I do not worship the ground our military walks on

[Lydia Leftcoast]

321. I didn't lose a fiancé, but I'm also part of the generation where 50,000 Americans died

for ideological fanaticism and LBJ's ego and Henry Kissinger's cynicism, and countless others came home disabled or mentally disturbed. That's not counting the millions of Vietnamese whose blood is on our hands.

There's a whole branch of my mother's side of the family that's career military. I can't talk to them about politics at all, because they start playing the tape about "fighting for freedom" and "defending your rights to criticize," but except for my great-uncle, who was a chaplain for the troops in the South Pacific during World War II, they all managed to spend their careers in safe posts Stateside or in Europe (one generation was too old for Vietnam, and the next one was too young). Are they heroes?

What about the men of my generation who enlisted rather than be drafted so that they would have a chance of avoiding Vietnam? I know some of them, too. They were able to spend their entire four years in safe posts, so were they heroes?

What about the fellow I mentioned in another post, the one who is so guilt-ridden about what he was forced to do and what he saw during his time as an "adviser" in Central America that he can't talk about it without choking up? Is he a hero?

Ever since Reagan came to office, there's been this cult of glorification of the military, something that had been dormant since World War II. Every country needs a military to defend itself. It does NOT need a military to "extend its influence."