THE RESPONSE: THE SCOTTISH TALIBAN TALKS
November 8, 2009 posted by Gordon Duff · 11 Comments
EYE TO EYE, WE ARE READY
Robbie,
40 years ago, 3 of us at Veterans Today, Bill Eckard, Eddie Harris and I were in South Vietnam, serving with an elite Marine Special Landing Team, looking for "terrorists." Decades later, our memories are less than clear. It was 4 AM, 0400H, and we were searching a village. Bill remembers finding an AK47 in one hut, I think it was a Garand.
It’s funny we all remember that morning, nothing outstanding about it. I remember being acutely aware I was in someone else’s home, uninvited. This is how I was raised. Bill and I remember trying to read the "friendship" ID card, written in Vietnamese that theoretically authorized the weapon we found. Ed was uncovering a large cache of rice which had been supplying the "indigenous" forces we called the Viet Cong.
40 years later, the 3 of us are disabled veterans. Many, perhaps even most of our friends are dead. We can’t even begin to count the Vietnamese who died, they numbered in the millions. Now we are invited to return to Vietnam for beach front vacations, our hosts, the people we were fighting.
We are not pacificists but we have learned a thing or two over the years. Not everything is worth fighting and dying over and war, too often, is something turned to for profit and seldom involves fighting to secure the safety of our home and families.
We have grown older in a world of lies.
We will come to Scotland and sit down at a table, meet with those who are said to be our enemies. We will go to Scotland. If we have to we will do it in Afghanistan.
It isn’t my job to judge the United States or her NATO allies, such as they are. The reality of it is that a generation of our children is in Afghanistan. We can’t change what people believe, not all at once, but we can start.
Few, even few in Scotland remember that it is an occupied country, part of the United Kingdom by force of arms, not free choice. Over 200 years ago, my family fled Scotland after a failed "rebellion," a family divided, half deemed terrorists. We became Canadians and Americans. Now, few remember any of this struggle, lost in history, a history, as we know, written by the victors. We were not the victors.
We now face new decisions and new opportunities. We are being invited to sit down with our enemies, not by clergy but by, of all people, soldiers, veterans like ourselves from Pakistan, those who have known a lifetime of war, political strife and instability, like ourselves.
We recognize the names of our new friends. These are tough people, strong willed and determined. We don’t agree with everything they propose but much of it reflects what is in our hearts also.
We have fought too many wars against enemies we vilify as something less than men. This has to end. If we are going to hate each other, kill each other, we can do it as men. My concerns are selfish. I deal with the suffering of our veterans on a daily basis. Anything I can do to stop that suffering, within my power, I will.
If talking, meeting and understanding can provide a basis for something that can move us past conflict I am willing as are many with me.
If there has to be endless, senseless war, perhaps it would be better if we fought instead of our children. If anyone deserves this, it is us. It has been our indifference to the world that has allowed anarchy to rule.
We are the ones who sat by quietly while , what could have been a generation of science, righteousness and plenty has turned into one of continual war, war obviously manipulated by gangsters who have hijacked the political systems of, not only the United States but much of the world.
There is no William Wallace among us. We are all lesser men. Perhaps we live in the times of lesser men. Perhaps this is our doom, to be led, not by the great but by the sly, the servile and weak. Replacing the prowess of Attila or the cunning of the Borgias is an oligarchy of grinning con men enslaved by the leavings, the offal of their masters in the oil, arms and drug cartels.
We have lost the ability to determine who is or is not a threat, an enemy or an "evildoer" as the world itself has reformed itself as a cesspool where religious hypocrites of all faiths, spew their hate and fear. How have the great religions become so enmeshed in the scheming that has led humanity on this descent into barbarity? For every petty prince there are two "servants" of a higher power following close behind.
Maybe this is the century chosen to prove mankind isn’t meant to survive. Little more could be done to prove this the case.
Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
G
Thanks for this thoughtful, excellent piece, it’s a keeper.
Bob
thanks
g
Posting this all over the net.
Find myself losing affection for President Obama. Maybe his people just floated the idea that they were sending in merely 34,000 more troops
Send all of us old guys…and everyone in government who didn’t serve…Bush/Cheney included….send us to the front.
g
I’ve often thought, “What if men and women laid aside their leaders and came to know one another better? Would it be a better world for it?”
Fran
where we are going with this
exactly
g
The vast majority of wars are invented by the money guys who personally profit on all the carnage and plunder at our expense.
It would be amazingly wonderful if our elected officials would actually uphold and defend the Constitution of the US. They take the oath, then do all they can to destroy our liberty.
In my view we are being led by former little rich kids who received stock certificates for birthdays as children and were told they were better then the poorer Americans.
During the Vietnan many gor their deferments becuse their fathers knew a doctor who wrote a letter to the selective service, others made a donation to their congressman or senator, and thousands became college students and many fled to Canada.
These people have bebome members of the United States congress, senate, and the executive offices in our lifetimes.
They have used wars to make billions of dollars in support service contracts, they speak boldly to the themes of freedom and patriotism, and while the not so educated are distracted by these themes the wealthly corporate eleced ones have altered the American constituion with thousands of amendments all in the name of god, freedom country, anf yes, for the children.
The biggest change has been the 1994 mass legislative movement in the private prison industry which began by the way in Gainesville, Florida at the University of Florida, Gainesville in the Liberal Arts college……….that’s all I will write about that online.
The state sentes of every state is where much of the taking over of Anerica has been taking place. Just looking at those campaign finance disclousres proves my point ofwho really runs the elected ones.
I will be changing political parties and entering the 2010 Florida United States Senator election. I will not be taking any corporate dinations as I want my vote, should I climb that hill, to be the vote of the people who get me there, not the corporations. I will run as the Independent one. I will need those who agree that both the republican and the democrat rich corporate fed momma boys candidates do not have the people s’ interest at heart.
I am from the old school and consider myself to be of the same grain as those American leaders in our early history. In Vietnam, I volunteered to fly aboard a ch-46D working the 50 cal and pulling out as many Marines from Laos that we could. 39 yrs later I want to volunteered again to kick the rich momma boys out of DC but first I need to start in Florida.
Please “Pass the Word” if you believe it can still be done in 2009/10. They’re a bunch of pissants to me. Just have to figure a way arounf that Florida fax your vote into the Sect of State method they use with a landline. Think 2000. Florida with its republican muscle and the dems who are actually rebubs in disguise are real good at deception.
I feel my not taking contributions is a start in wlaking the walk and when I ran for the state senate in2008 I did receive approx. 72,000 votes without counting absentees and I didn’t take or spend a penny. It was all “Pass the Word”. I feel I just have to try again after the feedback I have received from many veterans who helped “pass the Word” for me.
Thanks for reading and know we are not all dead yet! Sempre Fi – and fight till you die! George A. Lovenguth (Jorge) Mywebsite will be up this week. Time to shake that Florida cage!
George,
Get me a fat state contract…training swat teams or some kind of useless shit like that.
g
If I was in Florida coming up, I’d vote for you. If anything… just to see to my best that the ‘rich momma’s boys’ don’t get in. The only people I know in FL are rapid Republicans, rich momma’s boys and my name is forbidden to be mentioned in their mother’s home… but, I’ll do my best to pass it on!
Semper Fi!
correction: “rabid Republicans”