1st Phone Call From Our Son, Deployed By Military To GWOT Frontline - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 10-22-2006, 12:31 PM

I want to tell you about my weekend, and ask you to post about who you will be voting for.....and why?

Last night, my stepson, who is serving in his first tour of his US military duty in a combat zone....in a predominately islamic country that our government describes as featuring a "jihadist" front in the GWOT....managed to telephone us for the first time. Unfortunately, my wife....his mother, was not at home, and missed the call. Owing to the sensitive nature of his "specialty", he asked us, when he received his deployment orders, not to mention where he is or what he does.

With that in mind, I carefully limited my questions to details of his well being and living conditions, I relayed news to him about other family members, reminded him that we were very proud of him and of his service, how much we miss him, and that we were praying for him.

Other parts of my weekend were devoted to posting on Paq's <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=109790">Can't we all just get along?</a> thread....and to reading obscenities like these:

Quote:

http://wvgazette.com/section/News/2006101937
October 20, 2006
Bush names Stickler mine chief
By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer

President Bush on Thursday went around the U.S. Senate to put a longtime coal industry official in charge of the federal agency that regulates mine safety.

Bush waited until the Senate had recessed for next month’s election, and re-nominated West Virginia native Richard Stickler to be assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Twice this year, the Senate sent Stickler’s nomination back to the White House without a vote, citing opposition from the United Mine Workers and other safety advocates, along with this year’s spike in coal-mining deaths.

“It’s certainly been a long process for me,” Stickler said in a phone call with reporters. “And at this time, I’m just happy to have the opportunity.”

Senate Democrats were furious.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia said, “The sad reality of the Bush administration’s actions is that the person who will now lead MSHA lacks the trust of the miners he’s charged to protect and has a skewed view of what the safety priorities should be.

“We need a bulldog agency that will place miner safety over all other priorities, and not an agency that will continue to place a higher priority on mine production than on miner protection,” Byrd said.

Under the recess appointment, Stickler would likely be able to remain in the MSHA post — without Senate approval — until the end of 2007.

But in June, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., on the Senate floor that if Bush planned a recess appointment of Stickler, Republicans would schedule a Senate vote on the nomination first.

“If there were to be such a recess appointment, then this vote could come back, would come back at that time,” Frist, R-Tenn., told Kennedy......

Quote:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06167/698764-357.stm
Mining Safety
Bush signs mine safety law
Critics say legislation doesn't go far enough in protecting miners

Friday, June 16, 2006

.......However MSHA chooses to interpret the new law, it will do so, at least for a while, without a permanent leader. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., yesterday canceled a vote on the confirmation of Richard Stickler as head of MSHA. Mr. Stickler has been criticized by congressional Democrats and UMW officials for being too sympathetic to the coal companies he would be asked to regulate.

Mr. Bush put in a strong plug for Mr. Stickler at yesterday's signing ceremony.

"He's got experience. He served for six years as the director of Pennsylvania's Bureau of Deep Mine Safety. He was a miner, mine shift foreman, a superintendent and a manager, and the Senate needs to confirm Richard Stickler to this key position," Mr. Bush said.

Debbie Hamner and Sara Bailey, the wife and the daughter of the late Sago miner George Junior Hamner, sent a letter to Mr. Bush yesterday thanking him for signing the MINER Act but strongly urging him to withdraw Mr. Stickler's nomination.

Noting Mr. Stickler's long experience in coal mine management, they wrote: "We are concerned that his primary objective may be 'compliance assistance' and production, rather than on miners' health and safety."

They said Mr. Stickler "declined to endorse new mine safety rules" at his nomination hearing, including ones that would have required improved emergency oxygen equipment. Mr. McCloy, the Sago survivor, has said that four of his crew's oxygen packs did not work.

"Our nation's miners deserve an agency staffed with leaders who will aggressively advocate miners' health and safety," wrote Mrs. Hamner and Ms. Bailey. "We assert that Mr. Stickler is not the right person for the job and urge you to withdraw his nomination."

Quote:

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njw...06/1020nj3.htm
Terrorist Profiling, Version 2.0
By Shane Harris, National Journal

Friday, Oct. 20, 2006

The government's top intelligence agency is building a computerized system to search very large stores of information for patterns of activity that look like terrorist planning. The system, which is run by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is in the early research phases and is being tested, in part, with government intelligence that may contain information on U.S. citizens and other people inside the country.

It encompasses existing profiling and detection systems, including those that create "suspicion scores" for suspected terrorists by analyzing very large databases of government intelligence, as well as records of individuals' private communications, financial transactions, and other everyday activities.

The details of the program, called Tangram, are contained in an unclassified document that National Journal obtained from a government contracting Web site. The document, called a "proposer's information packet," is a technical description of Tangram written for potential contractors who would help design and test the system. The document was written by officials in the research-and-development section of the national intelligence office. A tangram is an old Chinese puzzle that takes seven geometric shapes -- five triangles, a square, and a parallelogram -- and rearranges them into different pictures.

In addition to descriptions of Tangram, the document offers a rare and surprisingly candid analysis of intelligence agencies' fits and starts -- and failures -- in other efforts to profile terrorists through data mining: Researchers, for example, haven't moved beyond "guilt-by-association models" that link suspected terrorists to other, potentially innocent people, and then rank the suspects by level of suspicion.

"To date, the predominant approaches have used a guilt-by-association model to derive suspicion scores," the Tangram document states. "In the cases where we have knowledge of a seed entity [a known person] in an unknown group, we have been very successful at detecting the entire group. However, in the absence of a known seed entity, how do we score a person if nothing is known about their associates? In such an instance, guilt-by-association fails."

Intelligence and privacy experts who reviewed the document said that it reaffirms their long-held belief that many computerized terrorist-profiling methods are largely ineffective. It also raises significant privacy concerns, because to distinguish terrorists from innocent people, a system that's as broad as Tangram purports to be would require access to many databases that contain private information about Americans, the experts said, including credit card transactions, communications records, and even Internet purchases.

"There is no other way that they could do this," said David Holtzman, former chief technology officer of Network Solutions, the company that runs the Internet's domain-naming system, and author of the book Privacy Lost. "They want to investigate real-time ways of spotting patterns" that might indicate terrorist activity, he said. "Telephone calls, for instance, would be an obvious thing you'd feed into this." .....

.......Tangram drew skeptical reviews from technology and privacy experts because of its links to Total Information Awareness, a controversial research program started by the Pentagon in 2002. TIA also aimed to detect patterns of terrorist behavior. Congress ended all public funding for the program in 2003, but allowed research to continue through the classified intelligence budget. In February, <a href="http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0223nj1.htm">National Journal</a> revealed that names of component TIA programs were simply changed and transferred to a research-and-development unit principally overseen by the National Security Agency. The unit, now under the control of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, also runs Tangram.

The Tangram document cites several TIA programs -- by their new names -- as forming the latest phase of research upon which Tangram will build. In a prepared statement, the intelligence director's office said, "Tangram is addressing the problem that the intelligence community receives vast amounts of data a day and there are a wide variety of algorithms -- mathematical procedures -- for figuring out what is relevant. Different algorithms serve different purposes, but we believe that combining them will provide us new insights in detecting terrorist plans and activities. The project will allow analysts to mix and match various methods to connect the dots."

TIA was similarly envisioned as a vast combination of detection methods. In Tangram, "I see the system of systems that is essentially TIA about to be born," said Tim Sparapani, the legislative counsel on privacy issues for the American Civil Liberties Union. "TIA was designed to be one unified system," he said. "This is the vision, I think, made practical."

Robert Popp, who was the TIA program's deputy director, also saw parallels to Tangram. "They seem to be doing something very similar in concept," Popp said. "Taking data, doing all the sense-making and path-finding, and turning it into a form which a decision maker can act upon." ........

....Last month, the government awarded three contracts for Tangram research and design totaling almost $12 million. Total funding for the program is approximately $49 million. Two of the firms receiving awards -- Booz Allen Hamilton and 21st Century Technologies -- were principal contractors on the TIA program. The third company, SRI International, worked on one of TIA's predecessors, the Genoa program. Spokeswomen for Booz Allen Hamilton and SRI declined to comment for this article. Repeated calls and e-mails to the Austin offices of 21st Century Technologies went unanswered.

The apparent lack of privacy protections in Tangram dismayed some experts. "Given the history of TIA and other programs, one would expect the proponents of a system like this would at least pay lip service to privacy issues," said David Sobel, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog. "The absence of that is a bit surprising."

The TIA program devoted more than $4 million to research aimed at ways to protect privacy while it was sifting databases, and former officials have said that although it was admittedly controversial, TIA was being designed all along with privacy protection and auditable logs to track those who used it. The privacy research, however, was abandoned when the program moved into the classified budget in the NSA.

Administration officials have singled out the importance of new technologies in the war on terrorism. President Bush said that the NSA's warrantless surveillance and analysis of phone calls and e-mails protects Americans from attack. Gen. Michael Hayden, the former NSA director, said that were such a system in place before the September 11 attacks, "we would have detected some of the 9/11 Al Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such."

But the Tangram document presents a more pessimistic assessment of the state of terrorist detection. For instance, researchers want to find ways to distinguish individuals' innocuous activity from that which might appear normal but is really indicative of terrorist plotting. However, the document states that, in large measure, terrorism researchers "cannot readily distinguish the absolute scale of normal behaviors" either for innocent people or for terrorists.

The ACLU's Sparapani called that admission "a bombshell," because the government is acknowledging that current detection systems aren't sophisticated enough to separate terrorists from everyday people. Other outside experts were troubled that such shortcomings also mean that individuals intent on doing harm could be mistaken for innocent people.

Popp said that attempts to separate terrorists' activities from those of normal people are perilous. "When you try to capture what is normal behavior, and then determine non-normal, that's highly intractable," he said.

