Our Generation: by Frank Fox

Misplaced Trust ...

Is it just me who thinks we have aged faster than our fathers who were in WW2 and Korea? Somehow, it seems like it took those veterans longer to reach our age.

This has all gone by too fast. Even some of the film footage on file seems like it was done with WW2 vintage photo equipment.

 
We (our generation) should be able to speak the loudest about getting sucked into a useless, uncalled for conflict, but with as many of us as there are, we didn't prevent losing all of the precious young American lives.

If there is one positive, it is that now is the longest we have been in combat overseas, and we haven't managed the numbers that was Vietnam, thank the Lord. 

My heart is broken for all the parents and loved ones of men and women who have obeyed orders in good faith from leaders who have lied and misled the American people, starting with GW, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Halliburton. 

Vietnam it was LBJ, Robert McNamara, and Gen. Westmoreland, Brown & Root, and the US Tire manufacturers. 

I visualize these parents looking at video's of the children they have lost with heavy hearts, especially at this time of year. 

Before I would waste that many young lives, if I were President, we would only go to war when we absolutely had to, and then it would be short and sweet -- we make bombs that can turn the desert into glass in a twinkling. 

I would give that terrorism group an overdose of radioactivity. We need to be respected again. If I had done what GW and company had done, I couldn't sleep at night for what I caused, and I would have already starved to death, because I couldn't eat after having seen the faces of parents and loved one's when they got the news. How does Bush go to sleep at night? Or Cheney?

God Bless everyone who has skin in the game at this time.  We have a blue star in our window for our son.

Certainly God Bless those in every war who have lost loved ones, or had them come back home disabled. We have to do better than this, I would have thought after the sin of Vietnam we would have done better. It appears that after a time people forget. 

When I was active duty, I was gung-ho, I believed everything they told me -- the leaders of the USA would never lie, or sacrifice men for nothing ... Even for years after discharge I felt that way.

Then as I started to pay attention more and read more, I found enlisted men were taken advantage of and used for profit and egotistical leadership. 

No veteran should feel guilty. They followed orders and had 100% trust and faith in the military's leadership, and the leadership of the nation.

It was our leaders who betrayed that trust of young men and women who were willing to sacrifice their lives for each other and a free USA.

I better stop I hear the national anthem starting to play ...

Frank Fox

Frank Fox

Combat Medic
Sea/Air Rescue
US Navy with USMC
August 1964 – August 1970 (6 years 1 month)

More Articles by Frank Fox:

The Marine and the Cure
More Thoughts on War and Youth
Opinions, Thoughts and Feelings
A Different Perspective

A Worthy Rebuttal to Mr. Garrison

“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do, and by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale


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