Sondra K, a PNW blogger of great power (and many good friends) posted a seven-minute YouTube video yesterday, depicting American Troops and Iraqi Children.
This video is work-safe, and kid-safe, so disregard the 'warnings'. It's a pleasant surprise, and a lovely film for people who see children as a better, more innocent "us".
Go, watch it. No, don't wait to read the rest of the article. You need these images in your head to understand what follows. Click on the link above. We can wait.
...
Done? Good.
On the other hand, here is a contrary viewpoint.
Vietnam War draft dodgers reunite in Canada
CASTLEGAR, British Columbia (Reuters) - Three decades after they fled the United States to avoid the Vietnam War, a small group of former draft dodgers gathered in Canada on Thursday, more convinced than ever that their anti-war stand was right.
Peace activist Isaac Romano, who moved to Canada from the United States in 2001, said he helped organize the conference to honor both the Americans who opposed the war and Canadians who helped them establish new lives.
I have some baggage when it comes to people who leave their country to evade the draft during time of war, and even more regarding those who have volunteered for military service and then refuse their movement orders because, they say, this is not the "right" war.
As a Vietnam veteran, I faced the same decision in 1968. When was drafted, I took the pledge at my induction without reservation.
And I decided not to criticize other should-have-been draftees who evaded the draft by taking up residence in Canada. I figured they were aware of the down-side to their decision, and if they were willing to pay it ... it was their decision.
I wasn't pleased when, in1977, then-president Carter granted amnesty to "Canadian Draft-Resistors". It seemed to me that they had lived when better, more honorable men had died for them. It seemed unfair to allow them to return to the country which they had betrayed.
Now these same ... people ... are celebrating their decision, in public, without shame.
Craig Wiester, who moved to Montreal in 1968 after being drafted into the military, said Americans have amnesia about the men who left their families rather than fight in a war that even some U.S. officials now say was wrong.
"Why are we still dishonored in American society ... those of us who said (the war was wrong) and knew it, and acted out our feelings on that," said Wiester, 59, who now lives in Minneapolis, Minn.
He said although his father, a World War Two veteran, personally hated the Vietnam War, he nonetheless reported his own son to the FBI after learning he was planning to refuse military service.
A personal note to the Wusster person: you are being dishonored because your actions did little to further the anti-war movement. What you did was to save your own precious self. You dishonored yourself. Instead of thanking God for saving you, and Carter for accepting you back to the bosom of your family, you continue to protest in your delusional concept that you acted out of honorable intent.
I hope you, and others of these physical and moral cowards, see that film clip if only to learn how men who are truly honorable conduct themselves.
It's probably too late for you to acknowledge how you have shamed your families, but perhaps a few of you will at least admit your own secret shame, if only to yourselves.
You have not redeemed yourself even as much as had Henry Fleming in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage.
You have not payed enough.
