www.nationalview.org and Note From a Madman brought to you by
for your Information Technology needs
owned and operated by Noah "The Madman" Greenberg
This Is What Democracy Looks Like
Today's Note From a Madman
May 20, 2008
A Child of Viet Nam
I was born into the Viet Nam war. No, I'm not Vietnamese or anything like that.
I was simply born in 1960 when that particular quagmire was really just getting
into its groove, so it and I have a common thread: We grew up together.
There was always a veil of concern in my parents' home. You see, I have three
brothers, all considerably older than I, and there was always this concern that
one, if not more of them, would have to go off and fight this war. Fortunately,
due to various reasons (including medical), they didn't have to fight and my mom
and dad didn't have to go through the hell of having a well-groomed military
officer come to the door voicing his regrets, as so many other military (and
reluctant-military) families have had to do over the years. Over 58,000 American
families went through it during the Viet Nam era and in excess of 4,000 have
gone through the same thing in relation to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, so
far.
My father, Abraham Greenberg, will always be linked to the Viet Nam war in my
mind. My brothers, being fifteen, twelve and ten years older, don't have the
same memories of their early years as I have. My father died in March 1975, just
as the last US troops were coming home from over there. To add to that was his
insistence that I not watch television on weekdays during the school year,
except for the news. So every night I sat on the floor in front of the TV and
watched Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News with (of course) Walter
Cronkite. And each and every night we got the casualty report together. If my
memory serves me correctly, it went something like this:
CRONKITE: Today in Viet Nam, 25 soldiers were killed in action and 45 were
wounded.
I got desensitized to it. I remember when the number was low it felt like a
"good day", and when the number was high, it was a "bad day". As that child, I
looked at the loss number much in the same way I looked at a New York Yankee of
Giant loss.
And I got over it... quickly.
But the truth of the matter was that my father and mother looked at those
numbers differently, much in the same way I look at them today. And I fear for
my son much in the same way my mother feared for my brothers back in the 1960's.
And I know what death is and it's far different than what an eight year old
thinks it is.
We Americans, today, don't look at the Iraq war in the same way we looked at the
Viet Nam war all those years ago. There are no draftees, just volunteers who
"knew what they were getting in to" as some who will use any rationale to keep
this war going have suggested.
The Viet Nam war was ended, in part, to the children who knew that they would
have to go fight in their generation's war. Thee is no draft today so it's easy
for the children of those protesters to not be touched by their war the way
their parents were touched by theirs.
My brothers' generation marched on Washington; they protested and made the kind
of noise which couldn't fall on deaf ears indefinitely. This non-draft war is
just the medicine which the Bush administration would have ordered. I remember
in the 2004 election, one of the bumper sticker slogans being, "Bush in 2004;
Draft in 2005". But there wasn't any draft. A draft would have put an end to
this war already. Our nation's families wouldn't put up with the loss of their
draftee children's lives for long. And as a nice side effect, the non-draft army
allows for war profiteers to make profits from the horrors of this war. They
provide food; they provide security protection for DC dignitaries who want to
tour Iraq; they make the profits of war.
If we had death, wounded and missing counts on the CBS Evening News with Katie
Couric today, perhaps this war would be brought home a bit more. maybe this war
wouldn't be a conflict fought "by someone's else's children" only.
The network and cable news channels are shirking their responsibility for not
showing flag-draped caskets coming home for the last time. They are not doing us
a service by excluding the horrific news from Iraq which contain the names,
ranks and home towns of our deceased heroes.
And if they were, perhaps this war would already be over.
-Noah Greenberg
In response to, "the 2.3 million Democrats who went to the polls and voted in
those two states were effectively told their votes didn’t count," Dorothy
Schwartz writes:
They were told their votes wouldn't count before the primaries. That's why my 26
year old son in Florida didn't vote -- he was told it wouldn't make a
difference. He would have voted for Obama, and plans to do so in November.
That's why it doesn't make sense to seat Florida and Michigan delegates as
presently constituted: people who believed what they were told won't be
represented.
And in response to, "women voters are angry," Dorothy Schwartz writes:
I am a woman voter and I am not angry, except at Hillary Clinton for the
divisive tactics she has used. If she is the nominee, I will vote for her in
November, but while holding my nose.
Send your comments to: NationalView@aol.com
-Noah Greenberg