The comments on the Yin Yang Conspiracy post got me thinking about this:
In 1961, at the age of 17 I took an oath agreeing to be part of a team effort to kill anyone John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and later Lyndon Baines Johnson, thought needed killing.
Everything I’ve learned about those two men during the decades since has caused me to believe both were despicable, incorrigible individuals bent on personal power and self-aggrandizement, first, with the betterment of the US public only a priority to the extent it contributed to those.
But I raised my right hand and took an oath to become the trigger-finger for anything they wanted doing, volunteered to point a rifle and kill whomever these two car salesmen cum rich-boy opportunists found more convenient dead than alive.
My thinking today is that, despite the popularity of the choice I made, despite the fact millions of other men made the same choice to abdicate their ethics, their intelligence, their judgement to those men and others exactly of the same unworthy breed, [still do so today,] it’s not a choice to be admired, praised, encouraged, or rewarded. If anything, it’s a testimony to my own shallowness, stupidity, weakness of character and obliquely, a failure of self-respect.
Today, men and women who openly vilify the President of the US, the US Congress, detest the US military command and officer corps, are nevertheless pointing their weapons at whomever those people they detest tell them to kill. And label doing so a virtue.
Aside from the fact I didn’t know enough when I took my oath to recognize what scum the two presidents I agreed to kill for were, those people serving today are in precisely the same position I was in. They’ve agreed to do whatever the dregs of humanity tell them to do, do it without question.
The main change between 1961, and 2011, is that I agreed to do it for $78 per month, whereas they’re getting paid one hell of a lot more to obey the orders about which unlucky human beings get the downrange surprises.
Think about it. Thousands of young men died, thousands killed because Richard Milhaus Nixon told them to do it. Yet Richard Nixon outranked those politicians of the time in scumhood so conspicuously he was casheered from office by the others of his club. His own peers.
What am I missing here?
Is there something in this worthy of admiration?
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
I made the same mistake in 66, but then if I hadn’t joined they would have drafted me. It would have either been that or do like another scum sucker that eventually because a president and headed for Canada. Difference between now and then is it was for rubber back then and now its for oil. Sooner or later it will be over of drinkable water.
Hi tffnguy: Yep. Eventually they’d have drafted me, too, if I hadn’t joined. That is a major difference between the US military then and the US military now. When you went in and when I went in the great majority of soldiers were draftees. They wasted no time telling us we were nuts, at best, possibly mentally deficient, certainly misguided. Now there’s nobody to tell them that particular truth. They’ve only got one another.
Gracias, J
Nope, no f*****g way, amen brother and seconded …..only difference I can see from when you and I had our heartstrings plucked & f***ed by the scum who signed the other 5 scum (Nixon was 3 all by his lonesome self) marching orders,pardons and pay stubs have perfected mass manipulation and brainwashing to an art form…..we were just proof their shit worked and they cranked it up to 11 and here we sit.
Hi Rich: Thanks for coming by. I like to think of myself as having enlisted to serve Jacquiline. But of course, it’s a lie. I’d like to be able to say I served my country by getting a dose of clap at Yonjugol, but that would also be a lie.
[Apologies to Rudyard Kipling]
In the South Korean time where I used to spend my time
In the service of sweet Jacquiline, the wyf
We camped along the Han and we screamed out, “Kajukan”
For the josans and a raging case of whatever the hell STD that was caused lesions on the pecker.
Truth intrudes again though. I never heard of anyone getting syph over there. But almost every man of them did pick up a dose of clap for his country. Likely they still do, but now from the US troops of the opposite sex.
Gracias, J
I’ve already told my young nephews no way in hell do I want you to even think of going to Afghanistan. If you need money you can come work for me. IMO these wars are for opium, oil, minerals and other stuff to evil to mention.
When I see these young men and women coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan with missing limbs it makes my head want to explode.
This is what I wanna know! Where are all those anti-war protestors I saw in the 60’s screaming, having love-ins and the general wailing and gnashing of the teeth.
Where is that bitch Fonda screaming about all the men dying in the middle east? Why isn’t she demanding Liar-In-Chief to bring the troops home?
The hypocrisy of this current administration is beyond imagination. These politicians are arrogant and they feel entitled. I hope they all rot in hell when they die.
Hi dumpsterdiver goddess: Thanks for coming by and reading. One of those 60s protesters is right here, answering your post. Me. This blog tells all about where I am and what I’m doing. I don’t know, don’t care where the other protesters are, including Jane Fonda. I do know that I did what I did back then, and that today I feel no remorse about it, no retreat, no compromise, no surrender. We’ve had a whole series of Liar-in-Chiefs since then. Where were you while they were doing their thing? Where are you now?
During the Mexican War Henry David Thoreau was in jail for his anti-war activities. Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him in jail. “What are you doing in here? Are you crazy?”
Thoreau just looked at him a while, then muttered, “What are you doing OUT THERE, Ralph?”
Old Jules