Several times, Popp said, TIA researchers discussed how to characterize nonterrorist behavior. "We avoided it. It was too hard. We had no idea how on God's earth you would characterize and capture normal behavior. We wouldn't know where to start." Instead, TIA researchers proposed looking for specific indicators of terrorist planning -- people purchasing airline tickets at the last minute with cash, for instance, or other transactions that fit the narrative of an attack.

Current detection techniques have raised the specter of what the Tangram document calls "runaway false detections." If analysts tie a terrorist suspect to five other individuals, say through phone calls, how can they be certain that these five people constitute a terrorist network and aren't simply people with whom the suspect has had innocuous, everyday interactions? The document says that research has been conducted on "the sensitivities of guilt-by-association models to runaway false detections."

Researchers have made other attempts to move beyond the guilt-by-association model, the document states. One technique, an obscure methodology known as "collective inferencing," in which the suspicion score of an entire network of people is computed at once, has apparently garnered some interest. But "existing techniques are far too simple" for real-world problems, the document acknowledges.

The Tangram document states that gaps in current detection techniques also owe to the difficulty of tracking terrorist behaviors, which are constantly changing. "The underlying assumption of existing approaches is that behaviors are constant," the authors write. "Yet, behaviors are not constant.... How can we profile dynamic behavior well enough to be able to identify, with more-or-less confidence, entities who want to remain anonymous?" The answer to that question apparently eludes the researchers, who hope that Tangram might provide it.

....I haven't felt as sincere as I would like to be when I've praised my stepson for his service. I know that he is wrong about what he thinks that he is fighting for. He buys into the same line of shit....hook, line, and sinker, that many of you here have posted your support for. He trusts Mr. Bush and his policy pronouncements, and the government.

To me, any POTUS who would appoint a Richard Stickler to administer the safety regs of mine workers, or a John Negroponte to the "Intelligence Czar" job.....to "keep us all safe", a POTUS who oversees agencies that rebrand and rename the same ole, unconsitutional "TIPS"....seems more of enemy of the American people, than a "leader" of them.

I'm feeling sick to my stomach, and I'm wishing that my stepson didn't call, this weekend....that I didn't reflexively recite what are becoming empty platitudes to him. We've had the conversations where I've showed him my posts at TFP politics. He politely listened, at times....and at times we both yelled back and forth. I couldn't reach him, and I can't reach many of you.

Can any of you who still support republican politicians, please post some information that will reliably inform the rest of us as to why you keep your support for that party and those politicians? Are they more honest, less hypocritical, more constructive, more accomplished, more open, less intrusive, more representative of working class concerns, and of our constitional rights, than I am thinking, this weekend...that they are?

Tell me what principles and rights, my stepson is fighting for....if republicans maintain total control of the government, after this coming election. Post about why you trust republicans over democrats. Is it their fiscal discipline, or their ethics and openness?

I'm not asking you to "win me over" to all things republican. I'm just asking for reasons why I should be proud of my stepson's service, and of his commander in chief........why I should overlook what I see and what I post about on these threads. What is the "higher calling" that you, as republican supporters must see....to continue your support and defense of the status quo....that I don't see? What would Nancy Pelosi do....if she became House Speaker, that would be worse than what Dennis Hastert has done..... he fired the ethics committee when it found against the ethics of Tom Delay....

NCB · 10-22-2006, 06:17 PM

Quote:

I know that he is wrong about what he thinks that he is fighting for. He buys into the same line of shit....hook, line, and sinker....I'm just asking for reasons why I should be proud of my stepson's service

Sorry host, but youre absolutely a gutless, selfish, and arrogant human being that you think so little of your stepson and that you refuse to put aside your political leanings for one bloody second. The man is putting his life out on the line for your country (probably something you never did) and you just berate him like that. I wish you never posted your story; I liked you a lot better when I thought you were just a misinformed, misguided liberal

Yeah, I know I'll get a PM from a mod on this, but this type of shit is dispicableand some things deserve a harsh reply.

j8ear · 10-22-2006, 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB

...(probably something you never did)...

For what it's worth, Host has previously bragged, in these forums, about being a recipient of Jimmy Carter's carte-blanche pardon of all Vietnam era draft dodgers.

Unsure of Host's age and/or eligibility for service in any other campaigns.

Host, my thanks to your stepson for his service, and the obvious dedication he brings to his responsibilities, both in life, and in his current assignments.

I am unsure who I will be voting for...but I can assure everyone it will not be for any irrelevant democrat. The two party only system is really starting to bring me down. It's a shame the differance between the two is so strikingly insignificant.

-bear

samcol · 10-22-2006, 06:53 PM

That's a pretty weird situation to be in. I think the only thing to be proud of is that in his mind he's trying to do the right thing. Although, if you showed him the evidence of lies that have been fed to us it makes me wonder how he can serve this system.

I will be voting for Libertarians first, then non-incubents second. The reason is that I have no faith in the two party system, and would like to support the party that believes in freedom. The non-incumbent vote is because all those in congress are criminals except for a select few, unfortunetly the select few aren't in my state.

Paq · 10-22-2006, 07:11 PM

ok, i don't know if i'm in any position to respond

but
1. i can respect that your stepson feels that way and i am thankful there are people like him fighting for what they believe is correct. I can find no fault and nothing but honor in that.

2. Bush could say it was raining in DC and i would have to take a flight and stand outside where he was standing to believe it. I could see him standing in a monsoon saying it was wet, and i'd still have to go there to see it in person. IE, bush can not say anything that i would believe at face value. So, i'm mainly signing up to see reasons why he has the support he has.

roachboy · 10-22-2006, 07:32 PM

i am confused.

ncb's post is written in a way that matches its content,
but something seems screwy:

ncb, did you actually understand host's post?
i mean did you follow the sequence of events?
i am not sure that you did.

when you used the word 'berate" what did you mean by it?

or, another way:

what do you imagine that host said to his stepson, ncb?

clear this up please

Lady Sage · 10-22-2006, 08:01 PM

However anything was meant... thank you to your stepson for serving in special ops. He is willing to risk his life in a way that I never was.

Unfortunately part of his job is to go where Bush sends him.

host · 10-22-2006, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB

Sorry host, but youre absolutely a gutless, selfish, and arrogant human being that you think so little of your stepson and that you refuse to put aside your political leanings for one bloody second. The man is putting his life out on the line for your country (probably something you never did) and you just berate him like that. I wish you never posted your story; I liked you a lot better when I thought you were just a misinformed, misguided liberal

Yeah, I know I'll get a PM from a mod on this, but this type of shit is dispicableand some things deserve a harsh reply.

NCB ..... I tried to combine my thoughts and my feelings into words ....... and you did, too. I hope that others will also post thoughts, feelings put into words, or a combination of both.

When we all knew a lot less....before the US invaded Iraq, my other son enlisted in the military, motivated primarily by the 9/11 attacks. He was injured during training and was discharged. He sees the present situation just as I tried to word it in my last post. When he enlisted, he had a strong sense about what he was going to be fighting for. The government and the political leadership had not yet been exposed as unreliable and misleading as to why and where our troops have been ordered to fight, as to whether...or not...there is a "terror" threat...to the US..... of a stature that rises to justify attacking and occupying other countries, as to the foreknowledge of and decisions made, by the leadership, before, during, and immediately following the 9/11 attacks, and the actual intent of the leadership with regard to the steady transfer, outside the law, and by changing the law and the makeup of the courts...of our constitutional rights from us....to the executive branch.

All of those affronts to our trust and our rights are known, and documented, much more definitively now. I could be reflexively supportive if my stepson harbored some doubts.....had some questions about the integrity of the government, the leaders, and about his mission. He is still cocksure, and he claims that the people who he serves with, all are, too.

I haven't "worked on him"....to change his opinions...not in any meaningful way. We have had discussions, all along....since 9/11. I've mentioned before that he is much more intelligent than I am. As time went by, and my questioning of authority increased, and the answers that I found, influenced my declining faith in the integrity of this leadership, his opinion stayed rock solid. I spent ten minutes in a discussion with him in september, where I showed him two of my posts on this forum, and drew his interest when I convinced him to read my post about Cheney saying in 2001 that "it was pretty well confirmed that Atta met with Iraqi government agents in Prague, and then denied in 2004, in an interview with Gloria Borger that he [Cheney} had ever made the strong Atta/Prague meeting connection.

My stepson asked for more proof, and I showed him the pages on the whitehouse website that contained Cheney's comments.

I want to understand....I don't want to feel like I an reluctant or against supporting my stepson's decision to fully support the administration and it's "terror" war fronts. I asked for others to point out what supports their belief systems....in spite of the "no one could have imagined that terrorists would hijack airliners and fly them into buildings, not once, but"...blah, blah, and the Negroponte appointment, the Gonzales appointment, the John Bolton recess appointment, and the Zalmay Khalilzad appointment, and the secrecy, and the fake Lodi, CA "jihadist" cell example, and the manipulation of the color coded terror warnings, and the false assertions that the "insurgency in Iraq is in it's last throes, if you will", and the "to tell you the truth, Kelly, I don't think about him [Bin Laden], and the "we don't torture" statements, and the 700 signing statements, and Patriot II and the "end run" around the FISA court, etc., etc., etc.......

In 1970, it was easy for me to decide not to make myself available or to cooperate with the military draft intended to provide replacements for other draftees completing combat tours in Vietnam:

Quote:

http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/....time/9605/20/
At War with War

(TIME, May 18, 1970) -- With an almost manic abruptness, the nation seemed, as Yeats once wrote, "all changed, changed utterly." With the killing of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen last week, dissent against the U.S. venture into Cambodia suddenly coalesced into a nationwide student strike. Across the country 441 colleges and universities were affected, many of them shut down entirely. Antiwar fever, which President Richard Nixon had skillfully reduced to a tolerable level last fall, surged upward again to a point unequaled since Lyndon Johnson was driven from the White House. The military advantage to be gained in Cambodia seemed more and more dubious, and Nixon found that he had probably sacrificed what he himself once claimed was crucial to achieving an acceptable settlement: wide domestic support, or at least acquiescence, for his policies. Now it is the opposition that has gained strength.....

