marines blown up by improvised explosive devices, the bombs used by insurgents.

"I'm all for (the troops) coming home because these IEDs are vicious," she says.

She is no fan of politicians, even though her husband is one.

"The world would be a much better place without partisanship," she says. But she is protective of Bill's reputation and says that when he retires, she might run for his seat if she doesn't like the candidates.

"I don't have a lot of political knowledge and I don't know much about the system. But I think I would be better than a lot of these people in state politics. I would do what's right for the people."

She is a Republican so she can vote for Bill in primary elections, but at least once she voted against him. In 1984, she voted for Democrat Robert Kent, a former wig salesman who changed his name from Ivan Korunek because he wanted a stronger name. He had little money and got trounced, but Beverly liked his honesty. She always prefers the underdog.

* * *

A few months ago, Beverly read that the Army was tightening its rules about when wounded soldiers could accept donations.

She was outraged. She feared the crackdown would discourage donors and intimidate soldiers.

She sat down at her computer and fired off a letter to President Bush. It began, "My name is Beverly Young, wife of Chairman Bill Young of Florida. In my 20 years in Washington I honestly believed there was nothing more that could shock me, but I was wrong."

A White House aide wrote back to say that the Pentagon would look into Beverly's complaints.

Her letter violated an unspoken rule for congressional wives, that they are to be seen and not heard. But Beverly didn't care. She was furious that an Army official would try to restrict donations.

"Why the hell did some idiot make that stupid comment and put it in the paper?" she told a reporter. "It has scared the wounded."

The Army insisted the rules were not discouraging anyone and that soldiers were still getting donations swiftly. But Beverly didn't believe it.

"F--- that!" she later said. "Print that: F--- that! These kids ought to be able to get anything they want from a grateful American."

Because of her complaints, Congress is changing the law.

* * *

Marine Lance Cpl. Josh Callihan was shot four times in the back in a training exercise. The bullets hit his spinal cord, leaving him partially paralyzed.

When he heard the Youngs wanted to see him, he expected the usual political visit: a handshake, a few snapshots and they would be gone.

But the Youngs came every day. When his condition deteriorated, Bill and Beverly acted as his family, meeting with doctors, discussing treatments.

Callihan was so heavily medicated, he was a zombie. He stopped eating and simply sat in his bed, staring into space. Bill and Beverly conferred with his doctors, who said his prognosis was not good. They wanted to transfer him to the psychiatric ward.

Beverly broke into tears. She left the meeting and went to Callihan's bedside.

"You know something, Marine?" she whispered in his ear. "You are a damn disgrace. If you were a real Marine, you would just pull out of this. I will get Gen. Jones (the head of the Marine Corps) down here and we will kick your a-- if you don't get better."

It was as if someone flipped a switch inside him. Callihan came to life and started talking to Beverly. He did not have to go to the psych ward.

When Callihan recovered, Rep. Young hired him for his congressional office. When he needed a place to stay, Bill and Beverly let him live at their home.

Callihan, who now works for a congressman in his home state of Idaho, says Beverly's tough love was the spark he needed.

"It got me fired up," he says. "She was instrumental in me surviving. If it hadn't been for her, I would have literally fallen through the cracks."

--Washington bureau chief Bill Adair can be reached at adair@sptimes.com or 202 463-0575.

Read more

SOTU 2005; A year later, SOTU 2006 tonight

A little reminder to myself of last year's SOTU (2005) and my reaction from last year as I prepare to listen to this year's SOTU (2006). When I wrote this article in Feb 2005, it reflected the political climate of that time, and actual dialogue on the Iraq war was close to non-existent. Well there was the 'wrap yourself in a flag' and all those magnetic yellow ribbons which didn't help much with the un-armored humvees and you could have dialogue as long as it was 'support the troops' by voicing no criticism or opposition.

As the year passed, and another mother who's son was killed in Iraq paid a visit to the President at his Crawford ranch, she had a quite different message to bring; generating front and center discussion and dialogue of the Iraq war.

As the year passed, a courageous Congressman, a 37 yr career and decorated Marine and a respected Congressman for 30 years came out front and center with his message 'Redeploy the troops out of Iraq".

As the year passed and the President's approval rating of his handling of the war has spiralled into the 30 % range, what the President; the Commander-in-Chief will say tonight in the SOTU while the Iraq war moves into third year will likely be more of the same, but sadly I will have to listen since he as Commander-in-Chief does hold the 'mission' (read lives) of our deployed troops (x 2, 3, 4, 5 repeat deployments) in his hands.



American Principles, SOTU 2005
written 02-03-05, by Lietta Ruger

Having watched the State of the Union speech last night, I find myself in a peculiar state of being today. While the news goes on and on about the emotional and moving tribute to the Iraqi woman who was thankful to be able to vote and the parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, I'm in a somewhat different and more somber place.

