George Bush came up onto a stage a Fort Bragg, N.C. in a roar of military yells and claps and foot stompings. Military was the primary theme; rather, the military and iraq. One quotation from the speech I found particularly troubling and somewhat ironic follows below: "Totalitarian Ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance, and despises all dissent."
What does that sound like to you?
Well to me, it is a scathing but accurate account of the policies at work in the Bush administration. With the recent ruling by the Supreme Court regarding report- source privilage, and the shield laws, we can see that Bush and his administration may preach one ideological belief but act upon another. In order to force these reporters to reveal their sources within the CIA, a scheming prosecutor bounced their civil liberties and rights as reporters, the Fourth Branch, right out the door.
Dissent is not a valued code of conduct for anyone to have according to our President. Regarding the remainder of the speech, this Administration often speaks in the abstract in order to justify its very concrete and very immoral actions. Freedom's March justifies the jailing and torture of enemy combatants?
At one point Bush goes so far into abstracting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to make a generalization regarding the very nature of terrorists. Any skeptic would certainly find a flawed logic at work here. In many instances, Bush and his speech writers assume that the public has a unanimous opinion regarding the Nature of Terrorists or the March of Freedom.
They then use this ideology to justify their own actions as the only path by which we can achieve such lofty aspirations. A man whose policies are primary based on fallacy, not to mention phallicy, should not lead a country into war and cannot lead one out of it. Modern warfare is greatly misunderstood by the public and by the Administration, as evidenced by their policies. What we forget about warfare is that there is no victor, there is no honor and there are no solutions. One war will always result in another.
Ethics are complex on the battlefield and must be understood in order to wage war. The greatest thing we all must remember is that war has the capability of going completely wrong. It is a fine line and we very well may not see the rise of the so called "Iraq beacon" in this troubled region. I work a block from the Oval Office and often stop by the White House on my crawls back home.
Article comments
1 - Bennett
You might want to break this up into paragraphs. Also, it's "Wednesday".
2 - Temple Stark
Please break into paragraphs and I will be happy to read your post.
Wednesday and time element of "last night" fixed.
3 - SFC Ski
Spell checking would be a good idea, too.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
Maybe it's spam?
5 - Terry Turner
Actually there was no military applause or foot stomping. There've actually been a lot of questions raised about why the soldiers were so silent during the speech.
6 - Eric Olsen
I heard the administration suggested in advance that the crowd remain subdued
Paul, though I don't personally agree with many points, this is well-written and obviously sincere, but please edit carefully, including short paragraphs. I have taken care fo this one.
Thanks!
7 - Tan The Man
That would make sense. I made a huge hooplah over Bush's State of The Union addresses when every two words Bush would get a standing ovation. It gets very distracting and everyone loses focus on his speech and what he's saying.
8 - SFC Ski
Soldiers are not slaves or automatons, so you might want to abandon that line of commentary if you want me to read the rest of what you write.
Having been to a few addresses in a military setting, it is not uncommon to request that those those attending refrain from applauding until the end. It is distracting, and especially because this was not simply and a speech for the trooops but a major address to the nation as a whole, it was a good idea to keep pauses for applause to a minimum.
Sidenote, the Army has had very high reenlistments among its active duty soldiers, most of whom have ben to Iraq, and/or Afghanistan, why do you think that is?
9 - Matt
"Sidenote, the Army has had very high reenlistments among its active duty soldiers, most of whom have ben to Iraq, and/or Afghanistan"
SFC Ski--where did you see that? Its interesting, although I haven't seen it.
10 - SFC Ski
Here's one article I found, it's linked of the Army's site, as well as military.com:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/4976385p-4547341c.html
Anecdotally, my unit and most of the other units have had very good re-up rates amongst those of us who deployed.
11 - Paul Herrington
Sorry about the typo's it is unprofessional but I had to post immediately and was on my way out of town. Please excuse my lack of sophistication in this piece, typically the pieces will be better written.
- Paul
12 - Phillip Winn
Can you apologize for the poor punctuation in your last comment, too?
It is 'typos,' no apostrophe. :-)
13 - Paul Herrington
Look, there are some things worth correcting and being a stickler over. Other things should simply be let go. In addition to the "typo's typos"
correction, the first sentence is a run on. Please just read the material and comment on the material. If you find an error, which inhibits your understanding of the piece, then by all means tell me. Otherwise, all you are doing is wasting everyone's time.