......The President had carefully calculated the diplomatic and military hazards of invading the Cambodian sanctuaries. But the more important risk involved the response at home -- and in that crucial area he has proved to be dangerously wrong. Nixon, to be sure, could not have foreseen the Kent State shootings. But he was sadly slow in recognizing their impact. After the four students were gunned down, he found no reason to censure the Guardsmen. All he could bring himself to say was: "When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy." That much was obvious. It seemed equally clear that even if the Cambodian expedition should accomplish more than now appears likely, it has already destroyed far more American resources of morale and cohesion than any North Vietnamese supplies could be worth.

Conciliation. By the end of the most searing week of his presidency, Nixon had grown elaborately conciliatory. Six Kent State students who drove to Washington on the spur of the moment to talk with Ohio Congressmen were taken to the White House to see Presidential Adviser John Ehrlichman. Learning of their presence, Nixon invited them into the oval office the next morning for an hour's conversation. .......

We've reached a similar juncture in the US now...it is obvious....certainly to someone as smart and talented as my stepson is, that it is past the time to entertain doubts about the neccessity of Bush's long and hard ,GWOT.

NCB...the actions and the deceit of the leaders of our government have split our family, and again, as in 1970, our country. Nothing that you can say to me, certainly not in a discussion begun because of my reaction to that set of facts, seems very controversial or anything like the slap in the face...twice now in my adult lifetime.....that deceit involving avoidable war and death of our troops stings the cheek of my sensibilities, currently.

My other son understands, my wife understands, our son who blindly trusts and fights for the shifting policies and the disappearing rights described by this administration as "freedom" and "American ideals", and others who support this deception...this false GWOT, are not understood by us.

You can react to me and what I post, as you see fit..... consider though, that my concern is that my son currently serving, and those who serve alongside him, are in danger of dying...or killing for nothing. This is what I believe, this is why I have to forcie myself to tell him that we are "proud of his service".

Instead of reacting the way you did, please tell the rest of us what you believe that our troops are fighting and dying to achieve, under orders of president Bush, that is neccessary, legitimate, defends the US against a signifigant and a looming threat, and is in the spirit of the constitutional rights and freedoms that we were guaranteed before 9/11/2001, and were paid for by the blood and sacrifice of US troops on Omaha beach and US marines on Iwo Jima?

I didn't see it rise to that level of justification in Vietnam, I don't see it rising to that level of justification in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, I don't see a serious effort to fight a "war on terror", and I am losing respect for a son who puts himself in harms way, as he unquestioningly and fully supports a POTUS and CIC who has spent fully, one year of that "wartime" period...clearing brush on his own ranch, and the rest of his time making key appointments of shitty, substandard choices like Negroponte and Khalilzad, and endlessly repeating his "stay the course" mantra, ordering even more of our troops to their deaths, in order to postpone the day when even he realizes that every death of a US soldier has been in vain....changed nothing in Iraq or in Afghanistan, made American "no safer", and "defended" less and less "freedom" and "individual liberties", than before the first US soldier died.

filtherton · 10-22-2006, 08:09 PM

nevermind.

Charlatan · 10-22-2006, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB

Yeah, I know I'll get a PM from a mod on this, but this type of shit is dispicableand some things deserve a harsh reply.

MOD NOTE

While I find your opinion on the matter to be perfectly acceptable, I find your delivery to nothing more than an attack on Host and a plain and simple flame.

That said, I am going to leave this for all to see. Host's reply is a perfect example of how to reply to a flame without escalation.

Ustwo · 10-22-2006, 08:50 PM

Quote:

He buys into the same line of shit....hook, line, and sinker, that many of you here have posted your support for. He trusts Mr. Bush and his policy pronouncements, and the government.

Or perhaps, you are the one who is wrong.

You know where my feelings are, and I wish your son success in his mission, its far more important than posting endlessly on the interweb.

Seaver · 10-22-2006, 09:54 PM

Host, I'm not going to be drawn into a Political matter on this (even though it's in Politics).

What your Son-in-Law wants to hear is how proud you are of him, how brave he is, and how you hope he and all his buddies make it home. Never talk with him (until long after he gets back for good from the war) about the politics of the war. Never talk to him about what and who he is fighting for is wrong. Never tell him how you believe Bush bombed the WTC, never tell him how you believe he should be impeached or how you hate the Republicans.

He knows by now your stance, he just simply will not want to hear it. All he should do is keep his mind on his mission at the moment. If he starts to question, his mind will wander. There's a saying I've heard before by a marine buddy of mine, "Wandering minds end up in a red mess." This was his company's saying to newbies hoping to keep their mind on the battlefield.

So, just tell him what he wants to hear. Telling him what you think he deserves to know, or converting him to your political leaning is selfish. You will have his entire life to argue and convince him when he comes back, but right now he needs your support. I know you'll state that telling him whats going on is supporting him, how opposition is patriotism... but it's not in the mind of a battlefield soldier just wanting to do his job.

NCB · 10-23-2006, 04:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

While I find your opinion on the matter to be perfectly acceptable, I find your delivery to nothing more than an attack on Host and a plain and simple flame.
.

The delivery does leave a lot to be desired. And for that, I apologize to the mods and the other members here for that. However, I will not and cannot apologize to host.

I find it gutless and arrogant that a parent needs to question whether or not to be proud of their childs service to their country solely based on their political leanings. Look, I get not being able to support the war. Heck, I can even get that Americans would like to see bad news come out of Iraq for it would lead to our failure and vindication of their own political idealogy. What I cannot get, nor will I ever, is the failure of parents to support their children in something as honorable as military service despite their own beliefs. Its what parents do!!! Hell, host even goes as far as berating his son! Sorry, but thats unforgivable and deserves nothing but contempt.

I'm done with this now and want to reiterate my apologies to the mods and other members for my rant. As people know, I have always been a team player on this board (ie....I've changed avatars before because people were offended by it, I've edited posts that some people may deem hostile, ect....). However, some comments deserve our scorn and host's comments are one of them. As for the inevitable post that will suggest that I have twisted host's words into something that other than what he intended: if anything, host has never, ever lacked the precision in his written communications here.

Yakk · 10-23-2006, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

1. i can respect that your stepson feels that way and i am thankful there are people like him fighting for what they believe is correct. I can find no fault and nothing but honor in that.

The people who killed themselves to destroy the WTC where fighting for what they believe is correct.

Fighting for what you believe is correct is valour -- but valour isn't enough.

Valour simply magnifies your ethical choices, it doesn't make your choices ethical.

pan6467 · 10-23-2006, 10:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB

The delivery does leave a lot to be desired. And for that, I apologize to the mods and the other members here for that. However, I will not and cannot apologize to host.

I find it gutless and arrogant that a parent needs to question whether or not to be proud of their childs service to their country solely based on their political leanings. Look, I get not being able to support the war. Heck, I can even get that Americans would like to see bad news come out of Iraq for it would lead to our failure and vindication of their own political idealogy. What I cannot get, nor will I ever, is the failure of parents to support their children in something as honorable as military service despite their own beliefs. Its what parents do!!! Hell, host even goes as far as berating his son! Sorry, but thats unforgivable and deserves nothing but contempt.

I'm done with this now and want to reiterate my apologies to the mods and other members for my rant. As people know, I have always been a team player on this board (ie....I've changed avatars before because people were offended by it, I've edited posts that some people may deem hostile, ect....). However, some comments deserve our scorn and host's comments are one of them. As for the inevitable post that will suggest that I have twisted host's words into something that other than what he intended: if anything, host has never, ever lacked the precision in his written communications here.

I find the only thing that is questionable is that Host posted family matters on here.

This is what Host posted :

Quote:

Originally Posted by Host

With that in mind, I carefully limited my questions to details of his well being and living conditions, I relayed news to him about other family members, reminded him that we were very proud of him and of his service, how much we miss him, and that we were praying for him. ....I haven't felt as sincere as I would like to be when I've praised my stepson for his service.

That is all he said to his stepson. That is support. Parents can't always be sincere when they feel their child is doing something wrong. Host has strong beliefs in the GWOT and thus, he may not be able to show support as sincerely as possible, BUT HE SHOWS IT..... He even stated he shows it.

Where is Host berating his stepson, where is he doing anything but not supporting his stepson?

Jesus Fucking Christ, this man is posting on here asking hardline Bush supporters to explain their stances and beliefs so that he may better understand his stepson, and you fucking attack him for things he never said. You didn't answer his questions, you didn't answer why you believe what you believe..... you simply put words and events that didn't exist and attacked the man.

Ok, I have a son, he goes to a war I don't agree with. He believes in it, I don't, I fear my son will die in vain and for something I am morally against.

I explain my side to my son, but he still believes and goes..... I give him my love, my support and my tears, nut I still cvannot believe in what he does.

He calls, we talk, I offer support and love. But I feel like a bad father because I couldn't put my heart into what I was saying..... (again, not because I do not love my son, or am proud of how he has taken responsibility.... but because morally I am opposed to the war.)

Then I ask supporters to help me understand their side, what is it I am missing, that my son sees? Because I need to.

Instead, you call me names because of things you want to add to my post?

wow....

My best to you Host..... Your son is doing something he believes in even though you can't, but maybe that loyalty and responsibility is what you taught him.

He'll be alright, and someday when it's all over the 2 of you will be able to truly talk about these days and understand the stances you took, and maybe you'll find out you both learned from and inspired the other.

stevo · 10-23-2006, 10:08 AM

Your son is a good man. It sounds like he has two battles to fight. I wish him the best in both.

And I won't be voting for bush on Nov. 7. or in 2008.

Paq · 10-23-2006, 10:16 AM

yakk, good point, but from their POV, i can find that they did what they thought was honorable, which is honorable in a way, just not a way i can agree with

Seriously, though, my remark was in relation to people who serve in the US military, and i failed to make that distinction. as R Lee Ermey once said, I never met an officer i didn't like.

on the other hand, i must admit to having a grudging respect for people who are willing to die of their own free will for something they believed in. not sure if that applies to the WTC people in the 'free will' department.

it gets confusing from there

at any rate, i have nothing but respect for the US soldiers doing what they believe.

pan6467 · 10-23-2006, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

at any rate, i have nothing but respect for the US soldiers doing what they believe.