I could rant, but I don't think I will. First the Iraqi woman was strictly photo-op PR stuff, as she hasn't been in Iraq since 1968 (google her name, Safia Taleb AlSouhail, to learn of her history). Having her featured at the SOTU was staging, pure and simple. I mean no offense whatsoever to the woman, rather I am objecting to the manner in which she was used. Juxtapose that with an account from Dahr Jamail, a journalist in Iraq, reporting what the media will not report and you get a very different portrait of election and voting in Iraq.

It was said at the SOTU that her father was killed during the Saddam regime. Be it reported that the children of men and women, both our troops and the Iraqis now being killed (and tragically maimed) in Iraq may some one day claim their parent was killed during the Bush regime. That will be a future time in history. Those children have no voice now, rather live their lives as children trying to reconcile the irreconcilable in loss of parent to love and raise them. Those children will someday have their own voice.

I take no consolation in the Iraqi woman who lost her father being used as promo for the supposed victory of Iraq elections. She was not part of the Iraqi landscape during this recent occupation by our own American forces (our forces do comprise the majority of the Coalition forces) and I would think it unlikely her reactions would be representative of the majority of the Iraqi people who live daily with the Coalition bombs and raids. If she does represent that for you, then sadly, you may not be following news of the rest of the realities in Iraq. Perhaps you are preferring to get your news from a media who reports on the inexplicable "vision" of a man who seems able to sell his vision as gospel while his actions speak a seemingly quite different vision. Or perhaps history will show him to be a man of foresight and all will come out well in the end once the fullness of his thinking is played out. I rather doubt it, but it is for sure, he will have made his name in history. It will indeed be a memorable name, George W. Bush. Will the ones who gave limb and life be as well remembered? How will the children who lost a parent remember him?

Second and way more difficult to reconcile, was the parents of soldier killed in Iraq, who were asked to come and apparently agreed to have their personal tragedy shared before the nation. It was obvious the pain they were in and how they struggled to not succumb to their own tears as they bravely stood before the nation to let President Bush tell the spin he wanted on their personal truth. How would I feel if I lost one of our loved ones in combat, in Iraq, and the President, their Commander-in-Chief, asked me to come before the nation at one of his speeches?

I wouldn't accept the offer, that much I know. Yet there is the paradigm that a brave and courageous and dutiful soldier should be honored by the military, the CIC, the nation, as has been traditional since time immemorial. I accept that. I am after all, a military brat, raised in military family. I still get tearful with the military songs, the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, the flag, the ceremony.......but from a place of yesterday, not a place of today. If another President besides Bush were to have an honoring occasion for a fallen soldier, how might I view that, I ask myself? Quite differently.

With President Bush, it is not authentic, it usually leaves me feeling slimed and dirty, like someone has just capitalized on personal trauma to their own advantage and re-traumatized the victims. With so many military families speaking out now and speaking a different military ground truth, it was opportune for the President to find a grieving military family willing to appear at his SOTU and permit their loss, their son's life to be shown as a patriotic and courageous cause. I can't, don't, and won't find fault with these parents who live with the loss of their son's life and will live that loss all their days.

What has been a proud tradition for military and military families, one they cherish and hold dear, as do I, is the ability to honor the sacrifices in knowing from inside the culture how much was sacrificed. It is this authentic tradition that has meaning for the troops and their families in ways personal to each of them. As I watch that very tradition usurped to aggrandize a flawed man in President Bush, my soul weeps and bleeds for our nation, for our troops, for their families, for the Iraqi people who have experienced the carnage and destruction in having their own families decimated in war.

I think what is sometimes more difficult to assimilate though, is that so many American citizens are willing to make hoopla of the misleading propaganda. It becomes increasingly more clear day by day that what is practically irrefutable and knowledge-based information, on which the President makes his bold decisions, will at a later date shortly down the road prove to be deceptive and unfounded knowledge or intelligence. Showing loyalty to this President is not a form of patriotism, or for that matter loyalty to American principles. Or is it?

What are American principles if what I am witnessing today is representative of the popular view? Have I deluded myself over my many years into believing a premise of the potential of America's greatness? Certainly, I'm not foolish enough to believe of America that it is all-good, neither all-bad as its own history which shows America's grandness along with America's horrific flaws. We have proud history and less than proud history to be sure. We have homage to pay to the populations we have exploited over the generations, and we have what has been "hope" that we can learn from our mistakes and grow into our potential as a people and as a nation among the world.

When in my young years as a new bride to my high-school sweetheart, we watched and marked time knowing the draft was in place and there was strong likelihood he would be drafted, his lottery number would be picked next. His number was picked, he went, and I chose to have my first pregnancy much sooner than we planned. If the death of my then young husband was to be an outcome, I wanted our child as a legacy to his life. I didn't join the protests of the sixties, as I was in that peculiar place of being a military family and of the military culture, one which esteems the military rule of discipline. Yet I was grateful that other voices were speaking out as it cast the questionable ness of the Vietnam War into a public dialogue. While I didn't always agree with the forms the protests took, nor even with many of the kinds of people protesting, I still valued that their ability to point out discrepancies did open the dialogue and minds in our nation.

