The First Rant
I hope you can find the time today to look at a few of the links that follow. Open your heart and search it when you are done.Pulling up extra tall, heavy duty soap box, clambering up to stand on top. Reaches in pocket for wireless microphone. "Testing....Test. Can you hear me now? OK."
I am not only non political but politically ignorant. I vote, but usually in a state of despair that there are no candidates worth the paper we punch the hole in, and choose what I hope are the lesser of the evil weasels that are running for office. I claim no concept of the larger picture - I do, however, have an OPINION.
Support our Troops! Yes , we do that. How? Putting a cute magnet on the vehicle? By keeping in touch with the ones we know?At least until we kinda forget them in the flow of everyday life. Then we send a joke or a chain email and the letters and boxes from home stop. Then the jokes stop. The calls stop. They are too busy, broke and far from home to call us. They don't want to be an imposition or extra cost to strapped families so they won't call collect. They're tough, they're soldiers, nothing can stop them.
Except a bullet, a car bomb, a hundred other ways to kill a human or, in our case a motar round.
And we are among the lucky ones. There are others, families that are getting a special notice about their boys and girls - the ones that will not be home - EVER.
And what about the previously wounded? Here's great news! low-cost “traumatic injury” insurance for members of America’s armed forces. Now, explain to me, why a country that was EMARRASSED into sending a LARGER donation to tsunami victims has soldiers that need INSURANCE related to their war injuries? We can't take care of our own?
We can't take care of our own. Chairities are making sure our wounded have backpacks to transport belonging, personal care and hygine items, a way to call home. Charities are providing military families with help while the soldier heals.
Why are there no photos of the action in Iraq? Read This, PLEASE. Where are the films of 6 soldiers being blown up by land mines, the children crippled and bloody from car bomb fragments? The images that would make us sick, that we won't let children watch because we are bombing other children? Where is the photo of the truth of war; the things that we refuse to picture, even in our minds as we read them? Is it just me? I don't read a lot of real papers, I get my new online. I checked google for iraq, soldier wounded. Not many links to real news places.
"DR. GENE BOLLES: The average American has not really witnessed the horrifying aspects of war, except from a distance, except from reading, except from what they may see on television. And we aren't showing very much here." Why not? Because we would have to take a stand against it. It's out there - on the web! In blogs and dot orgs. Check it out.
Can anyone show me how blowing up one more person is going to bring us closer to peace? Why is our fearless leadership sitting in it's cushioned office chairs (at 1500.00 a pop) on it's soft, lazy butts while our children are killed? Why are the 300,000 or so Great High Kabunga's telling the remaining 6,529,357,000 people to beat each other up from the comfort of their limos?
BECAUSE we let them. You let them. I let them. We grant permission by our SILENCE! As an adult citizen of the United States of America if you do not TELL them to stop, if you do not mail one letter to Washington saying War is the Wrong Way to solve disputes, then you are joining them as a warmonger .
If the people of the world can't stomach the destruction we can now cause with our hi tech, remote control weapons then the people of the world have to say ENOUGH. STOP. Stop the fighting and the bickering and butchering NOW.
Ask one mom if she would sacrifice her son or daughter for world peace. A few will say yes. I might even sacrifice ME for world peace. But isn't even one more life too many dead?
Ok, it is a rant. I have no grand plan to make the US quit wasting our money overseas an concentrate on making the section of the planet we have last longer. I turn off the lights, the faucets, drive to work and back as often as I can on the least fuel eating machine I have. I don't have room for a windmill and not enough money for thermal heating. I do what I can.
But I don't see how the US can fix anything anywhere until it fixes what is wrong at home. Stop the wars. Bring the kids home. Fix the infrastructure, feed the hungry, find all of us that want to work jobs so that we don't have to move to Mexico to work, get our kids in GOOD schools, let us disipline our children to teach them not to fight and bully but to share and compromise.
Share and compromise. Make Peace. Don't be so greedy. Get by with what you have. Share what you have too much of. Be kind to each other.
I love this world, the wilderness, the animals, the beaches and trees. I want it to last and I want to be proud to be an American again.
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I wrote the above when we had just heard of three soldiers being violently wounded. I believe our leaders have to lead. There may be ultimate good to come out of this war.
But it is up to us to make sure they stay responsible for the damage done our soldiers and their families. There are more stories out there about the neglect, attempts to get soldiers to leave the service before their medical needs are met, families being billed for items signed out but blown up when the soldier was wounded, it's UGLY! I will be putting these items here as I can find them.
If you have a story, a news article, photo or personal tale to tell, email me or post it in the comments. I will gather the links and post them here as often as I can.
The Links:
Help the Families at Home
A Soldier's Story,
Wounded Soldiers.
Never Returning
Previously Wounded
News Story“traumatic injury” insurance
Wounded Warrior Project
Fishers Houses.
Real Photos
Another Opinion on invisible wounded
Search for Photos.
Write Your Reps
posted by Valerie - Still Riding Forward @ 12:58 AM
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