I feel the same.

It is unfortunate that in 3 years my son's half brother will be of age to enter the military, and that the only way he believes he will get to college is by joining the military and possibly a war that he doesn't want to go to but may have to. He sees his mother's brother suffer everyday from Gulf War Syndrome and he knows the pain of war. I am ashamed that my country has given our children that belief and that we here at home don't change that reality.

Let us remember, that not everyone in the military or in the war believe that this war is righteous or even moral, but they do what they must to stay alive. The men and women who fall into this category also deserve our respect, pride and prayers, perhaps even moreso because our country gave them no hope to a better life.

NCB · 10-23-2006, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

. It is unfortunate that in 3 years my son's half brother will be of age to enter the military, and that the only way he believes he will get to college is by joining the military and possibly a war that he doesn't want to go to but may have to.

They have these things called student loans out there. Apparently, most anyone can get them with only a mere promise to pay them back when he graduates.

pan6467 · 10-23-2006, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB

They have these things called student loans out there. Apparently, most anyone can get them with only a mere promise to pay them back when he graduates.

Really and now that the interest rates are going up, the government is pulling subsidiaries and trying to make them private loans.... how do you expect an 18 yr. old to qualify? Plus, the loans barely cover tuition, what about room and board, books, etc?

Plus when he sees friends siblings, parents and so on getting shitty wages and expected to pay back loans and still live, the military sounds a lot better.... Education paid, money for college.... etc.

NCB · 10-23-2006, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

Really and now that the interest rates are going up, the government is pulling subsidiaries and trying to make them private loans.... how do you expect an 18 yr. old to qualify? Plus, the loans barely cover tuition, what about room and board, books, etc?

Plus when he sees friends siblings, parents and so on getting shitty wages and expected to pay back loans and still live, the military sounds a lot better.... Education paid, money for college.... etc.

They already are private loans, pan. They just all have govt backing. And yes, 18yo can qualify. Also, why not a part itme job to help? I know you see soup lines around every corner, but its not nearly as widespread as you seem to want it to be.

ratbastid · 10-23-2006, 11:34 AM

Somebody in this thread deserves a 30-day break.

'Sall I'm saying.

Paq · 10-23-2006, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Somebody in this thread deserves a 30-day break.

'Sall I'm saying.

what'd i do?

seriously, though, i think this thread is pretty civil after the first part and that seemed to be a misunderstanding more than anything.

i'm still waiting for the original intent of this thread, IE, why bush supporters are still behind bush

jorgelito · 10-23-2006, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

Really and now that the interest rates are going up, the government is pulling subsidiaries and trying to make them private loans.... how do you expect an 18 yr. old to qualify? Plus, the loans barely cover tuition, what about room and board, books, etc?

Plus when he sees friends siblings, parents and so on getting shitty wages and expected to pay back loans and still live, the military sounds a lot better.... Education paid, money for college.... etc.

Pan, your son is very much misinformed. So what if interest rates are going up, a loan for school is THE BEST investment. People have no problem getting a loan for a car, I think an eduation most certainly trumps that. Typical student loan packages will cover tuition, room, board etc. There are lots of ways to cover it.

In my case, I went to community college then transferred over to a state school. Saved 2 years worht of tuition by doing that and it was easier getting into the state school as a transfer student than as a high school applicant. Also, wise budgeting will yield great results. In fact, I always had money left over from each quarter due to my good spending habits.

Please PM me for more detail and I will be happy to share all my "secrets". If I can go to college, ANYONE can.

I mean c'mon, if all the illegals at my school can get funding, don't you think your son can?

P.S. - If your son wants to join the military, then he should, but not because he has no choice. But I would recommend he do the officer programs in either the Navy or Marines. Better training, better pay, better everything (in my opinion).

boatin · 10-23-2006, 03:20 PM

Seems like a great, well intentioned question from Host. It's a damn shame that no one can step up and answer the question. Fitting and not surprising...

Paq · 10-23-2006, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boatin

Seems like a great, well intentioned question from Host. It's a damn shame that no one can step up and answer the question. Fitting and not surprising...

i work with a lot of hardcore republicans and i ask them the same question as everything piles up...

this is about the expected response...let's just say the subject changes quickly

Seaver · 10-23-2006, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Seems like a great, well intentioned question from Host. It's a damn shame that no one can step up and answer the question. Fitting and not surprising...

Read my post. His question is not what the point should be at in my opinion. What matters is how certain things that can be said will affect his step-son. If Host speaking his mind about his beliefs on Bush, how he speaks of the war as a conspiracy for oil and to hold onto the reigns of power, and how he is responsible for the WTC.... well that will negatively affect his step-son.

I'm not going to defend my beliefs on the war, there are countless posts on the topic.

host · 10-24-2006, 03:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boatin

Seems like a great, well intentioned question from Host. It's a damn shame that no one can step up and answer the question. Fitting and not surprising...

I"ve posted about my OP subject matter on these thread, before....

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...41&postcount=8
06-25-2006, 01:17 PM

matthew330, I want to reserve this spot, below your post, because then I can avoid taking up space by quoting you.....stay tuned.....okay...I'm back....

My wife's son is a member of an elite U.S. military unit. he is looking forward to his first foreign deployment, after more than 30 months of training. He is positive that the liberal media and the opinions of folks like me have hurt recruiting efforts, and that Iraq is largely pacified, except in Anbar, Baghdad, Tikrit, and in Basra. He has no explanation for poor electrical and oil production in iraq.

He knows that the U.S. found WMD, and that, despite admitting that the U.S. has excellent "eye in the sky" surveillance, Saddam was able to smuggle all of his
WMD stockpiles and their R&D and manufacturing infrastructure to Iran and Syria before the 2003 U.S. invasion. He is frustrated and mystified by the failure of the Bush admin. to "defend itself" by publicizing the "proof" of all of this!

He has one of the highest IQs of anyone I've ever met....but he believes what he believes.

I look at what all three principle U.S. Iraqi weapons inspectors have said, and at the miserable job that the Bush admin. did to justify the reasons for invading and occupying Iraq....and what it has cost....in blood, and treasure:

<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=84506">Are the Feb. 18 Harris Iraq Poll Results "The triumph of Opinion Over News"?</a>

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2022762&postcount=20
03-09-2006, 06:14 AM

Sorry to bring news that your "smokinggun" was discredited last year in the UK "ricin terrorists" trial. I wrote about it in a <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=1751493&highlight=ricin#post1751493">TFP thread</a> that you posted to, but you apparently didn't read the news articles that I linked to... in April, 2005, when it happened...it was well reported in the UK and in the US. The "manual" that you cite, was exposed as a US DOJ misinformation "OP". It was apparently actually compiled in the '80's, possibly by one of our own intelligence agencies....

Mojo_PeiPei, you may come back with a response that "there are two manuals"...it is confusing. When the BS that you want to embrace comes from the UK or US intelligence and/or law enforcement communities as the "sole source", Who TF knows...? One thing to consider is that the "manual" that was discredited in a $50 million British prosecution, was reportedly found in "Manchester in 2000", was "named" by Ashcroft's DOJ in 2001, and was presented as evidence in a criminal trial in a US Federal Court in 2001.

The Ricin reciped in the "manual" has been convincingly discredited, and the "manual" is organized in a very similar way to the <a href="http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=98">SOA manuals</a> at the FT. Benning School. They've since changed the acronym to <a href="http://www.soaw.org/new/">"WHINSEC"</a> and it's still a terrorist training school, and "we" run it for the benefit of training security forces of repressive Latin American regimes.

...and Mojo_PeiPei....it's my country, too...and sometimes....I'm ashamed to be an American....I envy you your "uncluttered" POV, but I've always been one to ask too many questions. My eyes are bloodshot from keepin' 'em "wide open".

Finally, your Quran "take" is inaccurate, according to numerous June 2005 reports, including this one, from Foxnews...(where do you "get" your news, anyway?)

The former commander at Gitmo, does not seem like an officer who prizes the truth or supports, in an honest and forthright manner, the troops who followed his orders:

Mojo_PeiPei, as an aside, my wife and I have a son who serves on active duty in an elite US Military unit. His mother and I are intensly proud of him. We have even more reason to "stay informed", because of the service of this fine young man. Our soldier told me last summer, that "liberals like me (host)", are interfering with the military recruiting effort, because of our beliefs and our rhetoric. Facing several more years of active duty, I don't know if his POV is a curse or a blessing. He is a devoutly religious, intensely patriotic, and idealistic early twentysomething. He is, however, misinformed. I draw the line by not disclosing even half of what I post on these threads, to our soldier. The lies, false motives, and corruption of our failed, anti-constitutional leadership and congressional representatives is itself, almost too much to bear. The added pain that is a consequence of this, is the division in my own family that I suspect is mostly due to "catapulting the propaganda". I regret that I am not able to keep my entire family out of the way of "it" when it lands!

I've taken time to consider the "feedback" that I've been receiving here... and my reaction is to ask if there is inconsistency in what I've posted here, and in the two preceding, older posts.....versus what I've continued to communicate, as far as words (and feelings) of support to my stepson ?

I've posted in the past that president Bush had my support, when he spoke from the rubble pile at ground zero, in Sept., 2001. My close scrutiny of current events began when my son enlisted in the military in 2002....he wrote to me from bootcamp that his DI and trainers stressed that he would be going to Iraq very soon. I was taken by surprise and assured him that there was little to indicate that this was a possibility.

My opinion evolved from the point when president Bush had my attention and support in Sept., 2001. I can track and share the information that has changed my opinion. When I supported the president, after 9/11, and when my son enlisted, in 2002, the leadership of the CIC and his administration, and the justification for military action that they articulated, supported their case for using the US military to neutralize the capacity of enemies to directly threaten the US....reinforced by the actual example of the 9/11 attacks.

