Memorial Day

First see the Wombat’s wonderful musical critique post, and there are some great surprises.

The great unrequited love of my life, Frank Rich, has an excellent article where he compares Iraq not to Viet Nam but to WWTwo. Why? We denied exit visas to many many Jews and let them die. That’s another reason I became me. The knowledge that we allowed this has always crazed me. Yes I was the only nine year old to bore her friends with bad American policies. It’s a Select article. I should begin a page of copied articles.
The Times has a great editorial on our delusional president.
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Many people have died for our country. Many died to help to keep it great and for democracy.

Many have died needlessly. Many vets come back brain damaged. They did in Viet Nam also. There were no services specific for Viet Nam Vets. The VA was a mess. Yes, I know it is now. It was even worse then.

Most protesters always supported the Vets and would have died before hurting them. I can’t say that enough because I was a teenage hippie/anti-war protester who did end up pepper gassed when my friend wanted to go out for dinner after a protest in DC, and the policeman directed us into a riot.

It was my friend’s first demonstration. He was a Volvo driving frat president who wasn’t used to being treated like that. The experience changed him more than it did me as I told him not to ask a policeman. And I was so harmless. But if you looked like a hippie, you were the enemy to many people.

I never want the country to go back to not being able trust people who are supposed to help us. We are all in this together, and have become pretty united in our want for this needless war to end.
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i first saw Country Joe & The Fish when I was in high school. There used to be many free concerts at The Band Stand in Central Park. The first time I actually remember meeting the boy I would briefly marry was at a Jefferson Airplane concert there. He had introduced himself to me many times, but I was in my usual state of oblivion, or somebody this good looking, bright and funny, can't really be interested in me.

I was going to put in Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice Restaurant” but it is almost nineteen minutes long, and the code was disenabled, so here’s a link.

It was my father’s favorite song. My father supported the Viet Nam war. Had this non-understandable thing for Nixon and later Reagan but he didn’t think that people should actually go to Viet Nam and maybe die or be disabled.

When my parents and their friends went to Stockbridge my father got a much coveted present. A traffic ticket from Officer Opie. It’s all in the song. Non-linear I just realized!

My father didn’t like the first Bush.* First Republican in many a moon he didn’t love. Was scared of his CIA connections and power.

My sister and I believe with all our hearts that he would have hated this Bush much more passionately.

I can’t listen to “Alice’s Restaurant” without thinking about both my father and my husband who was very good at evading actual physicals. Strange or not, the stories endeared my father to him. That and they both lived to make fun of me In a nice way

LET’S GET OUT OF IRAQ QUICKLY AND CONCENTRATE ON HEALING THE VETS. MIGHT HELP HEAL THIS NATION

*My perfectly healthy father, or so the doctors thought, suffered a massive stroke and died five days later in 91. He told me he was losing his will to live. Truth is I think he missed a good political fight. He had misguidedly trusted Nixon and Reagan, but how do you trust a Bush?

My Mom died a month after 9/11. Two weeks after the attack and two weeks before her death, she asked me if I thought the attacks were retribution. Said she couldn’t state that to anybody else. At the time, I thought she became demented overnight. I do think she too lost her will to live.

I answered her properly but I should have been cheering. I didn’t think it was retribution. I did want war then

Any and all anti-war work I do is dedicated to both my parents memory, as what has happened would have been unimaginable to both of them.

My father might have argued for the war in Viet Nam, but when I was in high school, he was very proud that I stood up for my principles. And waited for the bus from DC, when I went for the 67 moratorium while I was in high school, until four AM.

I honestly don’t care if bloggers dislike me for my increasingly strident politics. I love this country. It’s a wonderful one. We don’t have a draft. We do have an increasingly tired armed forces who should be home. I would be against a draft in this case. As Frank Rich eloquently points out, the people who we claim to be fighting for want to come here.

We’re a mutt nation, and were once the greatest country because we’re so hybrid. We must let people come here who risk death, torture and other things if they remain in their country.

It’s the morally responsible thing to do. Immigrants enrich our country. Not saying anything new but most of us are descendants of people who came from other countries.