"The Ultimate Betrayal" by Howard Zinn
- Thread starter ub4me
- Start date
I recommend Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States". Its probably the greatest and most thorough work on American History ever created. It is one of the few books that dares to tell history from the side of the millions and millions of ordinary people whose stories are never told in the high school textbooks and biographies.
I've been reading and rereading it off and on for the passed few years. It never gets old and its always interesting.
I've been reading and rereading it off and on for the passed few years. It never gets old and its always interesting.
Siddhartha
Lifer
- Oct 17, 1999
- 12,505
- 3
- 81
I am not sure you can blame this war on the Generation Gap. Gong by this forum, before the war, a lot of younger people were for it.
"As for Jeremy Feldbusch, blinded in the war, his hometown of Blairsville, an old coal mining town of 3,600, held a parade for him, and the mayor honored him. I thought of the blinded, armless, legless soldier in Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun, who, lying on his hospital cot, unable to speak or hear, remembers when his hometown gave him a send-off, with speeches about fighting for liberty and democracy. He finally learns how to communicate, by tapping Morse Code letters with his head, and asks the authorities to take him to schoolrooms everywhere, to show the children what war is like. But they do not respond. "In one terrible moment he saw the whole thing," Trumbo writes. "They wanted only to forget him."
-Robert
-Robert
Or, this by Jarrell:
"From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."
-The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
-Robert
"From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."
-The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
-Robert
Oh goodie, a chance to post a couple of poems that I feel are relevant to the discussion. The first is by Siegfried Sassoon, a WWI veteran; the second is by Larry Rottman, a Vietnam vet:
Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you?ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
APO 96225
by Larry Rottman
A young man once went off to war in a far country,
and when he had time, he wrote home and said,
"Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here."
But his mother- reading between the lines as mothers
always do- wrote back,
"We're quite concerned. Tell us what it's really like."
And the young man responded,
"Wow! You ought to see the funny monkeys."
To which the mother replied,
"Don't hold back. How is it there?"
And the young man wrote,
"The sunsets here are spectacular!"
In her next letter, the mother pleaded,
"Son, we want you to tell us everything. Everything!"
So the next time he wrote, the young man said,
"Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm
on women and children."
And the father wrote right back,
"Please don't write such depressing letters. You're
upsetting your mother."
So, after a while,
the young man wrote,
"Dear Mom, sure rains here a lot.
Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you?ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
APO 96225
by Larry Rottman
A young man once went off to war in a far country,
and when he had time, he wrote home and said,
"Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here."
But his mother- reading between the lines as mothers
always do- wrote back,
"We're quite concerned. Tell us what it's really like."
And the young man responded,
"Wow! You ought to see the funny monkeys."
To which the mother replied,
"Don't hold back. How is it there?"
And the young man wrote,
"The sunsets here are spectacular!"
In her next letter, the mother pleaded,
"Son, we want you to tell us everything. Everything!"
So the next time he wrote, the young man said,
"Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm
on women and children."
And the father wrote right back,
"Please don't write such depressing letters. You're
upsetting your mother."
So, after a while,
the young man wrote,
"Dear Mom, sure rains here a lot.
Dissipate:
What makes you think the draft has anything to do with intergenerational conflict? More young men dying means fewer guys paying into the Social Security Trust Fund.
-Robert
What makes you think the draft has anything to do with intergenerational conflict? More young men dying means fewer guys paying into the Social Security Trust Fund.
-Robert
I think you've misidentified the issues, dissipate. chess9 and I are both relative oldsters, but we certainly haven't endorsed the war or called for the destruction of SS- hell, I've been paying 50% over expenses on that for 20 years, which has simply become part of the don't tax and spend foolishness championed by the so-called conservatives... translated into crippling debt for the govt...
As far as the whole concept of the Draft is concerned, I'm very much opposed- that will mean, of course, treating our volunteer army better than we do at the moment, and electing leaders less anxious to place them in harm's way. If we can't find the self-restraint required to use the military strictly in defense of our country and our legitimate interests, we'll have to bring back the draft, because nobody with a lick of sense will enlist- at least not in sufficient numbers to do the job...
As far as the whole concept of the Draft is concerned, I'm very much opposed- that will mean, of course, treating our volunteer army better than we do at the moment, and electing leaders less anxious to place them in harm's way. If we can't find the self-restraint required to use the military strictly in defense of our country and our legitimate interests, we'll have to bring back the draft, because nobody with a lick of sense will enlist- at least not in sufficient numbers to do the job...
Dissipate
Diamond Member
- Jan 17, 2004
- 6,815
- 0
- 0
Originally posted by: chess9
Dissipate:
What makes you think the draft has anything to do with intergenerational conflict? More young men dying means fewer guys paying into the Social Security Trust Fund.
-Robert
It's not really a conflict because younger generations seem to be going along with it. They really don't know what is going on. A classic example of the exploitation of ignorance. The problem is that those who are ignorant are imposing costs on other people of the younger generation who know what is going on and don't want any part of it, but are forced to take part because the government has made it so the fruits of one's labor can be taxed (to no end) and their right to opt out of conscription does not exist.
Older generations can have their cake and eat it too. As long as they don't send every young person into combat their social security benefits won't decline that much. In any event they can find an equilibrium between their war mongering desires and their government provided retirement benefits.
PingSpike
Lifer
- Feb 25, 2004
- 21,765
- 615
- 126
Some interesting points here. I don't think a lot of people realize how truely horrible a thing war really is. It isn't something that should be taken lightly as it seems to often is. War is something that should be avoided, not trumped up.
But like that poem with the vietnam soldier's letters, some people don't want to know. They just want something simple to hang onto.
But like that poem with the vietnam soldier's letters, some people don't want to know. They just want something simple to hang onto.
- Oct 9, 1999
- 46,933
- 10,813
- 147
I once picked up Howard Zinn at the airport and drove him to our course lecture at Pendle Hill. Drove him back, too.
Stephen Vincent Benet
1936
All night they marched, the infantrymen under pack,
But the hands gripping the rifles were naked bone
And the hollow pits of the eyes stared, vacant and black,
When the moonlight shone.
The gas mask lay like a blot on the empty chest,
The slanting helmets were spattered with rust and mold,
But they burrowed the hill for the machine gun nest
As they had of old.
And the guns rolled, and the tanks, but there was no sound,
Never the gasp or rustle of living men
Where the skeletons strung their wire on disputed ground....
I knew them, then.
"It is eighteen years," I cried. "You must come no more."
"We know your names. We know that you are the dead.
Must you march forever from France and the last, blind war?"
"Fool! From the next!" they said.
1936
All night they marched, the infantrymen under pack,
But the hands gripping the rifles were naked bone
And the hollow pits of the eyes stared, vacant and black,
When the moonlight shone.
The gas mask lay like a blot on the empty chest,
The slanting helmets were spattered with rust and mold,
But they burrowed the hill for the machine gun nest
As they had of old.
And the guns rolled, and the tanks, but there was no sound,
Never the gasp or rustle of living men
Where the skeletons strung their wire on disputed ground....
I knew them, then.
"It is eighteen years," I cried. "You must come no more."
"We know your names. We know that you are the dead.
Must you march forever from France and the last, blind war?"
"Fool! From the next!" they said.
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