Time passed....invasion and occupation of Iraq was stressed as justified because of a direct threat to the US....then that changed....no WMD were found.....flaws in the credibility of Bush and his admin. were revealed... and my opinion moved away from the post 9/11 justification for US military action, as more information poured in..... the same process that influenced me to agree with Mr. Bush and support what he said that he would do....that day in Sept., 2001....in his ground zero speech.

The justification for military action, defense of the US from a direct threat, the stakes, the mission, the moral imperative that Mr. Bush described during his ground zero speech, <h3>were impervious to "liberal criticism". BULLETPROOF.....How can my stepson's belief system now....and some of your own....be so fragile that "liberal opinion" could impair US military recruiting efforts, measurably undermine the GWOT effort, or compromise his safety or "mission", if there was any remaining substance to justify continued US military action?</h3>

How does my concern that my highly intelligent stepson's support for and participation in continued US military action.....knowing what he should know by now.....my concern that supporting him with no reservations, when I know that not only his life may be at stake....but also his soul, is the wrong thing to do? I have become convinced that the US is engaged in illegal warfare on several fronts. I can't see that killing people in other countries who resist the occupation of US troops in their countries....can any longer be considered moral. Doing so, anyway, when you have the responsibility of keeping the integrity of your own soul....your moral fiber....simply by turning a blind eye....ignoring or explaining away the available information.... brings you down to the level of the US administration....maybe even lower....because they certainly can't believe their own propaganda.....

Those of you who disagree with me, know what I'm talking about. Not even one justification has been posted to defend the worthiness, truthfulness, of the US administration or of it's latest arguments for continued military action.
What have you got to justify continued killing of people who inhabit Iraq and the "stans" by US troops, or to defend US policy pronouncements, or the truthfulness of our leaders?

I didn't transform Mr. Bush's objectives, articulated in his ground zero speech into something so fragile that it can be threatened by "criticism of liberals"...like me. He and his colleagues accomplished that, themselves. We are sending our troops into harms way....and they are killing and dying for nothing. If there is a god who sits in judgment....participation in the killing may be costing our soldiers their souls. If it is justified, if it is "worth it", you should have somethings to post in defense of it....you should "know how you know." Instead, we witness your silence and your condemnation of me. We witness, in the news report below, the politicization of the US military leadership by the political objectives of the civilian command, and the repeat of the traitorous, anti-American, Cheney bullshit of the 2004 campaign....Vote for US or we'll "get hit again".....

What have you got, besides the following? It's no wonder that some of you and my stepson are so concerned that the "war effort" is so fragile that it can be damaged signifigantly by critical opinions.....you can't even defend it, anymore....or consider that there is a reason that a "dose" of skepticism can be described as "healthy":

Quote:

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism...0-125437-2462r
Analysis: Insurgents target U.S. will
By PAMELA HESS
UPI Pentagon Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Senior U.S. government officials and military officers have suggested that Iraqi insurgents are trying to influence the U.S. midterm elections

A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq last week attributed the increase in violence at least partly to terrorists who want to influence the American vote.

His comments Thursday echoed those made by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney two days earlier on conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh's radio show, which is carried on the Armed Force Radio network in Iraq.

Brig. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad and head of the U.S. forces information operations branch as well as its public affairs unit, Thursday described several reasons why violence in Iraq is up despite a four-month offensive called Operation Together Forward meant to bring Baghdad under control. One of those, he said, was the American political calendar.

"We also realize that there is a midterm election that's taking place in the United States and that the extremist elements understand the power of the media; that if they can in fact produce additional casualties, that in fact is recognized and discussed in the press because everybody would like not to see anybody get killed in these operations, but that does occur," Caldwell said.

On Oct. 17, Cheney told Limbaugh: "I was reading something today that a writer -- I don't remember who -- was speculating on increased terrorist attacks in Iraq attempting to demoralize the American people as we get up to the election. And when I read that, it made sense to me. And I interpreted this as that the terrorists are actually involved and want to involve themselves in our electoral process, which must mean they want a change."

In tight races across the country, the Republican Party faces the possible loss of a majority in both houses of Congress.

A spokesman for Caldwell, Maj. Douglas Powell, told United Press International Thursday the comment was not based on intelligence, but rather what Caldwell knows in general about the enemy in Iraq.

"We have a thinking enemy who is aware of how American politics works and how the American public reacts to events," Powell said Thursday.

By Friday, the story had changed. According to Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician, Multi-National Forces Iraq reported that Caldwell based his comments on insurgent Web sites which say they need to attack "during this period."

That period may be interpreted as the run up to U.S. elections, but now is also Ramadan, Islam's holy month -- a time when violence has increased in Iraq in each of the last three years.

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., told UPI he doubts there is a correlation between the U.S. election and the increase in violence in Iraq, particularly in Baghdad.

"I hope they are right, but I see no basis for it in the previous three-and-a-half years of experience in Iraq," O'Hanlon said. "We did not see a spike before the November 2004 (presidential) election. We have not seen big spikes before other major political milestones. Sure, you can see slight increases in violence due to such things, but the big increases are generally due to changed American and Iraqi army tactics. Increased engagements with the enemy lead to greater casualties on all sides.

"Political events do not in my experience appear to be big drivers. I'd love to be proven wrong this time, because that would imply a reduced level of violence after Nov. 7, but I'd be very surprised if that happened on a major scale," O'Hanlon said.

In a new report published by the Johns Hopkins University and Brookings, researcher Victor Tanner and his Iraqi colleague -- who uses a pen name to protect his identity -- analyze the complex nature of the sectarian violence that now grips Baghdad. More than 5,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the city since May, most of them execution style.

The report describes factions motivated as much or more by their own quest for power, the evening of scores on a neighborhood level, and sheer thuggery, than it does a central strategy driven by geopolitics or the American election cycle.

That said, Tanner told UPI not to "underestimate the political acumen of the radical armed groups on both sides."

That Caldwell commented on the American election raised eyebrows as well. Military personnel are prohibited by both law and policy from using their "official authority or influence to affect the course of outcome of an election."

Caldwell stopped short of advocating for Republican retention of power, but the implication of his comment -- that terrorists in Iraq want to affect the outcome of the U.S. election -- makes that suggestion.

"In my opinion, Gen. Caldwell's statement crosses over the line into political partisanship," said Diane H. Mazur, a former Air Force officer and University of Florida law professor.

Caldwell's office did not respond to UPI's inquiry about the potential political implications of his statement.

Limbaugh's show was not the first time Cheney has suggested terrorists have picked favorites in the upcoming election.

In August, Cheney told wire service reporters that "al-Qaida types" were looking to break the will of the American people to stay and fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He linked that al-Qaida effort to the Connecticut Democratic primary rejection of Iraq war supporter Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., dismissed Cheney's logic.

"This situation isn't going well (in Iraq), and anyone that suggests that the people of Connecticut are somehow supporting terrorists, I don't think that's credible and that's what Cheney suggested," Reid said at the time.

Sticky · 10-24-2006, 06:54 AM

host, you asked a lot of questions in your opening post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I'm not asking you to "win me over" to all things republican. I'm just asking for reasons why I should be proud of my stepson's service, and of his commander in chief........why I should overlook what I see and what I post about on these threads. What is the "higher calling" that you, as republican supporters must see....to continue your support and defense of the status quo....that I don't see? What would Nancy Pelosi do....if she became House Speaker, that would be worse than what Dennis Hastert has done..... he fired the ethics committee when it found against the ethics of Tom Delay....

But what is the thread about is it about this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Those of you who disagree with me, know what I'm talking about. Not even one justification has been posted to defend the worthiness, truthfulness, of the US administration or of it's latest arguments for continued military action.

or is it about this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I'm just asking for reasons why I should be proud of my stepson's service

or both?

If this thread was able to help you find a way to be proud of your stepson would you need to have justifications for waht Bush is doing?

Must the two go hand in hand or is there a way that we can help you find a way to be proud of your stepson?
The reason that I ask is even if every Bush supporter in the world were to list all their reasons, would any of them convince you? You said it yourself that you are not looking to be convinced.

What are you looking for from this thread?
- Are you looking for a way to be proud of your stepson?
- Are you looking to find a way to understand the Bush camp?

I don't think that those two must happen together, but I am not in the situation you are in with your stepson.

Is the deeper question here (these questions are for everyone, not just host):
Can a parent be proud of a child even though that child is not acting accordiong to the parent's beliefs (morals, ethics, lifestyle) and values?

- What if your child was a republican and you are a democrat?
- What if your child wanted to marry somone outside of your religin and religion is important to you?
- What if your child operated a business that is legal but that you consider moral and unethical?

Can you be proud of that child?
These are hard questions. But deep down, I think that a good parent has to find a way to still give the child what he needs but without necessarily condoning what they do?

host,
is there a way that you can be proud of your stepson (if that is what he needs)?
- Can you be proud of the good job he does?
- Can you be proud of the respect he commands from his peers, those below, and those above him?
- Can you be proud of the way he is strong enough to stand up and take action for what he believes in?
- Can you be proud that he is able to have discussions and arguments with you and still respect you (I am guessing on this one but I assume he does)?

Does this help at all?

shakran · 10-24-2006, 07:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NCB

Sorry host, but youre absolutely a gutless, selfish, and arrogant human being that you think so little of your stepson

This has got to be the biggest, most unadulterated steaming pile of shit I've ever read on this forum. Host wants the soldiers, including his stepson, to come home. Host wishes the soldiers, including his stepson, had never been sent off to fight this illegal, immoral, and completely unjustified war. It's an amazing and idiotic world when the people foaming at the mouth to send young kids overseas to die and be maimed by the tens of thousands are "supporting" the troops, while those of us who want them safely at home bouncing their children on their knee are suddenly anti-soldier. It's complete Orwellian bullshit, and it never ceases to amaze me how many people buy in to it without even bothering to question the matter.