I was of the generation of the fifties, and never quite fully made it into the rebelliousness of the sixties. I looked to the adult generation, as I was taught and trained to do with a certain amount of respect. And I looked to the leaders of our nation as Leaders. The assassination of John F. Kennedy, followed by assassination of Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy was a wake-up call from which I have never fully recovered. It seemed that Leaders who chose to actually Lead were an unwanted commodity in our country. By the time of Vietnam, 1969 when my husband was drafted, at the beginning of the end, I had the benefit of a decade of seeing dramatic change in our country.

When my then young husband had to make his own choice and decision about Vietnam, I was prepared to follow whichever way he might choose. I had my own opinions and preferences for what I would want him to choose. He chose to honor his own WWll pilot father and my young husband decided to meet his "obligation to do his duty in time of war". As his military wife, and remember, this was not choosing to enlist, rather the outcome of his being drafted, I knew already the military culture and did my own dutiful service to honor my husband in the tradition of military families. Essentially, that means to keep your silence on matters of policy and the Commander in Chief in public, while stoically carrying on in private and bearing your burdens in dignity and pride. I respect that dignity and that pride then and now. Now the daughters bear that burden and just as I did, they do so silently, respectfully in dignity and pride.

But I'm an older version of my younger self these days, and not unlike the unrest of the sixties, I find my own unrest with how this President is choosing to spend the lives of my young in a mission not well identified as clearly defined. Rather it seems to morph from it's origins as the deceptive information is revealed and a new definition gets assigned to why we are there. It is a recognizable pattern and it is reasonable to expect those definitions of what the mission is and will become to get re-defined each time we learn of a new deception by this administration.

I did not agree that a knee-jerk reaction to 911 was a rush to war. Since our President made that choice and decision, I had the dilemma of choosing how to support our own loved ones as they went into combat. My heart screamed No, and the sage in my own background in military life came forward to remind me of some old military principles. Out of respect for our new young warriors, I kept a silence as I watched neighbors and citizens move into a spirited patriotism, careful to thank the troops and not forget the lessons of Vietnam.

Yet they did forget the lessons of Vietnam. One cannot take part of the equation and say on the one hand, we will not do to our troops as was done to them in Vietnam, while dismissing the rest of the equation as not applicable. What is the rest of the equation? What are the many lessons of Vietnam? Friends, our President would prefer us to view Iraq and the future countries we may invade as a scene out of World War ll and skip past the history of the wars that came after, Korea and Vietnam, Bosnia and those other little excursions that were not quite wars, but combat nonetheless. Our President would like us to see our nation’s efforts in invading a country who did not attack us as noble, as rescuing an oppressed people. If we conveniently disregard the history of our own other wars in Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere, then perhaps we can continue to delude ourselves into believing the propaganda that keeps our young deployed and in combat.

I choose not to delude myself, nor buy the propaganda. Rather I choose to see it for what it is and wonder at my incredible young naiveté when I was the young wife of a soldier and wanted to believe in my country, believe in my country's Leadership, believe in a wisdom that was beyond my every-day knowledge. Believe in spite of what was before my very eyes and ears as our country prolonged a war in Vietnam with incessant killing and carnage. I do not choose this for my young or for anyone's young, and the tradition of military culture is not what is going to keep them alive.

Now I'm a mother and a grandmother looking to my children and their children's future. I gave them the "rules" to living life as I knew them for myself and learned them along my own young and adult life. Now I find those life rules no longer seem to apply as the President goes about the process of re-arranging not only our country but the world in what seems to be a model known only to himself and some few insiders. Oh I know what the other half say or repeat verbatim as their own set of talking points and to listen to them, one might believe they believe what they are saying. Yet I wonder in their hearts, in those quiet moments, if doubts stir and rattle about and threaten to not be quelled so easily by those very talking points. I wonder if they have to force those nagging hints that all is not well into a subdued silence as the doubts suggest the talking points might be superficial, might be propaganda, might not be the whole cloth of reality.

Bless those parents who decided to go to the President's SOTU and who have now the memory of their child. Bless the Iraqi woman who had the opportunity in her lifetime to vote in an Iraq election. Bless this country that it has the potential to shake off the cobwebs it is allowing to grow in the corners of people's minds and will learn to engage each other again and listen to a fuller sense of experiences in what indeed has become a historical time as we live and breathe today.

Facing our future is not done easily by hiding truths in exploitation and propaganda. For my own two loved ones, who will return to Iraq in redeployment, second tours, I would not wish them to go blindly into combat on a feverish fervor of propagandized patriotism to give their limbs and lives that deception and lies might live in the cocooned minds of Americans as a testimony to our greatness. It requires us to do more than jump into the polarized camps of thinking that permit only either/or and very little in between. That in itself, ought to be a signal, a flag waving of an effort to minimize the ability to think more broadly about the issues and the war and to actually find a means beyond the constricted propaganda which has served to divide us, distract us, and keep us dis-engaged from talking to each other.

When did America stop being American? When did what stood for American principles change so dramatically and how will I teach my young what it means now to be American?

Lietta Ruger
Feb. 03, 2005

Read more