Quote:

The man is putting his life out on the line for your country

No he is not. He is putting his life out on the line in an effort to make us more unsafe. He doesn't realize it, but that's exactly what the war in Iraq has done. I of course hold no animosity for the soldiers who are over there - they're following orders - but I do feel terribly for them that they are fighting and dying in order to bring us further away from our goal.

Quote:

(probably something you never did) and you just berate him like that.

He's not berating the kid- - - the kid IS swallowing the same line of crap that fewer and fewer Americans are accepting. And I can understand why - the kid only has access to news that the government WANTS him to have access to. They don't get NPR in the desert. You take a kid and isolate him from the world and then tell him that a bad man in the desert is helping the people who attacked us and hell yes, he's gonna be gung ho for his cause, and well he should be. The shame lies with the snivelling dogs back home (most of whom did not themselves serve as you seem to think is so terribly important to have done in order to have an opinion on this) who tell baldfaced lies in order to send those kids off to die.

Ustwo · 10-24-2006, 07:13 AM

host would you be proud of your son if he got himself 20 years in military prison for going awol in a combat mission or something of that nature because he suddenly saw your version of 'TRUTH' as true?

If so seek psychiatric help, if not let the kid do his job, come home and then try to sway him to your point of view. His soul will be just fine.

seretogis · 10-24-2006, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boatin

Seems like a great, well intentioned question from Host. It's a damn shame that no one can step up and answer the question. Fitting and not surprising...

I find the current political dichotomy to be very curious, as an actual conservative. Both the Republicans (neo-con socialists) and Democrats (greater-good socialists) want the same thing -- an all-encompassing federal government which can do any damned thing it wants. The only difference seems to be that Democrats want to mask that power as "for the greater good" while Republicans want to disguise it as patriotism. Sure, Republicans offer a tax cut every so often but all the while federal government spending grows and its power becomes even greater. Republicans are not conservative, Bush is not a conservative.

Now you may ask yourself, "why don't Republicans and Democrats just put aside their differences for a moment and work together to turn the USA into Soviet Russia?" The answer is that if they did so -- if they both showed their true colors, the American people would balk. Republicans and Democrats NEED their disguises for incrementally more socialist and facist policy. Americans had 12 years to see Republicans in power and in action. Since then we have had more rights stripped away and bigger government glut. Come November, they will have to examine their values and what they can do about the current situation. Most likely they will vote Democrat instead of Republican, which will of course bring about no positive change. It's only when people look beyond the two nearly-identical major parties that we will see truly "progressive" policy to clear away the regressive socialist chains that have been pulled tight across this country.

The answer to host's question -- why anyone who supported Bush can still support him -- is simple: denial. Denial of the death of conservative policy in the two major parties, and denial of the need for change lest we become the United Socialist States of America in 20-50 years. The only way people can avoid noticing the oncoming train is by closing their eyes, covering their ears, and walking on the tracks while mumbling about how patriotic/selfless they are.

j8ear · 10-25-2006, 04:39 PM

Seretogis,

That was a great freaking post. Thank you.

-bear

filtherton · 10-25-2006, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by j8ear

Seretogis,

That was a great freaking post. Thank you.

-bear

I agree. (need to put in ten characters)

Paq · 10-25-2006, 10:15 PM

kinda sad that seretogis's post speaks so loudly to conservatives and liberals on this board.

i didn't think i'd agree so much with it, but it's true.

definitely...time for a change

host · 10-26-2006, 01:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

kinda sad that seretogis's post speaks so loudly to conservatives and liberals on this board.

i didn't think i'd agree so much with it, but it's true.

definitely...time for a change

the link in seretogis's post is from an article by the "heir" to Ayn Rand's estate and to her simplistic and incomplete "objectivism"....the sentiments in seretogis's post, IMO, do not take into account the fiscal discipline and reversal of federal deficit spending in the 1993 to 2001 period, a time when the growth of the non-military portion of the federal government was actually reversed...the non-military government employment total grew smaller, in addition to a reduction of 284,000 mostly civilian DOD positions. Annual federal debt increases were reduced from $360 billion, in the fiscal year ending on Setp. 30, 1993, to just $18 billion in the Oct. 1, 1999 to Sept. 30, 2000 budget period.

The actual record that I just described, vs. the last four years of "one party" rule, seems to me a total contradiction of the "broad brush" of dimissal and the lumping of both major politcal parties' flaws, together in seretogis's article. There is enough of a difference in the records of the two major parties' "accomplishments" to justify voting for immediate transfer of control from "one party" that is responsible for a sudden fiscal reversal into disaster, of at least one house of the federal legislature. Following the themes in seretogis's articles would justify leaving the political imbalance in place for at least two more, predictably disasterous years.....because "one party is the same as the other". The record of budget, taxation, and spending management of the last 25 years proves the core point of seretogis's article is wrong.

seretogis's article is largely influenced by the "work" of Leonard Peikoff...his article is the only linked item in seretogis's post. I do not agree with most of the ideas of Peikoff, as this example of his overly simplistic, militaristic and self centered, "work", clearly is the opposite of my understanding of the political challenges of the post 2001 period:

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200110300...errorism.shtml
The following editorial has been produced by the Ayn Rand Institute's MediaLink department. Visit MediaLink at http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/.

The following article was published as a full-page ad in the New York Times on October 2, 2001.

"End States Who Sponsor Terrorism"
By Leonard Peikoff

Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The climax was September 11, 2001.
Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower surrendered the West's property rights in oil, although that oil rightfully belonged to those in the West whose science, technology, and capital made its discovery and use possible. The first country to nationalize Western oil, in 1951, was Iran. The rest, observing our frightened silence, hurried to grab their piece of the newly available loot.
The cause of the U.S. silence was not practical, but philosophical. The Mideast's dictators were denouncing wealthy egotistical capitalism. They were crying that their poor needed our sacrifice; that oil, like all property, is owned collectively, by virtue of birth; and that they knew their viewpoint was true by means of otherworldly emotion. Our Presidents had no answer. Implicitly, they were ashamed of the Declaration of Independence. They did not dare to answer that Americans, properly, were motivated by the selfish desire to achieve personal happiness in a rich, secular, individualist society.
The Muslim countries embodied in an extreme form every idea—selfless duty, anti-materialism, faith or feeling above science, the supremacy of the group—which our universities, our churches, and our own political Establishment had long been upholding as virtue.......

<h3>host sez.... Dr. Peikoff....you've conveniently omitted the 1953 CIA engineered coup in Iran that removed the democratically elected head of state of that country, <a href="http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/">Mohammed Mossadegh</a>....and installed the compliant, corrupt monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi....</h3>

.......Most of the Mideast is ruled by thugs who would be paralyzed by an American victory over any of their neighbors. Iran, by contrast, is the only major country there ruled by zealots dedicated not to material gain (such as more wealth or territory), but to the triumph by any means, however violent, of the Muslim fundamentalist movement they brought to life. That is why Iran manufactures the most terrorists.
If one were under a Nazi aerial bombardment, it would be senseless to restrict oneself to combatting Nazi satellites while ignoring Germany and the ideological plague it was working to spread. What Germany was to Nazism in the 1940s, Iran is to terrorism today. Whatever else it does, therefore, the U.S. can put an end to the Jihad-mongers only by taking out Iran.
Eliminating Iran's terrorist sanctuaries and military capability is not enough. We must do the equivalent of de-Nazifying the country, by expelling every official and bringing down every branch of its government. This goal cannot be achieved painlessly, by weaponry alone. It requires invasion by ground troops, who will be at serious risk, and perhaps a period of occupation. But nothing less will "end the state" that most cries out to be ended.
The greatest obstacle to U.S. victory is not Iran and its allies, but our own intellectuals. Even now, they are advocating the same ideas that caused our historical paralysis. They are asking a reeling nation to show neighbor-love by shunning "vengeance." The multiculturalists—rejecting the concept of objectivity—are urging us to "understand" the Arabs and avoid "racism" (i.e., any condemnation of any group's culture). The friends of "peace" are reminding us, ever more loudly, to "remember Hiroshima" and beware the sin of pride.
These are the kinds of voices being heard in the universities, the churches, and the media as the country recovers from its first shock, and the professoriate et al. feel emboldened to resume business as usual. These voices are a siren song luring us to untroubled sleep while the fanatics proceed to gut America.
Tragically, Mr. Bush is attempting a compromise between the people's demand for a decisive war and the intellectuals' demand for appeasement.
It is likely that the Bush administration will soon launch an attack on bin Laden's organization in Afghanistan and possibly even attack the Taliban. Despite this, however, every sign indicates that Mr. Bush will repeat the mistakes made by his father in Iraq. As of October 1, the Taliban leadership appears not to be a target. Even worse, the administration refuses to target Iran, or any of the other countries identified by the State Department as terrorist regimes. On the contrary, Powell is seeking to add to the current coalition these very states—which is the equivalent of going into partnership with the Soviet Union in order to fight Communism (under the pretext, say, of proving that we are not anti-Russian). By seeking such a coalition, our President is asserting that he needs the support of terrorist nations in order to fight them. He is stating publicly that the world's only superpower does not have enough self-confidence or moral courage to act unilaterally in its own defense.
For some days now, Mr. Bush has been downplaying the role of our military, while praising the same policies (mainly negotiation and economic pressure) that have failed so spectacularly and for so long. Instead of attacking the roots of global terrorism, he seems to be settling for a "guerrilla war" against al-Qaeda, and a policy of unseating the Taliban passively, by aiding a motley coalition of native tribes. Our battle, he stresses, will be a "lengthy" one.
Mr. Bush's compromise will leave the primary creators of terrorism whole—and unafraid. His approach might satisfy our short-term desire for retribution, but it will guarantee catastrophe in the long term.
As yet, however, no overall policy has been solidified; the administration still seems to be groping. And an angry public still expects our government not merely to hobble terrorism for a while, but to eradicate it. The only hope left is that Mr. Bush will listen to the public, not to the professors and their progeny.
When should we act, if not now? If our appeasement has led to an escalation of disasters in the past, can it do otherwise in the future? <h3>Do we wait until our enemies master nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare?
The survival of America is at stake. The risk of a U.S. overreaction, therefore, is negligible. The only risk is underreaction.</h3>
Mr. Bush must reverse course. He must send our missiles and troops, in force, where they belong. And he must justify this action by declaring with righteous conviction that we have discarded the clich�s of our paper-tiger past and that the U.S. now places America first.
There is still time to demonstrate that we take the war against terrorism seriously—as a sacred obligation to our Founding Fathers, to every victim of the men who hate this country, and to ourselves. There is still time to make the world understand that we will take up arms, anywhere and on principle, to secure an American's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on earth.
The choice today is mass death in the United States or mass death in the terrorist nations. Our Commander-In-Chief must decide whether it is his duty to save Americans or the governments who conspire to kill them.

Leonard Peikoff is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, California. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Substitute Iraq for Iran, and it appears that Mr. Bush ended up following Dr. Peikoff's "remedy", almost exactly. It was neocon, islamophobic, ignorant propaganda when Peikoff wrote it, and paid the NY Times to display it, and it is a monument to his failed and richly flawed thinking, in hindsight. The risks were much greater, and the results, so far..... much smaller and more expensive, than Peikoff's narrow mind could have envisioned....

A vote based on the advice and the thinking of Peikoff is a vote wasted. The two major American political parties have nearly opposite fiscal management credentials, and change...away from Peikoff's, and republicans failed and bankrupting foreign policy and restoration of at least some.....any...checks and balances in government must happen now.....not in some undetermined future..... certainly not one that will ever be effected from the signifigantly less compelling, pompous, myopic, anti-intellectual "spin" of the dean of the failed school of objectivism. Rand offered no solutions for "the rest of us", and Peikoff offers no solutions at all.....

Psycho Dad · 10-26-2006, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I'm just asking for reasons why I should be proud of my stepson's service, and of his commander in chief........

You don't have to be proud of his commander in chief, but be proud of your stepson's willingness to defend that right to not show your support for Bush. Your stepson took an oath to defend his country against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey the orders of the President of the United States. He took that oath voluntarily and today is fulfilling that promise.

ratbastid · 10-26-2006, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psycho Dad

You don't have to be proud of his commander in chief, but be proud of your stepson's willingness to defend that right to not show your support for Bush. Your stepson took an oath to defend his country against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey the orders of the President of the United States. He took that oath voluntarily and today is fulfilling that promise.

Very true. You can be proud of his loyalty and integrity--that he's a man of his word--without necessarily agreeing with the thing he's given his word to.

roachboy · 10-26-2006, 10:45 AM

i have been hesitant to post to this thread for a number of reasons, not least of which is the complexity of the situation that it at its core and my sense of being unable to say anything meaningful about it.

another reason is that i do not really understand the main verbs that litter the conservative set responses: pride in particular, what it means in this context.
i do not see any necessarily linkage between "being proud" and being coherently supportive, unless the underlying assumption is that what is really required in such a situation is a kind of paternal blessing, which works under the assumption that there is something infantilizing about the situation in which host's stepson finds himself, and what is required to deal with it is the beneficient gesture of the paterfamilias. and maybe there is something infantilizing about it.
but playing into it seems useless, given the political divisions within this family, which is not concealed, is a part of conversation, is known to all players.
that on its own would seem to me to rule out any facile recourse to the discourse of "i am proud of you"--simply because it seems that it would be delivered as a message as already hollowed out.

i am proud...i approve of what you are doing...i approve of what you are doing in the context of a situation that i approve of...

how about saying what i assume from the op can be said and meant... something like: "i love you and i worry about you and how you are faring and i hope that you keep yourself safe and to stay safe you have to stay focussed on what you have to do."
something like that?

in the end, seaver's post 12 contains the same core, though still decorated with the discourse of pride, which i really dont think functional in this context. psychodad says a parallel thing above.

which brings me around to the main reason i hesitated to post here:

i think something about it is fundamentally unfair.

now i say this as someone who opposed the iraq debacle from the outset and who has been very vocal about that opposition, both here and elsewhere.

what seems to me unfair about it is the central question the op poses: which amounts to:

ok you assholes tell me something that i can believe in about this stupid, unnecessary, incoherent, politically motivated debacle of a "war on terror" that i can tell my stepson who, unlike you conservatives who post here from the safety of your homes or offices, is actually putting himself on the line for all this in real time.

what i do not understand is why any conservative would answer such a question and go much beyond what seaver said in post 12 (and psychodad's post directly above this one). to do so seems an act of almost mind-boggling presumption...

host posed questions that should have been unanswerable for you folks--you would have done better to have posted nothing, said nothing--or to object to the question itself--rather than walk directly into a self-evident trap--which you tried to bluster your way through using--well what?--half-baked reactionary memes mixed with an appalling refusal to remember that there is a human being behind the name host who is talking about a real problem that none of you are have to face.

how is this possible?
do you really think that the people who oppose you politically are thereby not deserving of simple respect as human beings?

it's funny--at the core of the new right's mythological "history" of vietnam there is the myth of the returning solder being spat upon by people who opposed the war in vietnam politically. it never happened, but no matter, it is a functional myth--which apparently has generated a kind of boneheaded sanctimoniousness amongst some conservatives that makes them feel justified in spitting on a human being they disagree with politically who posts something about an obviously complex personal situation....so the myth that the far right has taken for an allegory about the war in vietnam they now repeat in reverse. except they actually do it.
so it follows that there are dimensions of conservative ideology that function to dehumanize all who oppose it, if that ideology is taken as a total worldview.
nice demonstration, lads. i am sure that you did not set out to provide one, but you did. well played.

host · 10-26-2006, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psycho Dad

You don't have to be proud of his commander in chief, but be proud of your stepson's willingness to defend that right to not show your support for Bush. Your stepson took an oath to defend his country against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey the orders of the President of the United States. He took that oath voluntarily and today is fulfilling that promise.

.....this was asked before, by someone else....I'll ask it again.... how do you know that the fighting, dying, and killing, done by US troops in Iraq or in Afghanistan, today, is

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psycho Dad

but be proud of your stepson's willingness to defend that right to not show your support for Bush....

..... that premise seems to be the opposite of the actual result, judging by the new, unconstitutional authority that congress voted to transfer from the people and their former right to "due process", to the POTUS, just last month..... so swiftly after a SCOTUS ruling confirmed that the executive had already illegally attempted to diminish or remove the right to "due process" of some US residents, citizens, and enemy "combatants".

The reported record is that the current US executive administration is not only attacking our consitution, but making career ending "examples" of US military lawyers who attempt to defend and uphold it's clauses; and how good will the legal representation of US soldiers under military jurisdiction, be, in a certain future where all military lawyers know that their career ambitions depend on avoiding vigourous, successful defense of their clients in military courts? My very intelligent stepson fully supports the obvious undermining of his own rights to legal protections, at the hand of the CIC, who he totally supports:

Quote:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm..._lawyer08.html
Guantánamo defense lawyer forced out of Navy

By Carol Rosenberg
McClatchy Newspapers

NEWARK, N.J. — The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court — and won — has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Under the military's "up-or-out" promotion system, Swift will retire in March or April, closing a 20-year career of military service.

A Pentagon appointee, Swift embraced the alleged al-Qaida's sympathizer's defense with a classic defense lawyer's zeal, casting his captive client as an innocent victim in the dungeon of King George, a startling analogy for the attorney whose commander-in-chief is President (George) Bush.

"It was a pleasure to serve," said Swift, who added that he would defend Salim Hamdan again, even if he knew he would have to leave the Navy earlier than he wanted.

"All I ever wanted was to make a difference — and in that sense, I think my career and personal satisfaction has been beyond my dreams," he said.

Swift, a Seattle University Law School graduate, also said he will continue to defend Hamdan as a civilian. The Seattle law firm of Perkins Coie, which provided pro-bono legal work in Hamdan's habeas corpus petition, has agreed to support Swift's defense of Hamdan in civilian life, he said.

Hamdan, 36, who has only a fourth-grade education, was captured along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan while fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, launched in reprisal for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He admits working as bin Laden's $200-a-month driver on a Kandahar farm but said he never joined al-Qaida and never fought anyone.

Still at Guantánamo as an enemy combatant, Hamdan halted his war-crimes trial by challenging the format's constitutionality through civilian courts.

The justices ruled in June that Bush overstepped his constitutional authority by creating ad hoc military tribunals for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, sending the Pentagon back to the drawing board for the trials.

In the end, it developed a system very similar to those struck down, setting the stage for a likely new challenge this session.

In the opinion of Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, Swift was "a no-brainer for promotion," given his devotion to the Navy, the law and his client.

But, he said, Swift is part of a long line of Navy defense lawyers "of tremendous distinction" who were not made full commander and "had their careers terminated prematurely."

"He brought real credit to the Navy," said Fidell. "It's too bad that it's unrequited love."

Swift's supervisor, the Pentagon's chief defense counsel for Military Commissions, said the career Navy officer had served with distinction.

"Charlie has obviously done an exceptional job, a really extraordinary job," said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney, calling it "quite a coincidence" that the Navy promotion board passed on promoting Swift "within two weeks of the Supreme Court opinion."

In June, the prestigious National Law Journal listed Swift among the nation's top 100 lawyers, with such legal luminaries as former Bush administration Solicitor General Theodore Olson, 66; Stanford Law constitutional-law expert Kathleen Sullivan, 50; and former Bush campaign recount attorney Fred Bartlit, 73.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, Pentagon spokesman on Guantánamo topics, did not respond to a query about the up-or-out system by which Navy lieutenant commanders are retired if they aren't promoted.

No US soldier fighting today, in either of those two war fronts is defending "my right" to not show [my] support for [the US president]", anymore than a US soldier fighting in the Vietnam war was accomplishing that.

Our soldiers are not defending the US consitution from an "imminent threat" and the GWOT has been an excuse, and a device, used by the executive and a compliant and/or brainwashed congress to first circumvent, and then undermine the US consitution.

It is five years after "9/11", and the fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan is, as it was in Vietnam, is pitting US forces against a resistance of the indigenous populations of those countries.....populations who have opted out of fighting to preserve the US orchestrated and supported, central governments in those countries. US troops, in all three instances, can instead be observed, risking their own lives in order to kill folks who fight to bring down the governments that the US supports...... while the original mission.... US troops building an indigenous force to defend the US installed and maintained governments, fails miserably.

My stepson is a smart guy. He's helping to perpetuate this tragic and impossible to accomplish Vietnam "mission" redux. He's also risking his life, and I believe....his soul....by fully committing to dying or killing to support the continuation of central governments in countries where those governments cannot attract enough local men, under arms, to support them.

Quote:

http://mccain.senate.gov/index.cfm?f...ontent_id=1174
OUR EXIT STRATEGY IN IRAQ IS VICTORY ~ SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN
For Immediate Release
Wednesday, Nov 05, 2003

.....Iraq is not Vietnam because our ally is not a corrupt government unwilling to defend itself, but a newly-freed people that desperately want to build a new future.......

I'ts three years later, now, John McCain.... the signifigant, local, armed resistance is decidedly projected US troops and the central goverment of Iraq that exists only because US troops obey orders to die and kill to defend it's continuance......., the same situation that permits that continuation of the 4-1/2 year old Kabul government.

I can support, somewhat, his decision to follow orders....when he enlisted, what I just described was not clear, as it is now.....but he doesn't have to fully agree with what he is under orders to do. It is wasting and grinding US military capability, and the soundness of the US treasury, and driving away support for the US government in the world.

These war fronts actually reduce the certainty that the remaining individual rights in the tattered US consitution that our leaders once took an oath to uphold, will always be successfully defended against imminent threats.

10-22-2006, 07:11 PM	#5 (permalink)
Paq Junkie Location: South Carolina	ok, i don't know if i'm in any position to respond but 1. i can respect that your stepson feels that way and i am thankful there are people like him fighting for what they believe is correct. I can find no fault and nothing but honor in that. 2. Bush could say it was raining in DC and i would have to take a flight and stand outside where he was standing to believe it. I could see him standing in a monsoon saying it was wet, and i'd still have to go there to see it in person. IE, bush can not say anything that i would believe at face value. So, i'm mainly signing up to see reasons why he has the support he has. __________________ Live. Chris

10-22-2006, 07:32 PM	#6 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i am confused. ncb's post is written in a way that matches its content, but something seems screwy: ncb, did you actually understand host's post? i mean did you follow the sequence of events? i am not sure that you did. when you used the word 'berate" what did you mean by it? or, another way: what do you imagine that host said to his stepson, ncb? clear this up please __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

10-22-2006, 08:01 PM	#7 (permalink)
Lady Sage Mistress of Mayhem Location: Canton, Ohio	However anything was meant... thank you to your stepson for serving in special ops. He is willing to risk his life in a way that I never was. Unfortunately part of his job is to go where Bush sends him. __________________ If only closed minds came with closed mouths. Minds are like parachutes, they function best when open. It`s Easier to Change a Condom Than a Diaper Yes, the rumors are true... I actually AM a Witch.

10-22-2006, 08:09 PM	#9 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	nevermind. Last edited by filtherton; 10-22-2006 at 09:20 PM..

10-22-2006, 09:54 PM	#12 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Host, I'm not going to be drawn into a Political matter on this (even though it's in Politics). What your Son-in-Law wants to hear is how proud you are of him, how brave he is, and how you hope he and all his buddies make it home. Never talk with him (until long after he gets back for good from the war) about the politics of the war. Never talk to him about what and who he is fighting for is wrong. Never tell him how you believe Bush bombed the WTC, never tell him how you believe he should be impeached or how you hate the Republicans. He knows by now your stance, he just simply will not want to hear it. All he should do is keep his mind on his mission at the moment. If he starts to question, his mind will wander. There's a saying I've heard before by a marine buddy of mine, "Wandering minds end up in a red mess." This was his company's saying to newbies hoping to keep their mind on the battlefield. So, just tell him what he wants to hear. Telling him what you think he deserves to know, or converting him to your political leaning is selfish. You will have his entire life to argue and convince him when he comes back, but right now he needs your support. I know you'll state that telling him whats going on is supporting him, how opposition is patriotism... but it's not in the mind of a battlefield soldier just wanting to do his job. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

10-22-2006, 06:53 PM	#4 (permalink)
samcol Junkie Location: Indiana	That's a pretty weird situation to be in. I think the only thing to be proud of is that in his mind he's trying to do the right thing. Although, if you showed him the evidence of lies that have been fed to us it makes me wonder how he can serve this system. I will be voting for Libertarians first, then non-incubents second. The reason is that I have no faith in the two party system, and would like to support the party that believes in freedom. The non-incumbent vote is because all those in congress are criminals except for a select few, unfortunetly the select few aren't in my state.

10-23-2006, 10:08 AM	#16 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	Your son is a good man. It sounds like he has two battles to fight. I wish him the best in both. And I won't be voting for bush on Nov. 7. or in 2008. __________________ "If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

10-23-2006, 10:16 AM	#17 (permalink)
Paq Junkie Location: South Carolina	yakk, good point, but from their POV, i can find that they did what they thought was honorable, which is honorable in a way, just not a way i can agree with Seriously, though, my remark was in relation to people who serve in the US military, and i failed to make that distinction. as R Lee Ermey once said, I never met an officer i didn't like. on the other hand, i must admit to having a grudging respect for people who are willing to die of their own free will for something they believed in. not sure if that applies to the WTC people in the 'free will' department. it gets confusing from there at any rate, i have nothing but respect for the US soldiers doing what they believe. __________________ Live. Chris

10-23-2006, 11:34 AM	#22 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	Somebody in this thread deserves a 30-day break. 'Sall I'm saying.

10-23-2006, 03:20 PM	#25 (permalink)
boatin Psycho	Seems like a great, well intentioned question from Host. It's a damn shame that no one can step up and answer the question. Fitting and not surprising...

10-24-2006, 07:13 AM	#31 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	host would you be proud of your son if he got himself 20 years in military prison for going awol in a combat mission or something of that nature because he suddenly saw your version of 'TRUTH' as true? If so seek psychiatric help, if not let the kid do his job, come home and then try to sway him to your point of view. His soul will be just fine. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

10-25-2006, 04:39 PM	#33 (permalink)
j8ear Gentlemen Farmer Location: Middle of nowhere, Jersey	Seretogis, That was a great freaking post. Thank you. -bear __________________ It's alot easier to ask for forgiveness then it is to ask for permission.

10-25-2006, 10:15 PM	#35 (permalink)
Paq Junkie Location: South Carolina	kinda sad that seretogis's post speaks so loudly to conservatives and liberals on this board. i didn't think i'd agree so much with it, but it's true. definitely...time for a change __________________ Live. Chris

10-26-2006, 10:45 AM	#39 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i have been hesitant to post to this thread for a number of reasons, not least of which is the complexity of the situation that it at its core and my sense of being unable to say anything meaningful about it. another reason is that i do not really understand the main verbs that litter the conservative set responses: pride in particular, what it means in this context. i do not see any necessarily linkage between "being proud" and being coherently supportive, unless the underlying assumption is that what is really required in such a situation is a kind of paternal blessing, which works under the assumption that there is something infantilizing about the situation in which host's stepson finds himself, and what is required to deal with it is the beneficient gesture of the paterfamilias. and maybe there is something infantilizing about it. but playing into it seems useless, given the political divisions within this family, which is not concealed, is a part of conversation, is known to all players. that on its own would seem to me to rule out any facile recourse to the discourse of "i am proud of you"--simply because it seems that it would be delivered as a message as already hollowed out. i am proud...i approve of what you are doing...i approve of what you are doing in the context of a situation that i approve of... how about saying what i assume from the op can be said and meant... something like: "i love you and i worry about you and how you are faring and i hope that you keep yourself safe and to stay safe you have to stay focussed on what you have to do." something like that? in the end, seaver's post 12 contains the same core, though still decorated with the discourse of pride, which i really dont think functional in this context. psychodad says a parallel thing above. which brings me around to the main reason i hesitated to post here: i think something about it is fundamentally unfair. now i say this as someone who opposed the iraq debacle from the outset and who has been very vocal about that opposition, both here and elsewhere. what seems to me unfair about it is the central question the op poses: which amounts to: ok you assholes tell me something that i can believe in about this stupid, unnecessary, incoherent, politically motivated debacle of a "war on terror" that i can tell my stepson who, unlike you conservatives who post here from the safety of your homes or offices, is actually putting himself on the line for all this in real time. what i do not understand is why any conservative would answer such a question and go much beyond what seaver said in post 12 (and psychodad's post directly above this one). to do so seems an act of almost mind-boggling presumption... host posed questions that should have been unanswerable for you folks--you would have done better to have posted nothing, said nothing--or to object to the question itself--rather than walk directly into a self-evident trap--which you tried to bluster your way through using--well what?--half-baked reactionary memes mixed with an appalling refusal to remember that there is a human being behind the name host who is talking about a real problem that none of you are have to face. how is this possible? do you really think that the people who oppose you politically are thereby not deserving of simple respect as human beings? it's funny--at the core of the new right's mythological "history" of vietnam there is the myth of the returning solder being spat upon by people who opposed the war in vietnam politically. it never happened, but no matter, it is a functional myth--which apparently has generated a kind of boneheaded sanctimoniousness amongst some conservatives that makes them feel justified in spitting on a human being they disagree with politically who posts something about an obviously complex personal situation....so the myth that the far right has taken for an allegory about the war in vietnam they now repeat in reverse. except they actually do it. so it follows that there are dimensions of conservative ideology that function to dehumanize all who oppose it, if that ideology is taken as a total worldview. nice demonstration, lads. i am sure that you did not set out to provide one, but you did. well played. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite